Jason Leow

"Many people stop doing the right thing because they’re measuring it on the wrong timeline." – @AlexHormozi(https://twitter.com/AlexHormozi/status/1548088808754724865)

I know that making a living from internet products is the right path for me.

But perhaps I got the timeline wrong.

The frustration I feel with my lack of results is totally the consequence of misunderstanding the timeline.

I've seldom done something this long without reaching the objective I set. Seldom in all 4 decades of my life. In the past when I set my mind to it, I mostly can achieve it within 1-2 years, tops.

In school.
In sports.
In career.

"Patience with results, impatience with actions" - @Naval

Adding further fuel to the fire of frustration, I've always had problems with the patience. It's an uphill struggle practising this virtue. I know it's important, but it's just so hard.

The most challenging part is the right things in life and business often have no certain timelines. 10 months, or 10 years? It's anyone's guess. So it's hard to know what's the "right" timeline. In my case, I'm sure it's wrong, since it's giving me so much grief.

Perhaps then, being intentional about setting expectations is key. The horror is that I've never once sat down to set expectations. I've always assumed results will speedily arrive once I put myself to it. I've never quite asked myself:

- How long do I expect it to take?
- What if it takes way longer than expected?
- How long am I willing to commit?
- Do I have what it takes?
- Am I willing to trade off time for the reward?

Good time then, to think about this.

All thanks to this random conversation on Twitter!

https://twitter.com/patyvventura/status/1547696113863430145

Interesting observation and opinion about inflation in the U.S. from inflationchart.com (made by @levelsio) –

Inflation is actually 19%, not 9%.

Actual numbers are being downplayed.

"You’re now losing 19% of your money to inflation per year or 1.43% per month. At this rate, in 4 years over 50% of your money has evaporated."

That’s slightly over double of the forecast.

It looks scary.

I’m no expert economist, but I can go with the idea that the numbers don’t always reflect reality, and that downstream, real prices of goods might increase even more than 19%, but some might decrease too.

Perhaps the real impact on the ground depends on what you spend most of your money on:

Inflated prices:
- Housing
- Food & beverage
- Textbooks
- Childcare
- Healthcare

Deflated prices:
- Clothing
- Software
- Toys
- Cellphone service
- TV

Sadly, we can’t avoid food and drinks, housing, healthcare. The costs of our core consumption goes up, while the nice-to-have goes down.

That’s the counterintuitive thing - when times are tough, we intuitively cut down on the luxury spending, nice-to-have spending, when it’s actually the basics that need to be reviewed.

Of course, those are U.S. inflation numbers. Singapore’s forecast of inflation for 2022 is ~5%. Lower, but perhaps will rise as the year progresses. Which makes me wonder how much exactly that 5% is downplayed… If by the same multiple as the US (i.e.e double - 9% to 19%), then it’s like 10% or more? Caveat: Pure conjecture there, but concerning nonetheless…

I don’t understand the economics too deeply, but my main noob takeaway are:

- find ways to earn more (at least 20% more) instead of just saving as whatever money you hold will decrease in value
- review spending on consumption basics that’s most affected by inflation
- even investing in crypto isn’t a hedge against inflation that high anymore

What else can we do to hedge ourselves against inflation this high?

How to show the most recent video on my YouTube channel on my Carrd site?

Create a new Embed element where you want your video, and paste this code:



Remember to replace the YOUR_CHANNEL_NAME_HERE with your channel’s name in the url, eg for Mr Beast, its MrBeast6000 if you see the url of his channel

youtube•com/c/MrBeast6000

- Ask (good) questions as a tweet. Awesome for engagement
- If someone RTs/QTs my tweet, go to his/her profile and like/reply. Make friends.
- Auto-DM feature paired with a free gift - great way to grow following!
-

Sam Harris on the meaning of life, to sad guitar music (https://youtu.be/srxDtefn740):

"One thing people tend to realize is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. It’s not just what they it’s not just what they did with their time; it’s not just that they spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It’s that they cared about, the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up in petty concerns a year after year when life was normal… We all know this epiphany is coming… The horror is that we succeed - we managed to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfilment there."

Damn. Daaaaaamn. This was so good. I needed this. The emotive soundtrack behind the speech hit the spot for sure.

It really got me thinking:

Am I caring about the wrong things?

In work and career.
In family and relationships.
In health and wellness.
In life in general.

How would I know?

In most cases, you would know when say, a loved one dies, or some huge crisis happens. I don’t want to need those events to be able to reflect on it. It might be too late by then. I want to avoid the horror of succeeding in never having that epiphany until it’s too late.

How can I know if I’m caring about the wrong things, right now?

Some ideas:

• Intuition. Something feels off in life or whatever area you’re thinking. You’re not feeling the most aligned, congruent and on board with it. With how things are unfolding. A nagging suspicion things can be better.
• I’m not getting results I want. Data and feedback is showing that no matter how hard I work, it isn’t working. I could be doing it wrong, or I should be doing something else - in which case I should either change my approach, or switch games entirely.
• When was last time I felt joyful and happy? Truly happy. Not the kind of happy where you feel a peak but momentary elation of achieving a goal, but that sweet, deep, lingering aftertaste from doing, from the process. What are the things that give me that kind of goalless joy now?

Ultimately, it all seems to point back to mindfulness, awareness, presence.

When I’m mindful, when I’m embodied in my body, when I’m present to everything inwards and outwards. That’s when I can know with a higher probability if I’m caring about the wrong things.

The present moment contains the truth of whether what we care about is right or wrong.

Liquid Death is one brand that's fascinated me recently.

It's just water sold in a can. But it's not just water, it's MAN water. It's badass water. The can is designed to look like beer cans, with heavy metal-inspired font and designs, combined with marketing taglines like "Murder your thirst". You look cooler and hotter holding that can, than a clear plastic bottle of mineral water.

[Liquid Death ad](https://static-prod.adweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Liquid-Death-five-cans-lineup-2022-1024x538.png)

It's a product that's 100% branding. No one buys it for the water inside.

I'm fascinated because before bottled water felt like one of those 'dead' product categories. Differentiation is dead there. Where every brand looks the same. Where the main product is a commodity. Where the core experience of consuming it is 99.9% similar (because come on, distilled water and mountain spring water tastes the same to the average bear). It looked like that's all to it forever more, with nothing left to innovate in this product space. Yet along came this irreverent brand and is killing it.

It made me wonder: What other 'dead' product categories—physical or digital—are out there, waiting to be disrupted this way? Which boring products out there do we take for granted?

A few I can think of:

Milk
Ice cream
Bread
Meat
Vegetables
Airlines
Office supplies
Printers
Credit cards
Ecommerce stores
Web browsers (Chrome, Edge)
Email clients
Smartphones (surprise, surprise)

*Do you agree with the categories above? What did I miss?*

*More importantly, what's some 'dead' product spaces that indie hackers can work on?*

Posting daily on LinkedIn IS working way better than expected! This is yet another opportunity that came about because I was visible on LI

Reason for cancellation: To manage finances more closely and thus couldn't fit in the subscription.

But tbh I feel bad taking his money when he no longer use the site much. So it's a good thing in the end I guess.

That brings current MRR to $99, the first time it went below $100 since achieving it during Christmas last year. Sigh. 😔

NASA just released the [first images](https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/gallery) from the James Webb Space Telescope, our latest, newest, upgraded space camera after Hubble. And man did it not disappoint.

Here's an image of the "Cosmic Cliffs" in the Carina Nebula, located 7600 light-years away:


What a show-stopper of an image! 🤩🤩🤩

And the more I stare at this and ponder the implications, the more all my teeny weeny day-to-day worries melt away.

We're so infinitesimally small in something so infinitely vast.

People talk about leaving behind a legacy, but seriously...

Who will remember us when our Sun blows up?
Who even knows about us in this vast Universe?
Does anything *really* matter?

All is but an almost non-existent blimp in the infinite space-time of the Universe.

And instead of finding this nihilistic and depressing, I find this perspective, this overview effect, a relief. A cathartic release, almost.

It's like a creator realising that nobody cares about what you did or wrote today. You can see it as:

"Yaaay nobody cares! 🤸‍♂️ I'm free to experiment and do whatever I want!"

or

"Urgh nobody cares. 😭 This sucks, I suck."

I'm going for the former.

We're tiny. Nobody cares.

So now I can attribute and truly take ownership of my own meaning, take my own care, just for my own time, my own life, in my tiny speck of space within this vast cosmos.

It doesn't matter, so that it can now matter.

I’ve been frustrated with my lack of results lately. The success I seek seems to elude me. It’s been years. I try patience. I try to reframe my perspective. It provides temporary relief. But this frustration—turning into annoyance, at myself—always returns.

And I’ve got a working hypothesis that I’ve been toying with in my head, why it’s that way:

I’m not successful because I’m not lazy enough.

The reason why I’m not hitting my goals for my products is because I’m too working hard.

I’m too willing to work hard on everything—things that matter and don’t matter—that I spread myself too thin.

I’m greedy and hard-working, want to do it all, and feel confident to be able to do it all through just working harder, so I lose focus.

I’m the sort who enjoys feeling competent, so even if I’m not good at the skill, I’ll force myself to learn it.

I’m not using enough leverage to help me succeed—like tools, automation, capital, partners, freelancers, VAs, systems, templates—so I end up doing and achieving less.

I’m great at forming habits and applying consistency, discipline and a never-say-die attitude to my work, so that blessing brought to the extreme ends up being a curse (when I just hunker down in hard work without results).

I’m too much of a workaholic that I forget that rest is required for optimal productivity.

Essentially, the very virtue called industriousness had turned into a vice, because it had blinded me to what I need to do to be effective.

I was just being ultra efficient, but not effective.

To be effective, I need to be lazy.

In some aspects, at least.

I should really start practicing selective indolence and strategic incompetence.

I need to be willing to not treat my industriousness as the hammer and every problem as a nail.

I need to be open to doing more work upfront to automate, create systems, templates and using other tools to scale and amplify beyond the bottleneck that is myself.

I need to start considering how I can bring others in to help me, complement me, free me up to focus on things I’m more effective in.

To be successful, I need to learn how to be lazy.

Laziness is not a vice per se. It can be a virtue, if used appropriately.

Lazy on the things that don’t matter.
Industrious on the things that do.

Was just messing around with a new minimal CSS library called SimpleCSS I chanced upon today... and ended up making another accordion plugin for Carrd!

This time, a fast and simple one, with no fancy Javascript other than a tiny 4kb script for the library.

WDYT?

https://simpleaccordion.carrd.co/

I realised I’ve never written down all the problems that Lifelog solves, because I assumed those were clear for those coming from the old writing platform.

But @Chance_Smith used Lifelog as an example to apply this framework that @dickiebush had. This is Dickie’s framework:

Bad copywriting:

• Here’s my product
• Here’s what it does
• Here’s what’s so good about it

Good copywriting:

• Here’s your problem
• Here’s the benefit of solving it
• Here’s why what you’ve tried has failed
• And by the way here’s a product that will help you solve it

And this was Chance’s list of problems that Lifelog solves:

Problems LifeLog solves
- never starting to write
- solo writing
- inconsistent writing
- over ambitious writing goals (1k words/day)
- not self-aware (cloudy pov)
- not goal focused

Somehow reading the list of problems felt refreshing because I’ve never listed them down before. And when crafting my Learn More page I went straight to the benefits without ever demonstrating I got a good empathetic understanding of the problems my potential users faced.

Huge face palm moment. 🤦‍♂️

OK so let’s build on Chance’s list and try to add on all the problems my customers have:

Problems LifeLog solves
- never starting to write
- (loneliness of) solo writing
- inconsistent writing
- over ambitious writing goals (1k words/day)
- not self-aware (cloudy pov)
- not goal focused
- poor progress on goals
- lack of deliberate practice (on writing, clear thinking)
- insufficient emotional expression
- lack of confidence
- lack of sense of belonging to a like-minded community
- overwhelming fear of failure, perfectionism
- flow: find it hard to express thoughts to words
- ability to communicate well in writing, i.e. communication skills
- lack of clarity on your ideas/thoughts
- lack of career progression, opportunities
- lack of discipline and consistency in other aspects of life
- better writing skills in general

Anything else I missed?

I’ve seen this pop up several times over the last week, so I take it as a sign, a synchronicity, that I should write to think about it.

It’s always some version of this:

Don’t speak badly about yourself. Don’t say things like “I suck. I’m terrible at X. I hate this part of me.” A part of you—your subconscious, your inner warrior, your spirit, whatever—is always listening. It can’t tell the difference between it being said in jest or seriously, because it’s the same energy.

Perhaps I’m just seeing what I need right now.

Going through a period of creative burnout and low esteem, perhaps my inner voice, my self-talk in my head haven’t been the most kind to myself. Maybe it’s the cause, maybe it’s a symptom. I don’t know. I do know it’s there.

Some ways I speak badly to myself:

“It’s been years. Why are you still not earning enough money from your indie hacking?”

“Everyone’s doing well. Even folks who started later than you are enjoying more success. You’re not any less smart than them. Why are you not achieving what you want?”

“Why do you make it so hard for yourself? Just go do the thing and win.”

“You’re not being a good enough dad. You should be more involved. You should do more. Spend more time with your son. Time will pass you by much faster than you realize. Why work so much?”

“You’re not being a good enough husband. You should plan more dates, do more sweet things. Serve your wife more. Marriage takes effort too, you know.”

“You’ve not been spending time with your parents. They’re old, and time with them is limited. How many more years will you have with them? Seize it.”

Writing them down was nice. I realized I have a strong paternal inner voice, always coaching me in my head.

The first step to recovery is recognition. The second step is to speak differently, using loving speech.

“Easier said than done,” my inner voice went.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

An interesting all-round technique to get ahead of the pack, in life:

Just do the opposite of what 99% are doing.

OK caveat: Obviously this rule doesn’t apply to fundamental laws of physics things like jumping off a building or putting your hand in fire. Do as the 100% does in those things yes. But for the rest:

"How to get ahead in your 20s:
Look at what 99% of people in their 20s are doing
Do the opposite"
– @WrongsToWrite

For most important things in life that are valuable—career, business, entrepreneurship, money, relationships, happiness—these aren’t things that are clear cut. It ain’t black and white, it’s all grey. There’s definitely more than one way. Context matters in these cases. And being opposite gives sharp contrast, helps one stand out, distribute your message, sell your product. That’s when being contrarian is game-changing.

I see this all the time everywhere. The contrarian hot take on Twitter goes viral. The unconventional growth hack gets millions of users. The weirdos win.

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

That made me think – what have I done or can I do differently from the 99% of creators and indie hackers to get ahead? What are some of the norms and rules that everyone says to be true, but you learned you can do otherwise? What do I believe in that 99% don’t, that it’s a hill that I’m prepared to die fighting on?

A few popular rules/behaviours and how I do the opposite of the 99%:

❌ Hard work alone is sufficient for success
✅ Learning to lean more on being able to spot opportunity and leverage chance

❌ Going all in on one big bet thing, be known for just one niche, is the only way
✅ Go for a portfolio of bets intentionally, be known for many different things

❌ Sharing mostly wins to shape how successful you look. Even when sharing losses and failures, framing it to show how brilliant/good one is to overcome it
✅ Being vulnerable in public, openly sharing failures, struggles, worries with no heroic ending

❌ Hustle hard, succeed fast
✅ Commit a decade to it

❌ Anytime someone says this is the ONLY way to do it
✅ Always think, “It depends.”

Question to myself: What else can I do differently from the 99%, in business and in life?