Jason Leow

https://snowconfetti.carrd.co

https://www.reddit.com/r/Carrd/comments/zgjzr7/snow_fall_animation_in_carrd

https://imgur.com/IY3kct4

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/snow-fall-animation-in-carrd-c5af06e138

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1600882849896230912

https://m.facebook.com/groups/carrdusers/permalink/1197275910870463/?mibextid=qC1gEa

A gem from one of my favourite email newsletters of all time – the 3-2-1 newsletter from [James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/december-8-2022):

> “Look for situations where the energy is already flowing downhill. Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect. Create products that tap into a desire people already have. Work on projects that play to your strengths. And then, once the potential of the situation is already working for you, add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft. Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back. The idea is to sprint downhill, not grind uphill.”

“Sprint downhill, not grind uphill” is such a great and better way to describe this definition of [product-market fit](https://golifelog.com/posts/being-pulled-forward-with-product-market-fit-1669257663638) that I like to use – being pulled forward by a product.

Because that's how it feels like physically. With Lifelog and Sheet2Bio, I feel like I'm grinding uphill. With Carrd plugins, I feel like I'm sprint downhill. There's a significant and remarkable difference to how either *feels*.

In fact, let's run down the list of attributes that Mr Clear provided and compare that to how it feels for Carrd plugins:

- “Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect.” – I help people with their Carrd issues, and they are thankful or reciprocate. And so far, customers are reasonable and respectful of what they seek support for.
- “Create products that tap into a desire people already have.” – Carrd has some feature gaps which plugins plug well. Beyond gaps, I made plugins that's considered nice-to-have but people desire, e.g. the confetti plugin.
- “Work on projects that play to your strengths.” – It plays to my strengths because I know how to code, but not that good a coder to be a professional enterprise one. Helping folks with code snippets with limited scope and minimal functionality works to my favour. I also love using Carrd, and that adds to my strengths too.
- “...Add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft.” – I find myself willingly pulled forward by the work. Someone asks a question in a community forum, and I dive straight into it. Even though I have other work to do. There's something about helping others solve a painful problem that I'm fueled by.
- “Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back.” – I'm not sure I'm outworking everyone in the Carrd ecosystem but I certainly not wanting to take this "wind on my back" for granted. I still want to work on it and improve things. But even while this project is pulling me forward, I'm not making it as my main project but keeping it in side project status. That way I stay on my toes while not putting too much expectations on it.

What a great analogy. So much to fit in there.

Product-market fit is sprinting downhill, not grinding uphill.

I’ve always believed I needed a deliberate practice in anything I want to learn or get good at. Don’t just practice for 10,000 hours blindly, but be intentional about what you’re learning and be deliberate about how to improve and iterate.

While I’ve since moved away from deliberate practice as a sufficient formula for any sort of success as an entrepreneur, that’s not to say I don’t need any deliberate practice at all. It’s necessary, just not sufficient.

As an entrepreneur, how do you practice to get better at this entrepreneurship thing? What do you practice?

Cue the hidden benefit of doing a portfolio of small bets. Of chasing having so called shiny objects syndrome.

The more small bets you take, the more practice you get. The more products, services you launch and run, the more boots-on-the-ground experience you get on entrepreneurship. The more pivots you do for each product and business, the better you get at entrepreneurship

That’s why 2nd or 3rd time founders are looked upon differently from 1st time founders.

You’re an entrepreneur. You’re in the business of starting and running businesses. That’s your practice.

And practice makes perfect.

I wrote about getting some Black Friday deals for [quantum tech for sleep](https://golifelog.com/posts/quantum-tech-for-sleep-1669592548893) to help with my poor sleep quality.

And it arrived today!

The [Leela quantum energy frequency cards](https://leelaq.com/product/leela-quantum-frequency-cards/) are credit card sized metal cards that are charged with powerful, positive frequencies by world-renowned healers. I got the the calm and rest card to help with my sleep. What they said about it:

> The Calm & Rest frequency was designed and intended to support a much more relaxed and deeper calm and rest. Leela Quantum Tech is neither in the medical field, nor intends to be, so we also refrain from making any health claims. We can only pass on what others say about it. All test persons so far have reported that within about 1-5 minutes clearly noticeable relaxation occurred, that some described as if the Sandman came and did his magic. Several people tested it while still being in a conversation. After 5 minutes they had to put the card away so as to not want to go to bed right away. Then they picked up the card again when they were generally ready to go to bed and had very good night of sleep, deeper than normal. No morning issues were reported at all since the frequency disappears fairly quickly when you put the card away.

So right before bed I took it out, held it and then placed it under my pillow. I suspect reading those online reviews might have gave me expectations because I kept waiting for that sleepy feeling to wash over me, like some sleeping pill. But that didn't happen at all.

I just kind of went into sleep normally, at my usual sleep time (9:15pm) - not early like at 8:30pm. Had to get up once to go to the bathroom at 2:30am. Woke up at 4:45am as per my usual alarm. Here's my sleep chart:


- Sleep score: 82%
- In bed: 7h29m
- Asleep: 7h20m
- Asleep after 8min
- Heart rate: 78bpm
- Wake up mood: OK

Interestingly, I didn't feel too tired or sleepy 1h after waking. The sleep chart seems to be pretty good too - the peaks are regularly spaced and low (means normal undisrupted sleep cycles), with the only awake peak when I went to the bathroom. I was in bed for 7h29m and actually asleep for 7h20m, so overall that's means the sleep quality was quite good. In the past, 7+h of sleep usually trends with 70+% sleep score, so I think the 82% score was quite accurate. For contrast, just yesterday I was in bed for a similar period of time at 7h10m, but only asleep for 6h40m, and only got 74% score.

So I slept better last night with the sleep card. But was it a coincidence? How would I know?

This was just the first night. More observations to come!

I was inspired by what [@searchbound](https://twitter.com/searchbound/status/1598384995919446017) buying up descriptive domains of emojis with high search volume, and I went and did the same for emojis related to my products.

> Some context: Peter's a domainer, and his mode of operation is buying descriptive domains and building useful websites on them, usually job boards, e.g. VidaliaOnions.com, RanchWork.com, SEOjobs.com, BirthdayParties.com

I bought writingemoji.com (2.1k monthly search vol) and writinghandemoji.com (300 monthly search vol) for Lifelog. And plugemoji.com (1.0k mthly search vol) for Plugins For Carrd.

The hope is that I can somehow use them to generate organic search traffic for their respective products. To be honest, I don't know if it'll work! The search volume isn't super high unlike for heart emoji – 160k searches. But it sure sounds fun, and might be a good way to play around with tools and lead gens aka "side project marketing".

Other ideas:

- Promote my other products/side projects
- Affiliate links, e.g. to a Carrd subscription or to my Carrd templates
- Show ads from Google (but unlikely)
- Show ads of other indie hackers
- Collect emails for my products

Fun experiment! Let's see how this unfolds!

Ideas:
- Passive distribution from marketplaces like Amazon where they do the marketing for you
- Amazon 'SEO'
- 15k words ebook

“F**k it I’m doing it” is the approach I want to do more of from now on. I want to catch myself saying this more often in the week, month, year.

Because every time a “f**k it” happens, that means I’m taking a chance, risking something. It means I’m taking the leap of faith out of my comfort zone to try something I’m not 100% competent in or certain about. It means I’m not over-thinking it, no paralysis by analysis.

It can feel disconcerting at first, because I’m more used to being intentional and purposeful. “F**k it” doesn’t at all feel intentional. It feels more like a puppy chasing after a car – it wouldn’t know what to do even if it caught up to the car and got a firm bite on it. “F**k it” means fortuitous.

But that’s what embracing opportunity feels like. That’s what following my nose and acting on intuition to a chaotic environment feels like. That’s what Bayesian thinking feels like.

Maybe it’ll end with nothing. There’s definitely a high chance of nothing fruitful emerging from chasing random cars on the street. But as with probabilistic approaches, more is more. And the more I go “F**k it”, the higher the probability of getting more wins.

So more “f**k it”, less “sit on it”.

https://carouselslider.carrd.co/

Full page carousel - https://fullpagecarousel.carrd.co

https://snowconfetti.carrd.co

I passed 700 days here on Lifelog recently. That’s almost 2 years of unbroken daily writing. Some thoughts:

Simple is best
I got a simple system for my content flywheel going. Telegram saved messages for collecting notes, ideas and links. Daily writing here on Lifelog to process those ideas and thoughts. I like that simplicity. Big note-taking systems using Notion and Roam never quite worked for me, even though it’s so popular. I’m glad I found a simpler way that worked for me that’s sustainable. That last line is key to longevity I feel.

The payoff is the process
The payoff is the process. I can take all day to talk about all the benefits of writing. Clarity. Content library. Connections. But those are after the fact benefits. The direct payoff is just the process of writing something down every day. Something. Anything. It feels nice. I reconnect with myself. That’s it.

Every day is still hard
Yet despite having systems, it never gets easier. Some days I still struggle to know what to write. Today was an example. Every now and then I get reminded of just how much of an infinite game this is. We’re never done done.

Doubtlessness
Despite how hard it can get, I seldom ever question why I do this. There was probably a period of time early on in my daily writing journey where I had doubts. Am I chasing a streak? I would ask. What’s the point of writing some random sh*t every day? Who would read? Why do I bother? All those questions, GONE. After 700 days streak—and more if you count the 2 year streak before I started on this streak—all those doubts are gone. I know I want to do this. And it’s not just because I’m committed. But because it’s gotten to be such a core part of me, like eating and breathing, that I no longer doubt it. Now that’s something. When was the last time you built a habit outside of normal survival habits like eating, drinking that you reached this level of doubtlessness? I can’t recall other habits I have that I’ve done with such unwavering consistency. Not even meditation. Not even mindfulness. Not even my hobbies.

There. 700 days. Well done, me.

Created a image gallery that switch images by hovering over buttons

https://jsfiddle.net/yvat9rnc/