Jason Leow

> There is nothing great about working hard on a hopeless cause. You are not a better person because you are suffering more. Sacrifices can be necessary, but many assume that making sacrifices means they should be rewarded. There is nothing more common than useless sacrifices. – [@orangebook_](https://twitter.com/orangebook_/status/1682709172104876032)

***I felt that.***

What we always hear: "Success requires sacrifice".
What we often extrapolate wrong: "Sacrifice causes success."

Because if you're making sacrifices on the wrong thing, no amount of matrydom will get you to the success you seek. But when you hit on the right thing, you'll be sure you need to hustle hard and sacrifice something to get to the success you seek.

Sacrifice is an effect of a good opportunity, not a cause.

So **be lazy**. Wonder and wander. Window shop around. Don't leap into action and hunker down to work too soon. Work effectively.

The problem for me was when I started out, my spider sense for what's a good opportunity was ways off. I didn't know how to tell what good looks like. So everything became a good opportunity. Which led to too many failed attempts, lost time, wasted effort, and ultimately, burnout.

So in a way, doing it the wrong way, thinking that "sacrifice causes success" is a rite of passage. Without the painful lessons, it's hard to develop that spider sense of opportunities.

But it would have certainly helped if I knew this beforehand.

Success leads to sacrifice, not the other way.

Next, figure out how to animate it from left to right, month by month.
Then, how to record a gif/mp4 from it.

Logo carousel launch links = 16

https://t.me/carrdchat/4218

https://t.me/jason_leow/530

https://twitter.com/pluginsforcarrd/status/1686179740464594944

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1686283900916740096

https://www.indiehackers.com/post/logo-carousel-ec1258d4e6

https://pluginsforcarrd.substack.com/p/logo-carousel

https://pluginsforcarrd.tumblr.com/post/724412172561694720/logo-carousel-carrd-plugin-free-template

https://www.instagram.com/reel/CvYjshDO1yu/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==

https://www.tiktok.com/@pluginsforcarrd/video/7262161238065450247

https://mas.to/@jasonleow/110811819122644496

https://bsky.app/profile/jasonleow.bsky.social/post/3k3uesytp6j2t

https://www.facebook.com/groups/carrdusers/permalink/1327405494524170/?mibextid=S66gvF

https://www.reddit.com/r/Carrd/comments/15ezdvl/logo_carousel_carrd_template/

https://www.threads.net/@jasonleow/post/CvYrhajykdw/?igshid=MTc4MmM1YmI2Ng==

https://substack.com/@jasonleow/note/c-21672164

Email sent

August might just be the break I was hurting for in a while. Not a break as in for rest, but for work.

Since consulting gigs started in May, I've been super busy. Most days, I felt like I was working two jobs! One at my client's office, and another in the early morning or late evenings at home.

It's been hectic, to say the least.

Happy problem though. And I'm grateful for the consulting. But ever since I got some new ideas for new indie products, I've been dying to build and ship them.

With some consulting projects tapering off and new ones yet to start, August is looking promising to go full-on for indie hacking. And since I'm done quite some exploring in July, I'm feeling ready to get started on building and shipping. I still want to keep an eye out for new ideas though. But something has to start.

Something. *Anything.*

I don't want to put any hard metrics or deadlines on here since it's more about intentions, but I'll be happy to get at least one product out in the wild!

Onwards to August!

To overcome my chronic overthinking, I started July with the intention to say "F**k it I'm doing it" at least once a week. I think myself out of a business, basically. Instead I wanted to be hungrier, on an instinctual level.

Ship more, think less.

But I got way ahead of myself. I had hacker's block. I needed to get out of exploitation mode and back into exploration mode first, before I can ship fast.

Which was what I did.

I explored ideas, browsed idea newsletters, bookmarked articles. Now I got a few nice ones I want to bite into.

Maybe that intention for July was really meant for August. Glad I went with what I needed intuitively rather than forcing myself into something I wasn't ready for.

Onwards to August!

---

JULY 2023 METRICS
– Revenue:
- Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $119 (•$0)
- One-off revenue: $1080 (↑$152)
- Total revenue: $1199 (↑$152) 🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉 5th month in a row!
- Total costs = $170
- Total profit: $1029 (↑$152) (excl. consulting revenue)
- Profit margin: 86%

Twitter
Followers: 7317 vs 7789 (↑472)
Emails: 308 vs 278 (↑30) subscribers
Tweet impressions: 1.84M vs 924k
Profile visits: 26.6k vs 27k
Engagement rate: 1.6% vs 2.1%

- Added image upload feature via ImgBB to /write page on md snackbar editor.
- Added insert direct img link feature to /write page on md snackbar editor.
- Fixed issue of spurious clicks on md snackbar editor due to tooltip showing up as a link.

Over time I realised my most important lessons in indie hacking are about busting either/or myths, and learning nuance to mainstream advice. Here's some:

### Diversified enough to survive, focused enough to matter.
This settles the portfolio of small bets versus focus on one thing. It's not one or the other. You need both. How much of both? Just enough diversity to survive unknown unknown events, but not so many that it breaks your focus.

### Working hard on the things that truly move the needle, slacking off on the things that don't.
This is about being strategically incompetent. Even if you're an A player, you don't have to play the A game in *everything* that the product needs. It's about priorities, and also about knowing how to drop or quit pushing certain things. Sometimes you can leave fires burning, but the product still grows.

### Long term opportunities for steady cash flow, short term opportunities for fun and profit.
I wrote about this [yesterday](https://golifelog.com/posts/short-lived-opportunities-1690621132825). Sometimes going for short-lived but viral opportunities can be beneficial and fun too. Long term ideas are not objectively better than short term ones.

### Contented enough to be happy, dissatisfied enough to hustle.
This an important tightrope dance for me, a work-in-progress. I know being dissatisfied with my product, progress, or skills pushes me to work harder and grow. But too much self-inflicted bashing is also not healthy. I want to live a fulfilled, contented life on a day-to-day basis, yet also be aware and driven enough to improve and make changes.

### Confident enough to celebrate your effort and skill, humble enough to know much luck was involved.
I think in the startup world people like to say they can "make their own luck". I believe we can, but it's a lot less than we think. And there's a lot more luck outside of our influence and awareness than we like to give it. It takes a certain humility to admit that you're not totally in control. It's not just about moral positions either – it's practical and healthy for the mind to be able to recognise that, so that our expectations are more realistic.

*What other nuances did you learn along your indie journey?*

I used to be biased towards product ideas that are long term, 'sustainable' or something I can work on and grow for a long time. So I scoff at trends and fads, and tend to be kind of a snob at those who bandwagon on shiny new tech.

> You can spend years looking for a product idea that has no platform risk. Or you can identify painful problems fast, build fast, ship fast, and capture some values where still possible. Then move on to the next thing ✌️ – [@tdinh_me](https://twitter.com/tdinh_me/status/1684857544009994241)

But recently I'm coming round to a more nuanced view. I realised I'm excluding myself from a whole world of good but short-lived opportunities, all because of a narrative that just because it's short term it's lesser.

Truth is, longer term, sustainable ideas are not objectively or morally better than the short-lived and spiky viral ones.

They're just... different, just as we can enjoy the consistency of the sun rising every morning, but also love watching bursts of fire works that's gone in 60 seconds.

I think deep down in my psyche there's some sort of a wraped belief that sticking to something lasting is better. Like getting married to your product. The One True product that you can love and work on for the rest of your life.

When I write it this way to mirror it back at myself, it gets poignantly clear – I am **wrong**.

So comically wrong.

And it's not a false dichotomy either. It's not *either* long term product *or* all short term products.

*Why not both?*

A mix of both. Some longer term ones that's hardy like a workhorse, flourishing like a cash cow. And the others can be fleeting, opportunistic, bright sparks of joy and money.

Both can be just as lucrative but over different timespans.
Both can be just as fun to work on.

Both are just as good as any other opportunity the world has to offer.

- Added toggle switch for rich text editor to /write and /compose page.
- Added ability to save default preference for rich text or md editor using localStorage.
- Change write button on navbar to open /compose or /write page based on saved default in localStorage.

I tried to yarn create nuxt-app yesterday, and was met with a whole lot of complaints by the terminal. Unmet dependencies this, critical errors that. You need to update this, you need to download that. Amongst a whole host of annoying barriers to setting up.

That's so f**king annoying.

That's my least favourite part of using modern frameworks. Too much shit going on just to start. I remember back when I started using frameworks, just having to install and set up a whole host of stuff—node, npm, VSCode, extensions—was enough to make me want to quit. Yesterday's experience was reminiscient of that.

I just want to have a developer experience like how I develop my plugins.

Standard issue HTML and CSS, with plain vanilla Javascript. Nothing to install or download. Works right away in the browser. If I need to pull in a library for some styling, I use the cloud option. Just throw in the script tag, and we're off. If I want to use a Javascript framework, I use Vue.js on CDN.

Literally ZERO barriers to start.

I know I know... the veterans will say I'll hit some ceiling with that kind of stack. But ceilings are artificial. That's why people create new frameworks and technology stacks to get away from the contraints of predecessors.

Maybe it's time to *really* check out things like [htmx](https://htmx.org/) or [the stackless way](https://tutorials.yax.com/articles/build-websites-the-yax-way/quicktakes/what-is-the-yax-way.html):

> - You can go far without a framework.
> - Build tools are a burden.
> - Routing sucks.
> - JAMstack doesn't always need build tools.
> - The platform is evergreen.

This ain't the first time I'm complaining about modern Javascript frameworks. And it sure won't be the last.

I've got a weird Youtube hobby. I love watching travel Youtube videos of people's first time in Singapore, where I live. Yes, sometimes I do watch travel vids of other countries, or places I would like to visit. But not nearly as much or with as much interest as travel vids of Singapore.

Even when I was able to travel freely pre-covd era, I still enjoyed watching travel vids of Singapore.

On the surface, it's definitely nice to watch tourists marvel and say nice things about Singapore. But what's even more fun was to live vicariously through their eyes, to see my home country in a light I don't always get to see, because we all get numb to the things we see and touch everyday.

It's like, a different way to practice gratitude. For being able to live in a place where others can find joy and magic in. Even if you no longer do.

The foods that light a fire in their eyes. And their belly.
The honest folks preparing those foods being helpful to them.
The ease and fearlessness they can move around in the city.

I tend to forget all these.

There's nothing like outsiders to help remind me of all that.

Grateful.