A new experiment

Will’s Dispatch: Where I am, what I’m working on, and what has my attention

Welcome to Will’s Dispatch: a short Friday update, separate from my essays (ex: yesterday’s piece on how to slow down time). You can expect notes on where I’m at in the world, what I’m working on (company, Chinese, etc) and what I’m learning along then way. Think slice-of-life paired with valuable insights. Here we go…

Where I’m At

Happy New Year from beautiful Kunming, China.

Heard of it? Most people haven’t. I’ve lived here off and on for over a year. Kunming is the Denver of China (out west, beautiful scenery, national parks, high elevation)…if Denver had perfect San Diego weather and Chicago’s population. By US standards it’s a skyscraper-filled metropolis. Locals consider it a mid-sized city. 8.5 million residents makes it the 19th biggest city in China.

Why Kunming? I tell people it’s because Santa Monica spoiled me for seven years with endless sunshine. The full answer: it has the best private Mandarin school in China (where I live and study). And I’ve made friends here (fellow comedians, other students, teachers). It feels like a home-away-from-home at this point.

I’ll be in Kunming for the next three weeks. My main focus while here is building the company. I work a regular ET schedule here (roughly 9:30pm til 5am, China time), plus most afternoons and some weekends. After sleeping in, I also find time for 1:1 Chinese lessons and 8-10 standup shows per week. I love this intense schedule. These are full, focused days, working on exactly what I’m meant to do.

What I’m Working On

Ever since my “Internet Serendipity World Tour” ended the week before Christmas, I’ve reflected on 2025 and built excitement for 2026. My biggest insight: in 2026, my co-founder Dan Sleeman and I put the “macro” pieces in place to build a growing company. Now it’s time for me to level-up the “micro” side of life, meaning better consistency with small, ordinary actions.

A recap of the macro: we have two wings of the company: Next Act Studios is our B2B offering, helping creators and next-gen institutions build high-quality, live learning programs (cohorts, intensives, one-day workshops). Act Two is our own creative accelerator that helps people follow-through on creative projects. Cohort 2 starts on March 4th.

My goal is to elevate my micro-habits to match the macro conditions. I’ve been sporadic in other areas of life as we got the foundational pieces of the company in place. Now it’s time to execute hard on these other fronts: health, writing, reading, and defending my attention against distraction.

In my free time, I’ll be practicing Chinese and performing standup. I can’t wait to get back into my regular Kunming routine starting Monday. I’ve performed 135 shows so far, and expect to add 20-30 more before I leave China on January 24th.

One Thought

I’m obsessed with “ordinary excellence”.

Small, ordinary actions that compound into surprising results.

Below is my first-ever favorite quote, going back 10+ years. You probably know it:

“You are what you repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.”

Right after college, I read several books related to this idea:

• “Grit” taught me about the mundanity of excellence

• “So Good They Can’t Ignore You” taught me to seek rare and valuable skills

• “Flow” gave me permission study Chinese for its own sake

• “The Power of Habit” and “Atomic Habits”, well, you know.

These books fueled me. I put my head down and spent thousands of hours of my free time practicing Chinese. After two summers abroad in college, I didn’t visit mainland China once from 2014 to 2023. I learned to fluent speak Chinese in California, on the Internet.

This beloved devotion paid off. I’m now a professional standup comedian, one of fewer than twenty people in the world performing standup comedy in Chinese despite not being born here.

The formula was simple: small reliable habits, consistently endured for year after focused year.

The question I’m pondering: What can ordinary excellence look like in other areas of my life? Health, work, writing, reading, and relationships come to mind. What small, ordinary actions can I start today that will produce uncommon results in the future?

Links and Notes

• Are You Serious. One of my favorite works by Twitter legend Visa. About ordinary excellence.

• How Beeple Changed My Life, a short post I wrote about my daily video streak. For over two years I filmed a daily Chinese practice video and posted it to YouTube.

• Swimming in July. A brief, moving story by Henrik, another favorite writer. Not related to anything above. What a final line.

What I read over Christmas break

• Happiness and Contemplation by Josef Pieper. Thanks Tom White for putting this on my radar.

• The House of Mirth by Edith Wharton. A masterpiece from one of my favorite authors.

To close, how about this quote from the short film World of Tomorrow. It floored me the first time I heard it and I’ve never forgotten it.