Jason Leow

It's been [one year](https://youtu.be/mkJLqq6j0Ic) since my teacher Thich Nhat Hanh passed. Has it been a year already?

That gaping hole in the world when he left is no smaller.

Yet it holds us all—his students—in mindful embrace.

I first knew about my teacher through his books. I was living in London back then, on a working holidaymaker visa, working and living a new life in a different world. I was in my mid 20s. On weekends I would spend hours in Borders, and I think that's where I first chanced on his book. And I was riveted. His words are simple, basic, sometimes even child-like, but his storytelling and insight were mindblowing. And at the end of his books, I'll read that he lives in a monastery in Bordeaux, France called Plum Village.

I was intrigued.

A few more books, and with my time in London reaching an end, I decided to head to France to travel for a few months, and end that trip with a meditation retreat at his monastery before I headed home. I felt that was a good way to round up my time overseas, to reflect and regroup.

Except that destiny had other plans.

My stay at Plum Village turned out to be one of the best transformative experiences I ever had in my entire life. Learning about mindfulness and mindful living, practising with the monks and nuns for 3 months through the cold winter in the French countryside, was just the reset I needed to start a new season of life back home. It gave me the right tools and mindsets to better deal with the modern world. I gave me higher values and aspirations I looked up to, that I could work towards. I've never lived in a community where I felt so embraced and safe in everyone's loving kindness. I never saw someone walk so mindfully, with so much presense – can you imagine being transfixed by how someone walks? It's crazy. I never knew that walking can be a superpower. In the end, I felt saner, clearer, happier after Plum Village. I felt ready for the world, for a different life.

Everything changed.

He changed my life. For the better.

He had since gone, but like how he likes to tell us, he's never really gone *gone*. He continues in us all when we walk, eat, sit and rest in mindfulness as he had taught. He continues. We're his continuation.

With every mindful step and breath, we have arrived, we are home.

I like being strategically incompetent in some things. Like getting to inbox zero, or inbox organisation (categorizing emails into folders). Like keeping my desk neat and tidy.

These are the kind of work and tasks that are [motion, not action](https://golifelog.com/posts/action-not-motion-1674004783697). They keep you busy but doesn't move the needle much, if at all.

Then a [friend on Twitter](https://twitter.com/Ritu_Jhajharia/status/1616337273607589888) introduced me to strategic procrastination, a sister of strategic incompetence.

With strategic incompetence, you say NO to doing something or developing skill in it.
With strategic procrastination, you're NOT SURE about something, and put it off till it resolves itself, or it keeps coming back that you realise you got to do it.

I love that. It's like my toolkit for ignoring motion and prioritising action had just doubled.

Essentially, any decision that's reversible, or has low impact/consequences, costs little or nothing to get started or to maintain, doesn't piss important stakeholders (e.g. customers, family) off, are good game for strategic procrastination.

Tasks and decisions that could be intentionally procrastinated on, like:
- deciding what's the best name or domain for a new product
- having a logo for a new product
- replying to an enquiry which you're unsure if it's a warm lead
- replying to DMs and messages from folks asking to collaborate
- sorting and organising your note-taking system (notes that you don't use much of)
- replying to Twitter trolls/haters
- engaging in divisive topics like politics
- reading books to prepare to be an entrepreneur

*What else should I strategically procrastinate on?*

Indie solopreneurship is unhealthy for me. There I said it.

As much as I love the work, the lifestyle is just waaay too sedantary.

I just realised how unfit I am just working from home, after being absolutely knocked out from running a workshop for my client for half a day. My back starting aching just 1h in, and by the end of the workshop my body was screaming to lie down.

Not good. Not good at all.

I think my unfitness started trending downwards since the pandemic + fatherhood, and I never quite got back. In fact, I'm not even keeping my head above water, I'm just sinking slowly without realising I'm going to drown. Like the proverbial frog in boiling water. It's so easy to cruise along with my sedantary lifestyle every day, because I don't feel worse off day to day.


But it's like 1% daily compounding, except that it's negative. Hypothetically speaking, if I compound at 1% worse every day, I'll end up 30x less fit than a year ago. It's scary when I extrapolate the unfitness now to 10-20 years later when I hit my 50s-60s. By then it wouldn't be called lack of fitness, it'll be atrophy. Then quickly it'll be degeneration.

Not a future life I want. Where I live long years of life but there's no life in the years.

What can I do then?

I already exercise every morning:

- 15min brisk walk or slow jog
- body weight exercises like push-ups, squats, heel raises
- climbing up 7 floors of stairs

But I think I need to up the ante. Maybe multiply that workout by 2-3x, per day. Go for longer walks every week or two. Carry extra weight while doing that.

Nothing like a mini crisis situation to trigger a positive change.

With AI like ChatGPT, never has the need to be more utterly and beautifully human been more pressing.

All the more reason to build imperfectly in public, show some vulnerability, make friends, build relationships, be authentic and human.

Because nobody's going to like a flawed piece of software, but humans are the only ones with the privilege to own our flaws and other humans will actually find that cool.

Because "AI-powerred" plattitudes will be so easy to tweet now, that you got to show more unique personality, even weirdness! I actually love following weirdos who embrace their weirdness, as I want to do the same too.

Because AI will bring about a prosiac sameness to content and media, while people will come to appreciate other people who don't use it or use it to assist not replace.

Because vulnerability is bad for software but good for humans. We lose trust in software with vulnerability but we actually trust someone more when they show vulnerability.

Because ultimately, people like interacting with other people, buying from other people, connecting with other people, not robots.

And ironically, AI will mirror back to us what's truly valuable, what truly matters to us humans.

Funny that it had to take a robot to show us what being human means.

—

Inspired by the conversations prompted by this [tweet](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1615348895005184001).

"Never mistake motion for action." - Ernest Hemmingway

That's the difference between true progress versus false progress.

Motion is self-gratifying. Action is constructive.
Motion pushes back at you. Action pulls you forward.
Motion is mindless practice. Action is deliberate practice.
Motion is impressions and likes. Action is profit in the bank.
Motion is busy, low value work. Action is purposeful, high ROI work.
Motion is a lot of work. Action is prioritising, doing less to achieve more.
Motion is building an audience. Action is building buy intent in an audience.
Motion is doing something just because your hero does it. Action is doing something because your customers are paying for it.

It's so easy to get caught up in motion. Especially when you see your peers doing it. You assume that's the game and that's how it's played. You do and do, assuming that you need patience, that results will eventually come, that "good things come to those who wait". But that wise saying has so many caveats you've never heard. It only applies if you were working in the right thing. If it's the wrong thing, no product-market fit, the unit economics are off, then no amount of time and patience will come in to save you.

No amount of motion is going to deliver the outcome you want.

Always ask: Is this task/goal/objective a motion, or action?

Be real. Be realistic. Be skeptical of our own innate tendencies and biases to favour motion.

Then act accordingly.

True progress will come.

I wanted 2023 to be the year where I start reinvesting profits back to product. I wrote about my [intentions to do so](https://golifelog.com/posts/reinvesting-revenue-1671495174677), and then [brainstormed some ideas](https://golifelog.com/posts/ideas-for-reinvesting-revenue-1673504024637). And now my first experiment! Sponsoring ads in newsletters/sites by other indies makers and creators to get more distribution for my Plugins For Carrd project.

Just bought my very first sponsorship ad – a $20/month ad in @JannisBetschki's [Tools For Creators](https://toolsforcreators.co/) website. Since July 2022, Tools for Creators averages around 1,500 pageviews and 350 unique visitors per month, so I'm hoping that would translate to some click-throughs! 🤞

Some criteria I considered when buying this ad:
- a newsletter/tool by a fellow indie maker or creator
- he builds for Carrd or uses it often
- his audience is directly related to Carrd, or strongly adjacent (e.g. nocode)
- motivated and marketing the site a lot
- semi decent monthly traffic (TBH I have no idea what a baseline looks like...)

To better track the click-throughs, I added a ref URL parameter to the plugins.carrd.co/?ref=toolsforcreators so that it'll show up as a separate source on my Google Analytics dashboard. But one thing I would love to track is conversion. How many click-throughs from the site actually resulted in paid customers? That's the ultimate metric, but unsure yet how to measure it (or if it's even possible)...

Next ad I'm eyeing: the $19/month sponsorhsip ad on Mark Bowley's [Deck Of Carrd website](https://deckof.carrd.co/) which averages 400+ visits per month and average time on site ~5min.

*What else should I look out for or measure when it comes to getting the most out of an sponsorship ad?*

https://plugins.carrd.co/#confetti