Jason Leow

Now working on shorter and subbed video

More and more I'm seeing this recurring pattern, not just for myself but for others:

The products that I least expect to succeed are the ones that actually do. Often they are happy accidents.

Big lessons in there:

- By definition, you can't plan for happy accidents. Once you expect an accident it ceases to be one. Only thing I can do is to experiment a lot and launch small bets, all the while having low to zero expectations.
- Expectations more often than not, get in my way. Setting goals may be common wisdom. But with goals you get expectations. With expectations comes the associated stress, anxieties, frustrations when thing don't turn out your way. With goals and the expectations of hitting it, you start to narrow down your world into things that you *assume* are helpful for your goals and things that are not, thereby missing out on real opportunities that emerge from you putting stuff out into the world. These opportunities can get you to financial freedom but just because it seems unrelated to your goals, you are blind to them.
- There are so many great inventions that came about because of chance accidents. Penicillin, for example. A more recent and relatable one – Post-It notes. And often the inventors weren't even looking to invent that. They were often by-products of the main thing they were trying to invent. The sawdust from the woodwork ended up being more valuable than the woodwork itself. Selling your sawdust is underrated. I often look to the final output and outcome of any creative process as the product, but perhaps I should look more at the through-puts, process outputs and by-products as the product!
- Have fun staying curious. Happy accidents won't happen if I'm not curious and having fun doing that. I remember I had so much fun creating mini apps as a way to learn coding, and that ended up being plugins for Carrd.

Tl;dr - more happy accidents, less serious plans.

Learned this the hard way recently:

"When you choose who to follow on Twitter, you are choosing your future thoughts." [– @JamesClear](https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1312386219599433729)

For me it's more about who I engage with daily on twitter. I follow to make friends, but I don't use the home feed so I often don't see the tweets of those I follow. I only see those whom I switched on notifications for, and those on my daily-weekly engagement list.

And indeed, reading their tweets daily have an influence on how I feel and think too. As much as I like to say I'm sovereign and a discerning individual, I'm a lot less than I like to think I am. We're the effect of the 5 closest friends we spend time with. That's the 5 chimps theory. And it's not far from truth.

Granted, I've been curating my engagement feed with inspiring, hard-working, humble and awesome folks. People who I can learn a lot from. Folks I love to learn from.

Yet not everything I learn from them is applicable to me. In fact, just applying it wholesale to my context can hurt more than help.

There's something missing in all this.

A filter.

I don't feel like I'm filtering enough. I'm not sufficiently discerning. I definitely should think through more, experiment more and test new ideas I get from everyone more, before allowing it to live rent-free in my head.

Now *that* feels like it's hard to do.

It feels like it requires a lot more mindful consumption, a lot more effort expended at the point of reading. But does it?

Lately out of frustration I've been feeling a bit jaded and brought a skeptical lens to everything I'm reading. Granted, it's not the most wholesome feeling to have. But that experience got me thinking – perhaps that's all it takes. Just add a skeptic's lens to the reading.

A lens where everything is guilty of being wrong ***for me*** until proven right, through direct experience or rigorous research.

The "for me" part is critical, for it allows me to accept that something can be true for someone but not for me. Prevents unreasonable skepticism and negativity from creeping in.

OK so this is it.

Let's try this skeptic's lens for a few weeks and see what happens...

Learned this the hard way recently:

"When you choose who to follow on Twitter, you are choosing your future thoughts." [– @JamesClear](https://twitter.com/JamesClear/status/1312386219599433729)

For me it's more about who I engage with daily on twitter. I follow to make friends, but I don't use the home feed so I often don't see the tweets of those I follow. I only see those whom I switched on notifications for, and those on my daily-weekly engagement list.

And indeed, reading their tweets daily have an influence on how I feel and think too. As much as I like to say I'm sovereign and a discerning individual, I'm a lot less than I like to think I am. We're the effect of the 5 closest friends we spend time with. That's the 5 chimps theory. And it's not far from truth.

Granted, I've been curating my engagement feed with inspiring, hard-working, humble and awesome folks. People who I can learn a lot from. Folks I love to learn from.

Yet not everything I learn from them is applicable to me. In fact, just applying it wholesale to my context can hurt more than help.

There's something missing in all this.

A filter.

I don't feel like I'm filtering enough. I'm not sufficiently discerning. I definitely should think through more, experiment more and test new ideas I get from everyone more, before allowing it to live rent-free in my head.

Now *that* feels like it's hard to do.

It feels like it requires a lot more mindful consumption, a lot more effort expended at the point of reading. But does it?

Lately out of frustration I've been feeling a bit jaded and brought a skeptical lens to everything I'm reading. Granted, it's not the most wholesome feeling to have. But that experience got me thinking – perhaps that's all it takes. Just add a skeptic's lens to the reading.

A lens where everything is guilty of being wrong ***for me*** until proven right, through direct experience or rigorous research.

The "for me" part is critical, for it allows me to accept that something can be true for someone but not for me. Prevents unreasonable skepticism and negativity from creeping in.

OK so this is it.

Let's try this skeptic's lens for a few weeks and see what happens...

When I go too long without creating something—anything—I feel like I’m shrivelling up like a fish out of water. The metaphor is spot on, because being creative to me often feels like a fish swimming in the life-giving sea. Only in the water can the fish breathe, survive and be in its true element. Out of the water for too long, it jumps around seeking water, till it eventually dies.

And that’s how I feel after a few months of consulting and not much creating and building.

I mean, I’m grateful for the consulting. I truly am. It’s the only thing that’s putting food on the table – something I’m painfully aware of. I wrote about the gratitude I feel to be able to still do it. I went all out to do a good job, and I achieved that. But after months of not building my indie products, I’m feeling like that metaphorical fish.

Every year it’s the same seasons and same emotional journeys. I recall feeling the same way last year. Over the years I start to recognise it, and become comfortable with the changes.

It’s just the natural seasons of the soul. Nothing wrong, nothing to fix.

But it does mean I’m feeling ready to get back to creating and building again. That thirst is back.

Creative thirst.

And in a way it’s good to cultivate this creative thirst every now and then by switching over to something else. Because sometimes working on my indie projects can feel like an old tired relationship. Like an unhappy marriage that went on too long without love and spark. You need that occasional distance to get some perspective, and “make the heart fonder”.

And the heart sure is fonder now. I can’t wait to finally get back to working on Lifelog, on my Carrd plugins, on all the other ideas I have.

Soon. November.

https://m.facebook.com/groups/carrdusers/permalink/1166979470566774/

https://www.reddit.com/r/Carrd/comments/yct64b/gradient_text_on_carrd/

Realised recently that Carrd already allows for gradient text but only for the whole text element. To make gradient text of single words within a text element, still need some custom CSS.

So I made a gradient text template to do just that... and it's FREE! 🤑😉

Get it here 👇
https://gradienttext.carrd.co/

Inspired by @cjthacreator - thanks for the inspo!

I've been thinking about my [new goal for biohacking stress](https://golifelog.com/posts/new-goal-biohacking-stress-1666479705423).

Sure there's lots of hacks I can use and do, but as I learn from my sleep and diet biohacking, often the simplest and most basic ones are the most effective.

For sleep, it's simply sleeping more.
For diet, it's eating whole single ingredient foods.

How about stress? I think it's REST.

So simple and basic, but so hard for the workaholic me. It's like my Achilles heel. I like working and enjoy my work. Plus the stress of survival and feeding the family, it's a sure formula for cyclical burnout and chronic stress. Which was what really happened.

I struggle to rest, that's why I'm so stressed.

So just setting boundaries, putting time aside to rest, might already help a lot.

Ok blocking weekends, off days and alone time is important. I do that now. I don't work or check social media on weekends. I intentionally took a week off after my consultancy project to rest.

It's also about the different types of rest. The [7 types of rest](https://ideas.ted.com/the-7-types-of-rest-that-every-person-needs/):

- Physical rest - passive rest like sleeping, napping, active rest like yoga, stretching
- Mental rest - short breaks, long breaks, vacations
- Sensory rest - bright lights, screens, conversations
- Creative rest - walks in nature, being in the forest or sea, enjoying the arts,
- Emotional rest - express feelings, say no
- Social rest - toxic relationships or interactions
- Spiritual rest - connecting to something bigger than oneself, through prayer, meditation

Lots to do and experiment with.

Onwards!

I've just set a new goal: Biohacking stress.

Not sure why it took me this long to realise, but through a series of serendipitous content I chanced upon, [like sleep and insulin resistance](https://golifelog.com/posts/stress-and-insulin-resistance-1666395617976) and [sleep and stress](https://golifelog.com/posts/stress-and-sleep-1666304617982), I connected the dots to my latest hypothesis about my health:

My stress levels are chronic and is the root cause of most of my minor to major ailments in the past decade.

A quick run-down of all the ailments caused by stress in the past 10 years (since 2011):

- Bad diet habits like junk fast food
- Bloatedness, intestinal discomfort, poor digestion, bad gut microbiome
- Overall weight gain
- Visceral fat build up (the 'hidden' fat that's stored deep inside the belly, wrapped around the organs like the liver and intestines)
- Insulin resistance, likely near pre-diabetes level (own diagnosis)
- Immunity issues that led to surgery on my leg in 2012
- Gut issues that led to surgery in 2017
- Recent muscle/joint pains and injuries - back, shoulder, neck, Achilles tendon
- Multiple rounds of burnout every year or alternate years
- Overall increased chronic fatigue (not sure if linked to adrenal fatigue)
- Poorer mental health - anxiety, low moods

The horror is realising that all that I've been doing with my sleep and diet biohacking is just treating the surface symptoms. No wonder I've been doing it so long but still feel like something's missing. Like how I'm really happy with how far I've come for my diet, but can't shake off the feeling that despite it, I'm still not feeling that sense of wellbeing I crave for. Same thing with sleep. The habits are settled but the fluctuations in sleep quality seemingly outside of my control had been frustrating. I say "seemingly", because I didn't know that stress could be the underlying factor.

Now I do.

So I can't keep doing sleep and diet biohacking in good faith without also addressing the huge elephant in the room: my stress.

So I've set a goal to work on it:

> Reduce and remove stress to healthy levels as it's been the root cause of my sleep, diet and health problems for the past decade since starting my first business in 2011.

Still got much to learn and work on. This problem runs deeeeep.

But at least I recognise it and am now aware of its impact.

Baby steps onwards!

For those who are on keto or low carb to work on your insulin resistance but finding it hard, this finding that [Dr Bikman](https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cj8FSoiDpxh/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=) just shared looks super interesting – stress as a hidden factor to insulin resistance.

How it works: Cortisol and adrenaline are increased during stress/anxiety and works to increase glucose. So insulin must work harder to lower glucose, making the body increasingly resistant to insulin over time. Stress is one of the 3 primary causes of insulin resistance, potentially leading to Type 2 diabetes.

It's crazy that I'm only knowing this now, yet it's such a great a-ha but face palm moment. Because that's exactly what happened to me.

I've always thought I gained weight and got all the associated chronic conditions due to my poor diet and the carbs I love eating - desserts, pastries, ice cream. The story I made up was how I sought out comfort foods due to associations with food from my growing up years. When in fact at the root it could very well just be ***stress-related***.

Stress also makes the body want to increase glucose, which I'll naturally feel pulled to do by simply eating more sweet treats. Cause and effect. No need to pull in complicated concepts like emotional eating or personal relationship with food and all that therapy sh\*t.

Perhaps this explained why I gained so much weight during that first year I started my own business. I was super stressed. I worked late all the time. That led me to eating fast food and junk, no exercise. No wonder.

Maybe that also explains why it's so easy for me to gain back weight/dad bod, and a nagging suspicion of stubborn insulin resistance.

All because I've been chronically stressed since my first business in 2011. That's a damned decade there. The stress is uneven, with peaks and valleys throughout the ten years, but I definitely had more metabolic and physical ailments during the peaks, and overall health had declined significantly over the past 10 years. I would shrug it off to age, but the decline felt pretty steep and drastic, more so than simply ageing.

I've been sleep biohacking and diet hacking for years, but I now realise those are just working on the surface symptoms, not the root cause.

STRESS IS THE ROOT CAUSE.

Fix stress, and I fix my sleep, my diet, my health, my sense of wellbeing.

Oh gosh why am I only learning this after 10 years...... 😫

Stress and sleep is something that I've not looked into much for my sleep biohacking practice.

But recently my sleep quality had been noticeably poorer, and I suspect it's due to stress.

[Because](https://daveasprey.com/how-stress-ruins-your-sleep/) in order to relax and go into deep sleep, our brains have to switch off the sympathetic nervous system, the part of our that's in charge of "fight, flight or freeze". being chronically stressed means it's on even while asleep, and the cortisol hormones get in the way of relaxation and thus deep sleep.

Apparently, chronic stress is one of the best predictors of insomnia, other sleep issues, as well as overall poor sleep quality.

So if I want great sleep, I really need to get my stress in order.

I looked up some tips from [Dave Asprey](https://daveasprey.com/stress-management/) which I could use:

- Meditate: Already do this. But could spend more time on it at night especially, before bed.
- Cold thermogenesis: Tones vagus nerve, reduce stress. I stopped cool showers for some time. Time to bring it back!
- Diet: An unhealthy gut microbiome might stress you further. I stopped probiotics for a while, so might be worth being more intentional about consuming it. Sugar and emotional eating to deal with stress makes things worse, so must eat healthy and wholesome foods.
- Supplements: Apparently adaptogenic herbs help relieve stress, like kava, ashwagandha. L-tyrosine supplements might improve brain's resilience. I've not heard about all of these, so worth diving in to research more!
- Take breaks: I hardly take breaks during work. Got to finally heed my pomodoro timer, and take intentional 10min breaks!:
- Better, more sleep: Just being more disciplined and sleeping early at 8:30pm, and getting 8h of sleep, makes me less in survival mode and less stressed out. It's amazing what a night of sufficient sleep makes.
- Exercise: I exercise in the morning, but been skipping my evenings walks to work more. I do notice I'm less physically tired (even though I'm mentally spent). Time to bring it back!
- Embrace stress to make you more resilient: Inwardly, not wanting to be stressed makes me more stressed! So that's good advice - just let it be, and go with the flow.

I feel I'm so new to stress management, especially in relation to sleep. Much stuff to learn and experiment with!

Onwards.

Made a 10min mockup just for fun 👇

Fun fact by a new Twitter account [@stats_feed](https://twitter.com/stats_feed/status/1577530930201239554) I just discovered and enjoying:

> Squirrels fail to recover up to 74% of the nuts that they bury, unintentionally planting new trees in the process. 🐿

Nothing in Nature is ever wasted. Even mistakes.

The mistake of one creature ends up being beneficial to other plants or creatures, and overall great for the ecosystem.

It's interesting to see this from the perspective of entrepreneurship and the market.

Every mistake, loss or failure, is a mistake, loss or failure *to you*. But for the ecosystem—of other founders, businesses, customers—those mistakes, losses and failures might be planting seeds for other new ideas, products and businesses in the ecosystem, sometimes without us being aware it's doing that.

You try launching a SaaS to help people share their links using Google Sheets. You failed (sounds familiar?). But because you shared the story publicly, it might inspire or nudge someone to try something similar in his or her own way, or something totally different. He or she might end up succeeding where you failed. And all the interaction you had with this founder could be a Like, or maybe not even any interaction at all.

So the world is the better for it, even though it felt worse (to you) when you failed.

I like that sharing about my journey—wins or losses— are helping the ecosystem even if I don't directly benefit from it.

Perhaps if the world is better for it; perhaps if that uplifts the entrepreneurship ecosystem, we all rise together with it. Subtly. Invisibly.

I love how squirrels were the inspiration for today's post, for something as serious as startups and entrepreneurship.

Be like a squirrel.

To better reflect what the monthly newsletter offers - a deeper look into the lessons from wins and failures from building my portfolio of products AND services. Most of the stuff I write in the newsletter I don't tweet about it, so it's almost exclusive first dips