Day in the Life of a Project 24 Student (Full Breakdown)

Four in the morning. Three kids under four. A full-time day job that starts at six. And a self-imposed midnight deadline for writing blog posts and recording YouTube videos. That is what building an online business actually looks like when you are six months into Project 24 by Income School and you refuse to quit.

This post breaks down every hour of that day. Not a highlight reel. Not the success story you read after someone cashes their first big check. This is the raw, unglamorous, genuinely exhausting reality of someone in the middle of the process. By the time you finish reading, you will know whether this kind of commitment is something you can match, and you will understand exactly what it costs before any money arrives.

What You’ll Walk Out With

A minute-by-minute picture of one Project 24 student’s full weekday, from 4 a.m. to midnight
The real content volume required to reach a hundred posts across multiple sites
Why Income School’s February 60,000-word challenge works as a forcing function
The specific sacrifices that a full-time employee with young kids has to make to build a blog business on the side
When it makes sense to hire a freelance writer and what the goal is when you do
How stolen lunch-break time in Google Docs compounds into meaningful output over weeks
What “Project 24” actually promises and where the 24-month clock starts ticking
How to figure out whether blogging, YouTube, or a combination is the right path for you at finder.platformproof.com

What Project 24 Actually Promises

Before the schedule makes sense, the program behind it needs context. Project 24 is an online course built by Income School that gives students a structured roadmap for building niche blog and YouTube businesses. The central claim is that if you complete their 60 steps as recommended, you can replace your full-time income within 24 months. The course is careful to note that no business outcome is guaranteed, but the 24-month figure is based on the founders’ own experience building sites and coaching hundreds of students through the same process.

The model relies on organic search traffic. You publish posts and videos on a narrow topic, wait for Google to rank them, monetize with display ads and affiliate commissions, and repeat until the income from those posts adds up to what your job pays. The process is slow at the front and faster at the back. Month six typically means you are still mostly building, not yet earning meaningfully. That is exactly where this snapshot falls.

Six Months In: The Content Portfolio

Alston joined Project 24 on September 7, 2018. The day this video was recorded was February 15, 2019, which put him at roughly six months into the program. By that point, he was not running one site. He was running four.

Here is the exact count he shares:

Primary site: 61 to 62 blog posts plus 17 YouTube videos on a separate channel
Second site: 31 blog posts plus 9 to 10 YouTube videos
Third site: 10 blog posts
Fourth site: 5 blog posts

Total content: roughly 100 to 107 pieces, of which about 10 were written by a hired freelancer. Everything else, including every single YouTube video, he produced himself. Income School recommends focusing on two sites, not four. Alston’s reasoning was straightforward: if some is good, more is better. That logic is debatable in principle, but his output numbers show it is at least possible for one person to sustain it alongside a full-time job.

The first real sign of earnings was also arriving around this time. He mentioned expecting his first display ad payout that month. That is the moment most Project 24 students describe as a turning point psychologically, not because the dollar amount is meaningful, but because something finally comes back after six months of output with no income.

The Monday-through-Friday Schedule

The alarm goes off at 4:00 a.m. He showers, gets ready, and helps his wife get three kids moving. Twin three-year-olds and a one-year-old who had just turned one. Anyone who has spent a morning getting even one small child out the door knows what this costs in energy before 6 a.m.

He is out of the house by 5:30 a.m. His commute runs 20 to 25 minutes depending on traffic, and they live in a cold-weather area where snow and ice add unpredictability. He arrives at work somewhere between 5:50 and 6:00 a.m. The job runs until 3:00 p.m.

After another 20-to-25-minute drive home, he either picks up the kids or his wife does. From that point, the evening belongs to the family. Three kids under four means there is no shortcut through the bedtime process. His youngest child’s bedtime is genuinely hard to control, and he mentions that one of his twins will simply stand up to fight off sleep rather than lie down. The household does not settle until 8:00 to 8:30 p.m.

That is when the second job begins. He sits down and works on blog posts or YouTube videos until midnight. Four hours of focused content work, five nights a week. He calls it “punching in” to make the mental shift deliberate. This is not passive scrolling or casual brainstorming. It is sitting down and producing.

The math on sleep: in bed around midnight, alarm at four. That is roughly four hours of sleep on a weekday night. Not sustainable indefinitely, but his explicit bet is that the sacrifice now buys time and financial freedom later. He is not pretending this is comfortable. He is choosing it with open eyes.

Saturday: Gym, Family, and Back to Work

Saturdays start slightly later at 5:00 or 5:15 a.m. The first stop is the gym. After that, the family takes over the day entirely. He does not specify what that looks like in detail, but with three kids and a spouse who is also managing a heavy household, “family stuff all day” is not an understatement.

Then, once the kids are in bed again around 8 or 8:30, the work session begins exactly as it does on weeknights. Saturday evening is not a rest period. It is another content block.

He does not address Sunday specifically in this video. The implication is that Sunday functions as the only genuine rest day, or at least a lighter day, but the omission is telling. Most people in a similar position do not fully disconnect even on a rest day. There is always a draft to outline or a keyword to research.

The Sacrifices That Actually Show Up

He is direct about what he has given up. Friends, mainly. He describes not hanging out or talking to friends, with family being the only social contact he maintains and even that only occasionally. Sleep is the other major sacrifice, already quantified at around four hours per weeknight.

What he does not give up: the gym on Saturdays and his family’s daily routine. Both of those are treated as non-negotiable. This matters because it shows a real decision framework at work. He is not trying to extract every possible hour for the business. He is protecting the things that keep him functional, and cutting the things that do not.

The pitch he makes to himself is simple. If this works, he will have more time, more money, and more energy to give to friends and family later. That is the delayed-gratification trade at the core of most side-hustle models. The question is always whether you believe it will work and whether the wait is sustainable.

Lunch Breaks as a Hidden Content Block

One detail he almost forgot to mention turned out to be one of the most practical pieces of information in the video. In the early months especially, he was also writing during his lunch break at work.

His lunch period runs one hour. He would eat in approximately 15 minutes, then open Google Docs and write for the remaining 45 minutes. The reason he chose Google Docs was specific and practical: anything typed there is accessible from any device without downloading and re-uploading files. When he sat down at home later that evening, the draft was already waiting for him. No friction, no file management, just continuation.

Forty-five minutes of writing per day, five days a week, is 225 minutes per week. That is nearly four hours of additional content production that does not come out of his sleep budget or his family time. Over the course of a month, that adds up to roughly 15 to 18 hours of extra writing. At even a modest pace of 500 words per 45 minutes, that is potentially 5,000 to 7,500 words per month just from lunch breaks.

This is the kind of marginal time recapture that compounds slowly and then suddenly. It is not exciting. It is just effective.

The February 60,000-Word Challenge

Income School runs a community challenge every February: produce 60,000 words of content within the 28-day month. Words can come from blog posts or YouTube videos. Every YouTube video, regardless of actual length, counts as 2,000 words. Blog posts count at their actual word total.

The math: 60,000 words divided by 28 days equals approximately 2,143 words per day. That is a substantial pace to hold for four weeks straight while also working a full-time job.

Students who hit 60,000 words earn a badge or emblem next to their name in the Project 24 community. He describes it as a badge of honor, not a prize. The actual value of the challenge is the forcing function it creates. A public commitment with a visible deadline and a community watching the count move makes people write on days when they would rather not.

By February 14th, the day before this video, he had logged 40,161 words. With 14 days left in the month and 19,839 words remaining, he was sitting exactly on pace. That means the lunch-break writing, the midnight sessions, and the Saturday evenings were all working together to keep him on track even while holding down a full-time job and parenting three children under four.

Why He Hired a Freelance Writer

About 10 of the 100-plus pieces of content across his four sites were written by someone he hired. That is roughly 10 percent outsourced. He explains the decision clearly: he wanted to hit 100 posts on his primary site faster than he could writing alone.

The plan after reaching 100 posts on the primary site was to shift focus back to the second site and then put greater attention on the third and fourth. This is a sequencing strategy, not a shortcut. He is not outsourcing to avoid work. He is using a writer to clear a content milestone so he can move through the roadmap at a faster pace.

This matters for anyone watching from the outside who assumes that running four sites requires a large team. The reality here is one person, one part-time writer for a subset of posts, and an enormous amount of personal time. Scale like that is achievable. It is just not comfortable while you are doing it.

Not sure if blogging, YouTube, or something else fits your current situation?

Answer a few questions and get a clear recommendation at finder.platformproof.com.

Is This Pace Right for Everyone?

Alston is the first to say his day is unusual. Most Project 24 members work full-time but have different family situations, different commute times, and different energy levels at night. Some members treat Project 24 as their full-time job and can push content at a faster rate because they do not have a separate employer. Others have heavier family obligations than he does and need to work at a slower pace.

The program is designed to accommodate different speeds. The 24-month timeline assumes consistent output, not maximum output. Someone writing one quality post per week will still make progress. It will take longer to reach 100 posts, but the posts will index and rank the same way. The compounding works regardless of the pace, as long as the pace does not stop.

What his schedule demonstrates is the ceiling of what is possible for a motivated full-time employee with young children. If he can produce 100 posts across four sites in six months while working 40 hours a week and sleeping four hours a night, it also shows what most people do not have to do. Matching 10 percent of his pace still gets you somewhere meaningful inside of a year.

A Simple Framework for Getting Started

Pick one site and one topic. Income School recommends starting with two sites maximum. Most people are better served starting with one and doing it properly. Pick a topic you know well enough to write 50 posts about without running out of things to say.
Map your available time honestly. If lunch breaks are your only real window, start there. If late evenings are your best hours, protect them. Do not plan around ideal conditions. Plan around what is actually available to you today.
Set a 30-day word count target. Take your available daily writing time, estimate your writing speed, and set a number you can hit without heroic effort. Then hit it. Repeat for the next 30 days. The habit matters more than any single session.
Write in Google Docs or any cloud tool from day one. Never be in a situation where you lose a draft or cannot access your writing from a different device. The friction of downloading and uploading files kills sessions that could have been productive.
Identify the one thing you will cut. Alston cut friends. Something has to give. Decide in advance what it is so you do not spend your content time negotiating with yourself about whether to watch another episode or write another 500 words.
Wait for the first dollar before judging the process. Month six is not a verdict. Most sites do not generate meaningful traffic until they have 50 to 100 indexed posts and several months of aging. Evaluating the business before those conditions are met is evaluating a cake by tasting the batter.

Find Your X

Before you copy anyone else’s schedule, it helps to know which format actually fits your situation. Blogging, YouTube, a combination, something else entirely — the right answer depends on your existing skills, your available time, and how you actually communicate. The Platform Proof Finder walks you through a short set of questions and gives you a specific recommendation rather than a generic list of options. Start there before you start building.

Frequently Asked Questions

What exactly is Project 24 and who made it?

Project 24 is an online course and community built by Income School, founded by Jim Harmer and Ricky Kesler. It teaches students to build profitable niche blogs and YouTube channels using organic search traffic. The “24” refers to the goal of replacing your full-time income within 24 months by following their 60-step roadmap. The program includes video lessons, community forums, and access to tools that support keyword research and content planning.

Is a 4 a.m. start time actually necessary to build a blog while working full-time?

No. Alston’s schedule is one of the most aggressive examples you will find. Most successful bloggers who work full-time find two to three hours per day somewhere in their schedule — early mornings, lunch breaks, or evenings — and that is enough to build meaningful content over 12 to 18 months. The 4 a.m. start reflects his personal ambition and the fact that he is running four sites simultaneously, which is more than the program recommends. You do not need to match his pace to get results.

How many blog posts do you need before you start making money?

Income School generally talks about 50 to 100 posts as the range where meaningful traffic begins to appear, though this varies significantly by topic, competition level, and post quality. Most sites do not reach consistent monthly revenue until they have at least 50 well-researched, properly optimized posts and have been live for six months or more. Expecting income before those thresholds are met will lead to premature discouragement.

Should you run multiple sites at once when starting out?

Income School recommends a maximum of two sites for most students, and many coaches suggest starting with just one. Running four sites the way Alston does in this video requires either exceptional energy or a very high tolerance for slower progress on each individual site. The advantage of multiple sites is reduced risk if one fails. The disadvantage is that your attention and your content volume are split. Most beginners are better served by going deep on one site before expanding.

What counts as “words” in the Income School February challenge?

In the February 60,000-word challenge, blog post word counts are taken at face value — however many words you actually write is what you count. YouTube videos receive a flat 2,000-word credit regardless of the video’s actual length. This system is designed to make it fair for creators who work primarily in video, since transcribing and adapting video content to written form would add extra work that the challenge is not intended to require.

When should you hire a freelance writer for your blog?

Hiring a writer makes sense when you have a specific content milestone you want to reach faster and you have enough cash flow or savings to pay for quality work without creating financial stress. It does not make sense as a way to avoid learning the writing process, because understanding what good content looks like is essential for editing and eventually directing others effectively. Alston hired one writer for roughly 10 percent of his posts to accelerate progress on his primary site, while continuing to write the majority himself.

Why does he use Google Docs instead of writing directly in WordPress?

Google Docs removes the friction of file management entirely. Anything typed in Google Docs is accessible from any device with an internet connection, which means a draft started on a work computer at lunch is immediately available on a home computer in the evening. There is no downloading, no emailing files to yourself, and no risk of losing a draft because a browser crashed before you saved. For someone writing across multiple locations in stolen time blocks, that frictionless continuity adds up.

What should someone do if they cannot commit to a schedule as intense as this one?

Work at whatever pace your life actually allows and do not use someone else’s extreme schedule as a benchmark for whether you are working hard enough. A person who writes three quality posts per month and publishes consistently for two years will have 72 posts, which is more than enough to generate real traffic in a non-competitive niche. Consistency over time beats intensity that leads to burnout. The key variable is not how fast you go. It is whether you keep going.

Sources

Alston Godbolt, “Day in the Life of a Project 24 Student (Full Breakdown),” YouTube, 2019
Income School, Project 24 course overview and community documentation
Income School February 60,000-word challenge rules and scoring guidelines