How makers stay productive

I use these four phases when making a project — Strategy, Design, Development, and Launch phases.

Strategy - includes brainstorming, research (tech stack, design inspirations, etc), planning out high level tasks for Design and Development phases, and scheduling (I often skip this part because it doesn't work for me 😅)

Design and Development are self-explanatory. Both of these go back and forth.

I wish this didn't sound as boring as it does!! :)

Generally the brainstorming comes up first. An idea usually gets added to my ideas notebook. I move on then and leave it alone.

If it keeps coming up or I'm thinking it's time to do something else that's the notebook I go to. I then start spec out the project backwards. So I start with what it will do for me or customers. How will it help them and solve their problem, provide value.

I talk about it, here or in the slack / telegram channel / twitter I share my idea and what I'm thinking, or I find people in the space I'm thinking about and ask if I can buy them a coffee and have a chat (harder these days but that's what I do)

I will try out other tools or apps that are in the space and see if they are what I'm thinking or if there are different ideas, these are competitors so I do some deep diving on the research looking at all their features and then I have questions for people that are using those tools to find out what they use on them, what features they enjoy, etc.

Then I start to prototype, and try and see if I can make it work and get a very raw / rough Beta 1.

Get it out there and give people a chance to sign up and join the wait list. Talk in public about what I'm building, share my #makersneakpeek and drive a small bit of traffic.

Then get the MVP out into the wild and start marketing it and talking to potential customers to get feedback and go from.

I very much go with the lean start up approach too.

I decided to write a blog post about this. https://joshmanders.com/how-to-find-a-product-to-build

I have a couple of phases for creating new projects.

1. Ideation: I think of the idea, consider it seriously, and start thinking about how I'd implement it. I then hit up figma and work on a prototype.
2. Code: I pick a stack or boilerplate, usually Futurestack (my custom project boilerplate).
3. Ship that shit.

I really like this kickoff process doc by Shaan from Hustle.

Last week I went through it with a few ideas I might start working on. It's fast and accurate.