Jason Leow

Lately I'm been sleeping poorly. Again.

Every time when my sleep gets bad, 9 out of 10 times I know it's because I veered off my sleep fundamentals. It's not even about using the latest sleep biohacking tech or supplements. When the core basics are off, no tech can help.

And thinking through, I am indeed breaking many sleep fundamentals:

- Late dinner. Eating within 1-2h of sleeping affects sleep quality. And I eat late because i work late.
- Late cut-off for work. Usually I have an alarm reminder to get me off my compueter by 4pm. But usually I linger a bit till 5pm. Lately, I'm working till past 8pm. Baaad idea. The extra screen time and blue light, the ensuing late dinner, all clocks up to poor sleep later.
- Screentime at night, and before sleep. Usually once I stop work, I don't check my phone. But lately I'm doomscrolling after that, and even right before bed. The blue light isn't helping with getting me in the my
- Slacking off on morning walk and exercise. Exercise always helps with sleep. Sometimes I'm not physically tired enough at the end of the day, and it makes it harder to fall asleep.
- Stress. Recent consultancy gigs had been somewhat stressful, and that impacted sleep. On top of that, I'm working later into the day and through weekends. Not enough time to decompress.
- Too much caffeine. I recently switched to drinking local coffee, which is a stronger brew. And sometimes drinking it past 2-3pm.

This seems to be a lesson I circle back pretty often. You're never *done* done, even though you've learned it once. There's always new seasons, new challenges, new lessons, or old lessons relearned in new ways.

Sleep is such a infinite game.

Ready, shoot, aim.

That's how I'm going to do it from now on for my portfolio of small bets approach. Credits go to [@jasenf](https://twitter.com/jasenf/status/1598143751066914816) for the phrase!

In case you missed it:

Not "ready, aim, shoot", but "ready, shoot, aim."

Why shoot first, aim later?

This reminded me of the [Cynefin framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework):


Because for most new products, we're operating in the **chaotic** zone. Cause and effect are unclear and confusing. Responding based on prior knowledge has no guarantees. There's no way to truly validate a business or product idea until you actually launch it. [Validation is a mirage](https://world.hey.com/jason/validation-is-a-mirage-273c0969), as Jason Fried nicely put it:

> If you want to see if something works, make it. The whole thing. The simplest version of the whole thing – that’s what version 1.0 is supposed to be. But make that, put it out there, and learn. If you want answers, you have to ask the question, and the question is: Market, what do you think of this completed version 1.0 of our product?
>
> Don’t mistake an impression of a piece of your product as a proxy for the whole truth. When you give someone a slice of something that isn’t homogenous, you’re asking them to guess. You can’t base certainty on that.

That's why we use small bets in such chaotic situations. Because we want to act-sense-respond. Act first and fast by scoping something small, and make little steps to get to small wins. And from acting, we get data where we can make sense of the situation, and then respond to try to put more order in place and transform the situation from chaos to complex.

The problem is most people try to sense-categorize/analyze-respond. They assume launching a new business to be "known knowns" and "knowns unknowns", in the simple or complicated zone, where best practices are known to work, and cause and effect are straightforward. And when things go awry, they externalise and blame luck, the market, or their competitors. Most failures come from oversimplifying the problem into a domain that it is not.

So don't do ready, aim, shoot; sense, analyze, respond.

Ready, shoot, aim. Act, sense, respond.

No lessons. No threads. The payoff is the process.

Setting intentions for December had always been easy. Every tail end of the year, it’s the same intentions.

Rest and reflect.

By right I should be in Bali now, having my annual solo retreat. Living in an eco-lux villa. Waking up to the sound of birds. Swimming in the sea. Taking long calm walks in rice fields. Scooting around looking for adventures on my scooter. Eating delicious local foods grown in the fertile volcanic soil. Sampling single origin drip coffee in one of their many specialty cafes. Writing under the full moon. Or just doing nothing at all.

While I look forward to reliving that past life some time in the future, I make do at home base for now.

A badly needed break, to rest and reflect.

Rest. Taking care of my health and body.
Rest. Spending much needed family time.
Rest. Loosening the mind from deadlines and goals.

Reflect. On the year that had passed.
Reflect. On the new year ahead.
Reflect. On my indie solopreneur journey. And life.

So there’s actually lots to do. But rest in action. Active rest is my poison of choice.

Active, yet centered.
Calmness in motion.
Power while at rest.

Onwards!

📈 Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $109 (↓$10)
📊 One-off revenue: $918 (↑$657)
💰 Total revenue: $1027 (↑$657) ⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️
🏦 Total profit: $965 (↑$641) (excl. salary and consulting costs)

👀 Tweet impressions: 260k vs 232k
💙 Likes: 3.1k vs 2.6k
💬 Engagement rate: 4.0% vs 3.9%
🏡 Profile visits: 40.5k vs 32.7k
📣 Mentions: 1517 vs 1088
👣 New followers: 402 vs 280
📧 Email subscribers: 51 (↑11)

My intentions for November were simple:

• Finish well for my consulting gigs.
• Start from zero for my products, without any preconceived or blindly inherited notions of right or wrong, should or must.

I definitely finished well for the consulting gigs. Client feedback were mostly good, though I expected better Net Promoter Scores. Overall, finishing without major mishaps. And I got paid! Phew that was a close shave... my savings were running out.

Alignment to that sense of being able to do it my own way, without any borrowed narratives felt good. I under no illusion that I’m completely free from external influence, of course. It takes time to be an independent thinking, self-assured (or shameless) creator. But the initial steps this month felt optimistically promising.

Going all in on hyper-commercialism and marketing overdrive for Black Friday was fun this month. And for the first time, my total revenue from my indie products (excl. consulting) hit the $1k milestone! That counts for something! 🤑

Overall, November felt like I’m taking my first steps of a different, more self-assured approach in my indie solopreneur journey. Definitely bodes well for the new year to come!

Onwards to December!

Hey guys, Heroku keeps warning me about heroku-18 stack update for my Strapi app...

Anyone know how does updating heroku-18 stack impact Strapi?

More context:

—-
System Information:
Strapi Version: 3.2.4
Operating System: macOS High Sierra 10.13.6
Database: SQLite 5.0.0, PostgreSQL 8.4.1
Node Version: 12.18.4
NPM Version: >=6.0.0
Yarn Version: 1.22.4
—-

I have a Strapi instance running on Heroku with Postgres database.

With Heroku forcing our hand to update apps on heroku-18 stack, I’m wondering what impact updating the heroku-18 stack will have on my Strapi instance.

Just asking for the overall approach:

- Approach with extreme caution and follow the steps as recommended
- Nah updating that will not impact Strapi at all. Just update.

Which option should I take? So anyone did a heroku update recently?

https://lottieanimation.carrd.co/

Indeed, some appreciated the reminder and ask for the discount links!