Jason Leow

In time for Day 4 tomorrow!

I run a portfolio of products, ala the portfolio of small bets approach.

The whole idea is that diversity mitigates risk. A portfolio prevents the classic all eggs in one basket problem. But some folks hate it. They prefer to focus and go all in on one thing. They prefer concentration as an approach.

I’m on board having focus, just not too much.

Focusing on just one thing feels like it’s too much. 1 is just 1 away from 0. If a black swan event occurs—Apple bans you from the App Store for no reason, a fire burns down your store and all your inventory, or a massive competitor shows up—you lose.

But as much as I love diversity as a hedge against risks like this, there’s also such a thing as too much diversity.

“The more positions you have, the more average you are.” – Bruce Berkowitz
“You can diversify yourself into mediocrity.” – John Neff
“Diversification covers up ignorance.” – Bill Ackman
Source: mastersinvest.com

It’s really a spectrum, isn’t it? Concentration on one end (with a minimum of 1 big bet), and diversity on the other end (with maybe hundreds of small bets). The trick is to find somewhere in between:

“Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.” – Warren Buffet

Don’t have just one thing. but don’t spread yourself too thin.

How thin is thin - it’s entirely up to your capacity.

Have a couple of bets to start. Try, experiment, market, push them. Prioritize the 1-2 that have potential, but keep the rest going, or try new ones, or spin off from the good ones. Have concentration and diversification.

You can have both, but in varying degrees as you progress.

Collected loads of ideas to inspire new ideas

I did it. I finally did it. I hit 100% score for sleep!

Writing this down for record and remembrance:

Date: Monday night 12 Sep 2022
Sleep tracking app: Sleep Cycle iOS app
Sleep score: 100%
Went to bed: 8:48pm
Woke up: 5:06am
In bed: 8h 17m
Asleep: 8h 7m
Asleep after: 9min
Heart rate: 67

This was despite me having a sore neck for the past few days and not being able to move freely to sleep on my side. This was despite me being slightly unwell and exhausted from my consulting last week.

It was tough sleep last week. I was at 83% (my normal range), then went to 58% after a particularly intense day of work, then built it back up to 74%, then 82%, then 85%, then 88% (yesterday), and then 100% today. It took me 5 days to get back up.

But the number of days here wasn’t the critical factor here. It was the commitment to self care. To prioritize taking care of myself, at the expense of all other things like fun and play, even some family time.

All my past sleep problems, and poor health resulting from sleep deprivation, were simply a prioritization problem. I felt I could sacrifice sleep for other things. I thought it was a commodity that I could trade off freely without consequence. This is a pattern of behaviour right from my 20s till now. I guess I’m only truly starting to learn this lesson now, after two decades. Only “starting to learn”, because I still fall into the trap of my old ways from time to time.

Sleep is the first mover.

Writing this to remind myself of what matters.

### Vanity metrics:

- Likes
- Impressions
- RTs
- Replies
- Page views
- Clicks
- Followers
- Email sign-ups/subscribers
- Mentions from press
- Praise from peers
- Free users
- Revenue 😱

### Valuable metrics:

- **Positive testimonials** from customers that shows you're adding value to their lives.
- **Negative feedback** from customers who's invested enough to give feedback. Also shows that there's still room for improvement.
- **Paying customers** – Not to be mistaken with free users. When people open their wallets, they have skin in the game. It's the difference between heaven and earth.
- **Profit.** Note I didn't use "revenue". Because it's easy to earn $1M. Just spend $2M on ads. Profit is the what's sustainable. Profit is what makes your thing a real business.
- **Number of people you helped.** This group could be your paying customers yes, but it shouldn't be the entire group. Help other indies, other non-users, help grow your industry. Volunteer or do pro bono. Give without asking.
- **Your quality of life.** If your business isn't improving your life, why are you doing it? Sure, maybe we got to hunker down and hustle for a time to make it succeed. But always question if—on your death bed—it's truly worth the trade-off. If I have to be a martyr and sacrifice my family life for decades, count me out.
- **Freedom.** This is personal to holder. To me. If my work isn't allowing me the autonomy and ownership to make my own decisions on time, effort, creativity, joy, people, impact and equity, then it's work that I should seriously start reconsidering.


*Did I miss anything?*

I started on the ketogenic diet on 2 Sep 2019. It’s been three years.

To the uninitiated, the keto diet is form of low carb, high fat diet. We’re eating too much sugars and carbs in our modern diets, and that’s leading to a whole host of metabolic conditions like diabetes, inflammation, and obesity. Keto aims to counter that, by drastically reducing our carb intake, and training our metabolically flexible body to burning more fats.

And three years on, I never felt better.

Some stuff I learned along the way:

### Year zero
I started on keto as a last ditch effort to heal from a series of chronic gut issues, which included surgery. It was nice to look back at my [first week on keto](https://jasonleow.github.io/200wordsaday/articles/one-week-on-keto-intermittent-fasting-267905d763e868b56a/index). All the pains of easing into a difficult habit. Keto flu. Fatigue. Queasiness. Bad sleep. Headaches. Brain fog. Sugar cravings. It felt so impossible then. But I did it!

### 1st year
I did strict keto mostly for the first year. Lost 10kg, couldn't fit into my clothes, became quite gaunt. I learned so much about nutrition in my first year, I felt like I took a diploma course. All the little insights about eating habits and nutrition got compiled into a running log of a blog post called [counter-intuitive things I learned about nutrition and wellness while on intermittent fasting and keto diet](https://jasonleow.github.io/200wordsaday/articles/counter-intuitive-things-i-learned-about-nutrition-while-on-intermittent-fasting-and-keto-423975f00843835a30/index). One of the last few things I wrote – "Your keto today won't be your keto tomorrow". 100% true.

### 2nd year
Even within my 1st year I started to explore more meat less fat, and slowly moved out of eating fat bombs. By the 2nd year I was definitely into [meat-heavy keto, or ketovore](https://golifelog.com/posts/keto-two-years-on-1631240576181). The 10kg in weight I lost, I gained it back weight, but I didn't get back the old dad bod cubby fat - my frame remained slim. Talking to other keto veterans, they say if your clothes sizes didn't change, it's likely you gained muscle. Every month I would do some days of intermittent fasting and strict ketovore, to self-correct the occasional treat. Sometimes if I see my dad bod belly coming back, I'll go strict for a few weeks. This was also during the lockdowns and the birth of my baby boy, when it got easier to stay in routine.

### 3rd year
But by Year 3, I started to feel I needed more adjustments, in particular adding more carbs back. It's strange - I started to feel like the diet wasn't giving me as much energy as it used to. Most days ketovore, some days carnivore, some days with carb reloading. But sticking to mostly single ingredient carbs like rice, pasta. And tiny portions, like a few spoonfuls. On average, I veering towards a low carb freestyle intuitive eating sort of approach now. It's so much easier to stick to a diet philosophy and let that framework make the eating decisions for you. It's 10x harder to listen to the body and eat intuitively. Worse coming from someone who didn't have the best relationship with food and being embodied. But three years on, I feel a growing confidence in eating intuitively. I check in with my body if a food is something I truly need. I'm starting to enjoy whole, natural, single ingredient, non-/minimally processed foods. Even on carb reloading, I don't gorge on carbs like a starving prisoner released. I nibble it, eating mindfully, cautiously. And stop if it I hear whispers from the body that it's enough. This approach certainly helped a lot in feeling like I can carb reload without releasing the flood gates and going back to before keto.

It feels really hopeful now, my diet journey. I think fundamentally, coming back to listening to my body, heeding what it truly needs, not what it craves from poor past eating habits, had all along been what I was after. It's eating like that that truly brings health and a sense of wellbeing.

The diet you healed yourself with might not be the diet you eat in the long term.

Onwards!

I read this from James Clear's recent newsletter:

"3 things that help luck:
1. Deconstructing your craft, so you know what good opportunities look like.
2. Remaining vigilant, so you notice when lucky breaks come your way.
3. Acting quickly, so you are more likely to seize luck when it arrives."

– [James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/september-8-2022)

#2 and #3 are familiar, but #1 got me thinking because I realised I don't know the answer to that...

So what does a good opportunity look like in indie hacking? In particular, for my products?

Some thoughts:

- Viral. But not all viral are created equal. Viral is an opportunity if it converts, if it helps you achieve your goals. If it's just a funny viral meme with no engagement, no conversions, then not an opportunity.
- People pay for pre-sales, in droves. If there's not even a product yet but people are willing to open their wallets, you might be on to something.
- When you hit more than $10k monthly. I used to think hitting $1k was enough as a signal that the product is a great opportunity. But that's too low a bar. Hardly even ramen profitable. Just breaking even isn't enough to count as a great opportunity. $10k is a better benchmark.
- When you're pulled forward by external forces—market demand, feature requests, high usage—it also means opportunity. When you can't build fast enough, or don't have enough time to serve everyone lining up for it. In contrast, if you have to push hard on everything, the process feels uphill, and with little to no results, that's a sign there's no opportunity.
- When you're having fun and not caring about the results or rewards of your work other than the joy of doing it, yet people love it, sign up and pay. That's a perfect overlap of customer desirability and maker enjoyability.
- When you get multiple offers for micro-acquisition. Bonus points if the project is not even revenue-generating yet.
- When it's a saturated market and there's already multiple existing competitors, yet customers come to you.
- When you don't do paid marketing or ads, yet customers come to you via word of mouth.

*What are the other ways a good opportunity looks like in indie hacking?*

Again, Bootstrap overriding some styles, for background colors and hr dividers

A question regarding indie hacking that I've been pondering for the past few days:

> "What's my biggest bottleneck now? Am I working on it? If no, why not?"

Why past few days? Because I realised I didn't know the answer, and I've been wrecking my brain for one.

It's empty.

Perhaps this explains the real reason why I feel stuck with regards to the progress with my products. I don't even know what my biggest bottleneck is.

I asked:

- Is it product-market fit? Maybe my products just don't solve a good enough problem that enough people will want to pay for. This could be partly true. My products so far are vitamins, not painkillers. The solution could be placing more small bets.
- Is it marketing? Yes I can always do better, do more in marketing. But it doesn’t feel like it’s the biggest bottleneck, when product-market fit is dubious at best.
- Is it lack of energy/motivation? This could be true too. I've been trying so long, I'm starting to feel tired. I was burned out for the past 2-3 months, and only starting to slowly get back to work on products.
- Is it lack of time? Being a new dad I've always lacked time. But that simply brought more focus and prioritization. I wake at 5am to work on my projects. I work on weekends. And I have the same 24h as everyone as. So that doesn't feel like a bottleneck.
- Is it lack of money? To make money in products you often got to invest money. Domains, hosting, web infrastructure, all costs money. The biggest expense of them all - my quality of life, my cash runway to support me and my family. Not gonna lie...that's been a challenge lately yes. It does take away some mental bandwidth, brings stress, thinking and worrying about it. But that's not the bottleneck to my progress. It's a background noise that's always there – sometimes louder, sometimes a whisper.

So you can now see. I have ZERO clue.

Perhaps not knowing is the biggest bottleneck of them all.

And the solution is collecting and finding the data to ascertain it.

You can't fight an enemy you can't see.

I said in mid August that I was going to try sleeping early to get [8h of sleep](https://golifelog.com/posts/8h-sleep-goal-1660433590964), so that I can get myself back in reasonable shape for my consulting gig.

> So I’m going to try to get 8h of sleep every day from now till start of September. I’m going to exercise daily in the morning. I’m going to eat well. I’m going to wind down for the evening properly. I’m going to prioritize self care. I’m going to get my family on board for this. I’m going to do what’s required to:
>
> - Feel rested from sleep
> - Feel stronger in body
> - Feel sharper in mind

And almost one month since that intention, happy to report back that it really did help. In fact, I was surprised how much it helped.

Because the effects felt immediate and obvious. One month in I feel:

- Clearer in mind
- More rested
- More motivated for everything in life
- Exercised daily
- My spirits felt lifted and lighter
- Needed less coffee
- Didn't feel like I was struggling to get by each day
- Sleep pressure decreased - I had harder time falling asleep. It used to be immediate the moment my head hits the pillow (which on hindsight, might be too high sleep pressure)

Before, I was in kind of a low energy slump which I couldn't seem to extract myself out of. But with 8h sleep I started to climb out of it.

It's that simple.

So simple, I was surprised. Actually, cut that – I was shocked. I was shocked by how sleep deprived I actually really was. Goes to show just how important sleep is, and how my struggles can be traced back to the vicious loops of my poor sleep hygiene (sleeping late, getting less than 7h sleep, not winding down enough). I was carrying to accumulated burden of sleep debt and it was seeping into everything I did in life.

Therefore, slump.

So I'm continuing this 8h thing.

I'm not done yet with my sleep debt yet.

This is how I’d start over and grow on Twitter as a creator if the slate was wiped clean:

1. Reply thoughtful replies - Replying remains one of the best ways to grow your following. Notice it comes before #2 about tweeting. Because in the beginning no one will see your tweet. But by replying, you’re leveraging the audience of the account you’re replying to. If you reply something that adds to the conversation and people find valuable, they might check out your profile, and some might click follow. Don’t reply stuff like “Yes” or “Agree” or “No disagree” and call it a day. “Thoughtful” can mean many things: educational, entertaining, empathetic. The good thing about using “thoughtful” as a quality barometer - it’s an in-built mechanism to prevent burning out from replying too much. I once tried 80 replies a day but couldn’t even hit that many to reply to. Now I do like 10-20/day.

2. Tweet once a day - I’ll go for once a day because I’m coming from a habit-building, long game point of view. I think many creators start off strong, have grand ambitions of building an audience, want to do a lot, but fizzle out after a few months. Bonus: write 7 tweets within 1-2h once a week, and schedule them. Why batch write? Because it takes time to get into the groove when writing tweets. After you write one, you might as well ride the momentum and write 6 more. Writing just 1 tweet a day ends up taking more time over 7 days compared to batch writing all 7 at once. Caveat: I’m referring to solo creators, not startups with media teams.

3. Make like-minded friends - My latest definition of building an audience: Surrounding myself with people who help me build my best self in public. It’s like forming a mastermind group on Twitter, where we collectively benefit from the right kind of inspiration, accountability, influence to help us progress on our goals. By the way, if I want this, I need to do #1.

4. Reply, reply, reply - This repeat is intentional, for emphasis. Being the reply guy remains the best way for growth for newbies. Yes it does take energy to engage on Twitter, and can be a huge time suck… That’s why I try to do it at the end of the day after I’m done with my core tasks.

That’s it, thanks for attending my Twitter growth course.

A question from a previous [James Clear newsletter](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/september-1-2022) stuck with me:

> Sometimes it benefits us to be passive: to allow life to come to us and unfold without force. Other times it benefits us to be aggressive: to bend the world to our will and actively shape the life we want.
> Are you being too passive or too aggressive right now?

How do we tell when to do which?

How do we know when to be passive and flow alongside the tide of life?
How do we know we should be proactive in bending reality?

Some thoughts:

**Passive**
- When you're in a situation where you don't have much control over
- When acts big or small makes little difference
- When it calls for presence—observing, listening—than solutioning
- When things aren't broken, don't need fixing...or even going well

**Aggressive**
- When I have a lot more control and autonomy than I realised
- When a small act can have huge differences
- When you're called on by others to contribute
- When things are sub-optimal

I'm not sure where I'm going with this thought experiment.

Truth is, I feel more led along by life right now than bending reality proactively.

Maybe it's a phase, my current life stage, a natural season of life.
Maybe I've done a lot of bending in the past and now it's just time to let things come to fruition.
Maybe there's a lot of things out of my control now and it's time to watch.

Maybe that's why I needed to figure it out by writing this down.

*How do you tell when to be passive, when to be aggressive?*

Part 5 of tiny yet cool Twitter hacks that I’m slowly accumulating over all the daily practice and observing how others do it:

Read [Part 1](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-1640567252125), [Part 2](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-ii-1642293081196), [Part 3](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-iii-1645066528768), [Part 4](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-iv-1656294820581).

- **Occasional profile page face-lifts**. I recently updated my Twitter profile bio into [indie solopreneur](https://golifelog.com/posts/im-an-indie-solopreneur-1659662395379). It felt more authentic, and gave visitors something more about why they should follow me. It gave a small boost in new followers.
- **It's ok to walk away.** I took a break for 2-3 months but continued with daily scheduled posting. But I replied a lot less. And mostly didn't care about the app on weekends. Engagement and impressions suffered, but it's not too hard to build it back. If I'm in this for the long game, this is but a small blimp.
- **Shit-posting is a viable strategy.** Just like how @dagorenouf got big using startup memes. Not to mention, it's just so much fun, and a good way to cull my following of folks who don't get my humour. If you can't find what I find funny funny too, maybe we're not in the same tribe.
- **Write only when inspired.** I now write my indie hacking tweets only when inspired. Spending just a few minutes on it. But it's all queued up to a consistent publishing schedule. The best of both worlds from consistency and inspiration!
- Caveat to the strategy of reply thoughtful replies to big accounts: **You don't have to reply to big accounts** if you don't have anything good to say or if it's no fun that they don't reply to you. Just shut up and learn from them. Replying to peers is more fun.
- **Build your best self in public.** My latest take on building an audience = Surrounding myself with people who help me build my best self in public (inspiration, accountability, influence). Build an informal mastermind of peers on Twitter. [Build an audience and it builds you back](https://golifelog.com/posts/build-an-audience-and-it-builds-you-back-1661390959486), and I should stick to influence from people who are actually a good influence.
- **Tweet about your product without tweeting about your product, by actually doing the thing with your product.** I stopped tweeting writing-related content + plug about my product, and just tweeted single building in public tweet + screenshot of longer form Lifelog post, followed by a reply tweet to the link to the Lifelog post. No more daily asks to get people to my product. It ended up working slightly better - I had more sign-ups using this indirect strategy than direct asks. Instead of talking about writing, just write and show how it's done.
- **My latest form of engagement list is a list of @mention account names in a DM to myself.** I stopped using Twitter Lists because of too much noise (it showed replies). I used Chrome bookmarks to open >20 profile pages of everyone on the list, but that was a pain - it just hung my Chrome for a while before I can use it. Now I use a 'bookmarks' list in a DM to myself, open the desktop DM picture-in-picture window, and click through to open up profile pages. No more having to switch windows/tabs, open them all.
- **Tweeting about my family.** This isn't about using family or kids as a tool. It's about being authentic and just sharing what really moves me as an indie hacker. I recently [tweeted](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1562801975967641601) this out, which I consider one of my most personally significant tweets I ever posted. It didn't go viral, but that wasn't the goal. It felt right, because that's increasingly what drives me, what gives me happiness to what I do.

*What other tiny Twitter hacks do you know?*

Happy to announce that after more than 2 years of sleeping at 8-9pm and waking up 4-5am, my body clock had finally settled into that routine. Maybe my circadian rhythm had switched over for some time already but I didn't realise it until I had to change my routine.

Because recently when I had to work and sleep later than usual (past 10pm), when I sleep out of routine like this, I wake up feeling like I have a hangover. 😵

Like literally:

- Head feels heavy, groggy
- Tension in the forehead
- Feeling sleepy by late morning
- Fatigue even though I sleep more for 7.5h
- Not alert unlike my usual alertness at 7.5h sleep
- Thirsty

I used to just wake up at the same time anyway on weekends even if I sleep late, at the expense of sleep quantity. Not sleeping in might be better for your heart, at least. A University of Arizona [study](https://twitter.com/steveonspeed/status/1497798849129107457) showed how for every hour your sleep shifts on the weekend, you're 11% more likely to develop heart disease. So consistent sleep keeps you alive.

But that's at the expense of sleep debt/deprivation. So to be honest, I'm not sure what's worse:

**Sleep debt or sleep hangovers**

Something to learn more about on this sleep biohacking journey!

Now that my body had settled into that 5am routine, next goal is to be able to wake up naturally on my own at 4:40am without an alarm.

Onwards!

I'm sitting on a goldmine of untapped potential all this time with my project [Plugins For Carrd](https://pluginsforcarrd.com).

Seeing [Components UI](https://componentsui.com/) by @oscaroarevalo made me realise that.

It has all the tricks of the trade that we creators are familiar with:

- beautiful well-designed landing page with ConvertKit CTA
- Affiliates program through Gumroad
- Testimonial from Carrd founder AJ himself
- Selling bundles - 7 components for $59 while I sell 1 for $15/$25
- 10 day email sequence on Carrd tips
- Free guides - simple pricing tables, 10 days of Carrd, set up web analytics, a week of better design, How to: Design Agency, How to: Freelancer
- FAQs
- Templates, UI components, dark mode, Spanish version of UI
- Subdirectory blog for SEO purposes - tutorials, and posts about the journey of building in public (even a dedicated emailing list for this journey)
- Roadmaps, Changelog, License and Affiliate program pages

I look at Components UI and see my future for Plugins. I should really be doubling down on it and executing on all this tricks. I kind of already knew I *should* before seeing Components UI, but seeing something in real life was the kicker.

A few things I might do differently though, or will stick to doing it my way:

- Calling it a "plugin" instead of component because non-technical creators are more familiar with "plugins" (ala Wordpress) than "components" (a more UX designer / frontend developer term)
- Selling individual components *as well as* bundles
- Showing demos for each plugin on a Carrd site for street cred
- Keeping the marketing simple - too much conversion copy can feel too salesy. I like how it's simple and straightforward now for Plugins.
- My giving/helping focus on social media and communities as a way for marketing and reach, plus it's a great way to discover new plugin ideas

Excited!