Myself as a project

Where it started

When I was 9 we moved from Turkey to Spain. I went from everyone knowing me to not even speaking the language. School got harder every year and I still couldn’t read. I gained weight, and over time I felt more and more like I was the problem.

At 11 my school told my mother I was a lost cause and would end up in juvie. I still remember my father telling me that everything was my fault, and that I was hurting my family and my mother. As an 11-year-old, that was hard to hear. Later he admitted that he had given up on me. He thought I would grow up fat, uneducated and depressed, with no capacity to take care of myself, let alone anyone else.

But if it really was my fault, then I also had the complete power to change it. When everyone gave up on me, I picked myself up and decided I wasn’t going to let the world decide who I was going to be.

Learning to read

At 13 I learned to read. With my mother’s support I left school and was homeschooled for three years by a teacher who finally understood me, and I’m so grateful for that. I also went from 80 kg to 52 kg.

At 12 I qualified for the Fortnite Champion Series semi-finals, but I was too young to compete, so I coached players instead. At 13 I realized that as much as I loved the game, I didn’t want to be known as the best Fortnite player. My ambition is higher than that.

Brazilian jiu-jitsu

I started jiu-jitsu at 14, and honestly it was out of jealousy. A popular kid at a party trained it, and I wanted to show him I was better. In my first session I beat every kid in the gym except him, which made me so mad. By the end of the first week I beat him too.

I’ve always hated being in a situation where I’m not the best, and I’ve always had higher expectations of myself than anyone around me. Within a month they moved me up to the adults, and six months in I was the regional champion.

AJP rankings as a blue belt, my best positions. I won 24 fights through 2025, and I qualified for the World Championships but missed them through injury.

At 17 I won triple gold in the adult division, and I was on a streak of seven competitions in a row. That’s when I got cocky. I stopped training properly, and at the Istanbul Grand Slam, in front of my father and my whole family, I didn’t make the podium for the first time ever. I had no one to blame except myself.

For months I couldn’t walk into a gym without reliving that day. It took me a long time to forgive myself, but I went back.

The daily system

At 15 I started writing down my goals every day. Over time it became a whole system of daily habits. These are my numbers as of November 2026.

Living alone

At 16 I felt that living at home was slowing me down. I pitched my parents on moving out with a plan and data. They said no to dropping out of school but yes to moving out, so we found a school in Barcelona that counted my own projects as credits.

From then on I managed my own apartment, money, school and training.

Performance Enhancing Routine

PER

In January 2026 I started PER, my Performance Enhancing Routine. My idea was simple. The better I know myself, the better I perform.

For 138 days I logged up to 31 things about my life, from sleep and training to every meal, my mood, my focus, my hours of real work and whether I finished my to-do list.

The clearest pattern was my to-do list. On the days I finished it, I did more than twice the hours of real work, and 19 of my 22 best days were list days. How many hours I slept made almost no difference.

I always plan my to-do list for the next day, and I go through my day methodically, checking it off.