I have this tradition (almost) every year where I do something that I suck at.
It started in 2019, when I was in the poorest state of mental health I’ve ever been in.
All I wanted was to succeed at entrepreneurship and I wasn't even close.
During my lowest point, I told myself that I sucked so much that I might as well just prove it by doing something else I knew I sucked at. The logic was twisted. It didn't make any sense. But I wanted to viscerally and tangibly experience the feeling of progress in any capacity.
It didn't even matter what kind of progress it was, or what it looked like, I just had to experience a small win.
So on October 7th, 2019 I chose running.
I still remember trying to run for the first time after leading a sedentary lifestyle for 2 years.
Every step I took felt like I was lifting bricks on my feet. By the end I felt like I was legit suffocating. I still have the screenshots and I averaged a 16:47 minute mile 😅.
But I continued to show up and do the thing that I sucked at. It wasn't long until I got obsessed with the feeling of improvement.
Just 11 days after I started running, I ran 4.91 miles with an average pace of 10.04 minutes/mile.
Fast forward 3 months later, I ran 10 miles without stopping for the first time in my life. A major milestone.
The idea of running a half-marathon never even entered my mind before this day.
Then on January 18th, 2020, just 3 months after I started running, I woke up at 3:30AM without telling any of my family and friends, drove to Pasadena, CA and quietly ran my first half-marathon alone.
I know this isn't the first time you've heard a story like this.
Running has become so popular in the last few years, there's thousands of stories just like mine.
But I don't always choose something exercise-related.
In December 2024, I intentionally picked something I was bad at and committed to it: talking to a camera and posting on YouTube.
Besides the nice camera I already owned from being a photographer, I didn't spend money on anything else. I didn't even clean my room before filming this video.
As you probably know, I stuck with it and continued to make videos throughout 2025.
One year later, it's drastically changed my business life and has shaped a lot of future business ideas/plans.
Takeways + Things I suck at 2026
I’m happy to say I haven’t had a mental rut like the one I had in 2019.
I’m also happy to say that I still suck at a lot of things, which means I have no shortage of options for my 2026 TISA (Things I Suck At) experiment.
Looking back, things like running and posting on YouTube started as desperate attempts to change a life I wasn’t very satisfied with at the time.
I didn’t know where they’d lead. They were shots in the dark. Just small changes in habit that created momentum I couldn’t see yet.
What those TISA experiments taught me is simple: I need to keep creating tangible feelings of improvement in my life.
I used to believe that if I wasn’t good at something, it wasn’t worth doing.
That’s naive, and it ignores the obvious truth that everyone sucks at the beginning.
This year especially, I’ve noticed how easy it is to get comfortable once you’re good enough to keep a job, run a business, or sustain a livelihood.
Ironically, that learning and improvement is often the very thing that got us here in the first place.
My 2026 TISA experiment isn’t locked in yet, but right now it’s between Jiu Jitsu or sales (either cold calls or in-person sales for directory monetization)
I suck at both.
And that’s probably the point.
Best,
Frey
