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Howdy rebel ideapreneurs 🦸♂️🦸♀️
Leo hosts a weekly podcast about strength training for people who start late.
He began it because most fitness advice assumes you're already young and fit.
His message is simple — it's never too late, and late beginners aren't broken.
And his listeners? They want proof that starting to train at 35 isn't a mistake.
⛳️ Problem:
Leo has 30 episodes recorded, but episode 31 just sits there, unedited.
Every week he opens the file, stares at it for a minute, and quietly closes it again.
So he watches a motivation video, promises himself tomorrow, then feels even worse. We've all been there.
His struggle:
He can't figure out what's really keeping him from finishing one episode.
🔥 The recipe
➡️ The Unblock Method
Back in 2017, Ali Abdaal was a busy medical student at Cambridge, in England.
He wanted to start a YouTube channel, but he was nervous and had no idea what he was doing.
Still, he filmed a shaky first video in his room. Before he could lose his nerve, he hit publish anyway.
Then he made himself one promise: post one to three videos every single week.
And he kept it — right through his exams, and later through long shifts as a young doctor.
He never skipped a week, even when almost nobody was watching.
Turns out — for a long time, almost nobody watched.
It took him until 2018 just to reach a hundred thousand followers.
The channel didn't truly take off until 2020, more than three years after he started.
Today he has over 6 million followers and a business that has made millions of dollars.
But at the start, the thing that almost stopped him was fear — that people would judge his rough videos.
He didn't fight that fear with willpower.
He named it, made the first step tiny, and hit publish anyway.
That's how he learned the real way out of being stuck.
Putting things off is almost never about being lazy.
It's usually one of just three things.
It's boring — there's no spark, so you keep drifting away from it.
It's confusing — you're not sure what to do, or what "done" even looks like.
It's scary — finishing it puts you on the line, where people might judge you.
Once you name which one it is, the next small step gets much easier.
🚗 So Leo tried it his way.
Recall Leo and his strength-training podcast?
Every week he opened episode 31, then quietly closed it again.
So he decided to finally find the real reason he kept stalling.
Instead of forcing himself, he sat with episode 31 and asked what was really going on.
Funny thing is — it wasn't boring. The guest was a 52-year-old who lifts twice his own bodyweight.
And it wasn't confusing — he'd already edited 30 episodes before this one.
But when he pictured hitting publish, his chest got tight. So it was the third one: scary.
The guest had openly admitted quitting every gym he ever joined.
Publishing something that raw meant Leo felt exposed too — a fake who hadn't earned the right to give this advice yet.
Just naming that fear out loud made it smaller and easier to face.
Plot twist: he didn't force a long editing session.
He opened the file, played the first five minutes, and wrote down one note.
The fear shrank, and that night he edited for 40 minutes without pushing himself at all. Just like that.
🧸 You're not lazy. Name the block — boring, scary, or confusing — and the next small step appears.
The prompt below runs one stuck task through the boring / scary / confusing test.
You just tell it the task you've been avoiding.
🏄♀️ The prompt
Save this prompt as a Skill or add to Project in your favorite AI tool — build once, use often.
Update your input values in the prompt, or just run it as is. Your AI sidekick will use the example values and give you an output.
CONTEXT:
- (use what's available, fall back to the inline values)
- If my Voice Profile exists, write in that voice. Otherwise, write in a clear, warm, no-jargon voice — first-person, plain words, no startup-speak, no therapy-speak.
- This is a diagnostic prompt, not a motivation prompt. Be honest and kind. Never blame me. Never tell me to "just push through."
Inputs:
The one task I've been avoiding for at least 3 days (one sentence, specific and picture-able — not "my whole launch"):
{e.g. edit and publish episode 31 of my podcast — the interview with the 52-year-old who deadlifts twice his bodyweight}
What I usually TELL myself about why I'm not doing it (the story I run when someone asks):
{e.g. "I'm waiting for the right energy" or "I want to do it justice" or "I'll batch it on the weekend"}
What I've already tried (motivation videos, hard deadlines, accountability buddies, time-blocking, etc.):
{e.g. watched two productivity videos, blocked Tuesday 9-11am, told my friend I'd ship by Friday — none of it worked}
For Audience: {e.g. me — a guy building a strength-training podcast on the side while still working a day job, scared to publish content my fitter friends might judge}
For Outcome: {e.g. an honest diagnosis of whether the task is BORING, SCARY, or CONFUSING — plus the one tiny next move that shrinks the actual blocker}
Outputs:
1. The diagnosis — pick one label: BORING (no spark) · SCARY (puts me on the line) · CONFUSING (I don't know what "done" looks like). One paragraph of evidence from my inputs.
2. The pebble — one sentence naming what's actually under the avoidance, in my words, no therapy-speak.
3. The one tiny next move — a 5-15 minute action that shrinks the pebble, not the whole task. Something I could do in the next hour.
4. What to AVOID this week — one specific anti-pattern I keep reaching for (e.g. another motivation video, another hard deadline, another accountability text).
Then write me a 3-line closing in my voice that acknowledges naming the pebble was the hard part — without slipping into hype or motivational quotes.
That's it, my fellow trailblazers!
Yours 'helping you build an AI sidekick that works and makes money while you enjoy life' Vijay Peduru 🦸♂️