Day 52 was unusual! Mostly because I did all cardio today at the gym. After taking my progress pictures, weighing myself and reading ten pages I reached the gym. I trained on the elliptical, then the treadmill, then the peloton bike and then the recumbent bicycle. I also did a little bit of skipping. I was expecting there to be pain in my ankle but that did not happen. I suppose it only hurts when squatting. Surprisingly I did not burn a lot of calories only around a 1000. I was expecting to burn a lot after an hour of cardio. I came home and had lunch which was chapati, dal, roasted sweet potato slices and Karela (bitter gourds). I love bitter gourds. There is a tact to make it and my mom knows how to do it properly. Also it is an acquired taste so not everybody likes it.

In other news I finished reading my third book “How to launch a Magazine” by Mary Hogarth, which was about establishing a magazine and then taking it to print. I learnt a lot from it because it was written around 2014 a time when social media was present but not fully invasive. People still read books and had interests other than watching reels. I also had a chance to read what some of the industry experts thought would be the future and I am surprised to say that some of them were very accurate. One insight was that advertisements would be very targeted and that is true. None of them predicted the rise of AI use back then because they simply didn’t know about it but their predictions have been spot on so far.

In order for a magazine to sustain in today’s market it needs to become an immersive experience. The magazine needs to establish itself on multimedium platforms such as having its own website, having its own presence on social media, print and now it needs to sustain itself with the help of AI. Print is not fully dead yet but it might as well be. I have a theory however- people are starting to get exhausted of the video format because of the sheer abundance of it. People want less screen time and want to get away from all the negativity that sometimes takes over their feeds.

The thing about phones and entertainment is that it has become too convenient and the value has gone down because people see too much of it. Paper has become a luxury of sorts and digital mediums can never replace the tactile haptics of the smell of paper and the feel of its texture. Similarly digital won’t replace the haptics of DVDs or Vinyl or Cassettes either. So there is no saying what trend might return in the future. People are tired of excess bombardment from advertisers so a paper medium might actually be a relief for them. In regards of content the book does not say much because each magazine has its own unique brand and audience. As long as there is an audience and the content is credible and entertaining I think there isn’t much to say about that. A lot more of this has been written and since it is about older methods of my business I was keen to learn about it. With this knowledge I can make some real strategies that can have an impact today in my line of business.

Went for a walk in the evening and my gallon of water was complete before my walk. There is going to be another heatwave and I have already started tanning quite a bit. Day 52 was a success.