Jason Leow

I would call myself a serious person. As a kid, I was the serious one. Never the first to laugh or joke. Always the first to observe, learn and do.

I think it carried over to my career and work, and it had served me well… mostly. Being serious about work is favoured by employers of course. But it doesn’t get you much favours from your colleagues being so serious. The social department doesn’t get much capital. And I brought 100% of that into entrepreneurship.

Lately I’ve been thinking I need to change that. It’s one of those funny things that entrepreneurship does to you. From wanting to learn how to better spot opportunities and be lucky, to embracing my identity-based goals of an Opportunistic Trickster, to now wanting to be less serious. I feel like I need to flip my serious to fun ratio around. Maybe it 90% serious, 10% fun. I want to get to 40% serious, 60% fun. Or more.

Why be less serious? I’d invert it and ask back, “Why so serious?”

This line from Osho comes to mind:

“I don’t think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole of existence is a celebration.”

Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s due to reaching mid-life. Maybe it’s a recognition that time is running out. Maybe it’s what having a kid does to you. Maybe it’s realising that my past serious ways aren’t helping in my work - maybe even holding it back. Maybe it’s witnessing how I’m not enjoying my journey. Maybe it’s a sense that ultimately, what’s the point of being serious if it helps me get to my goals but not my happiness?

Fact is, many of the most successful folks in my field whom I look up to, always look like they are having the more fun than anyone else. If I can’t take a cue from my own life, perhaps I can listen to their’s for a change.

Fun > serious

I really need to remove the Boostrap script and use classic css and js instead. Bootstrap's hidden styles cause more trouble than help!

Joined the 500 day club in Lifelog yesterday. Such milestones are always a good time to reflect about the state of my writing:

- It’s an infinite game: Even after 500 days, I still struggle to know what to write every day. I don’t prepare topics beforehand, but I do collect notes and ideas. Sometimes I get an idea that would be great to write a post about, and I jot it down in my trusty note-taking app – Telegram saved messages

- No system is best system: But despite those struggles, I decided having an elaborate content system for my daily writing habit doesn’t quite work for me. This habit isn’t for content creation. It’s for mental fitness. A minimal set up suffices. It doesn’t have to be perfect or great to be helpful.

- A promise is a promise: Some days my projects and products pull me into their vortex so much that I feel like writing is a hassle. Yes! Even after 500 days. But thanks to my commitment to it and all the benefits I experienced, I still come back and write anyway. When it’s a beneficial non-negotiable, it’s easy to not see it as a choice.

- It’s an iceberg of untapped potential: I have so much content here that’s relevant for distribution elsewhere but I’m not even leveraging 50% of it. Occasionally some posts become short threads, or long ones. But nothing consistent. I should leverage this more.

- Growing old together as siblings: Shout out to the Lifelog folks here who show up every day and write. It’s a strange feeling, but over time I feel like I know some of you more than I know my in real life friends. And the same the other way – I think you know more about me than my real friends. It’s almost like being siblings, but instead of being bonded by blood we are joined by a creative pursuit, a writing habit. For that I’m super grateful.

- No endgame: I’m certain I will keep writing for eternity if there’s no limit. I want to keep going and showing up every day to write. Even after 500 days. It’s a part of me now. A limb.

Onwards to 1000!

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Since I switched from marketing mode to high impact work (that truly moves the needle) for my morning deep work session, I feel so much more motivated and productive.

I’ve always said it feels great to have done your most important work from 5-8am, but truth is I might have slipped from that for the past 3 months. That feeling had gone and I didn’t even realise it until I switched. And the only reason that feeling went away is because my priorities had changed, but my routines had not.

I’ve come to realised marketing is an infinite game, like daily writing here. I’m never going to be done done. I just have to show up and market consistently, daily… just as I write here every day. So there’s no need to hunker down on it. And a lot of the marketing tasks, like replying to tweets, don’t require deep work. It’ll be like using a flamethrower to light a cigarette!

Big overkill. A waste of quality deep work hours.

Of course, there’s some marketing tasks like thinking up a marketing strategy that could use deep work hours. So it’s about whether the value or impact of the work matches the brain power available.

A few things I see are worthy for deep work sessions:

• Coding, building, debugging
• Reflection and reviewing top-level strategy
• Writing a good pitch, marketing copy for a high impact piece
• Creating a new product - SaaS, digital downloads, Carrd plugins, free templates/offers as lead magnets
• Anything that has revenue-generating immediacy
• Creating side projects for fun or creativity - e.g. notyourcustomer.carrd.co

Anything else I can add to the list?

Aside... I hit 500 days of daily writing on Lifelog! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

Customer joins queue via queue form → I get notified via email → I email them payment link and confirm user handle (esp. if unavailable) → customer pays → redirected to thank you page → I get notified of payment → I create Google Sheet + link-in-bio page → I grant customer access to Sheet + editing permissions → customer logins, edits Sheet to customize their own link-in-bio page → END

- DO NOT type out a URL without the https://. Twitter would use http, see it as not secure and shadowban the tweet
- No Twitter from 5-8am now. Use morning for revenue-generating deep work. Twitter can come later.

I’m trying out something new recently - analog weekly recaps.

I would take time alone (rare occasion since becoming a dad) for 2-3 hours, head out with only my notebook and pen, without my laptop, and have coffee at some cafe to review the week.

I’ll then do two things:

Write down the past week’s opportunities and ideas so that I won’t forget to explore them.
Quick self check-in using these questions:
• What’s adding energy?
• What’s draining energy?
• Why truly moved the needle? Am I on, or off course?
• What needs to be reduced or removed?

This had been truly instructive and useful. For this week’s recap which I did yesterday......

And with that, the beta comes to an end! Will launch MVP next (after creating payment flow)

- Added a demo page with linked Google Sheet so that customers can check it out how it works
- Added pricing US$10/m
- Added a link to the queue form
- Added a caveat in the footer re: the raw html aesthetic to make a statement why it's so minimalist

https://forms.gle/7x7fZVEEPWGZceED7

One of the best things about running a portfolio of 10 different active products:

When I procrastinate on one, I switch to another.

Procrastination never felt more productive. In fact, can we even call that procrastination anymore?

User should be able to switch from "MRR" to "ARR" / "Revenue" or whatever column header one wants to use. It was previously hardcoded in one of the functions, now it just reads whatever the text is in the column headers (for the "Months" column too)

Stack Overflow resource: https://stackoverflow.com/a/35722367