π€ Sent $9500 invoice to client
Removed 2 listings which shut down, and updated broken links
π΅ Sold yet another single license mega navbar Carrd plugin (US$15 + $6 UK VAT via Payhip-Stripe)...thanks mxvex!
Day 937 - Consulting vs indie hacking - https://golifelog.com/posts/consulting-vs-indie-hacking-1690340440000
Most days I'm grateful for my consulting work. It's meaningful, does social good, and pays the bills.
But on other days, I feel held back by it.
I was inspired to make the [animated chart gif generator idea](https://golifelog.com/posts/product-idea-animated-chart-gif-generator-for-twitter-1689904564092) and been trying to start it for some weeks now, but with ongoing consulting projects, it's hard to even sit down to get started.
I'm still grateful for the ability it gives me to feed my family. But sometimes can't help but feel like my progress could be so much faster if I could focus.
With consulting and freelancing, your runway is theoretically infinite, it reduces the stress of survival, but it takes time away from your indie products. It's hardest when inspiration clashes with commitment.
With just indie hacking, I get so much freedom for my health, time, and creative autonomy. But it can't feed my family yet. It would be so stressful to depend on it.
Pros and cons, hard trade-offs I guess.
Only just yesterday I managed to close one project with the client. There's still one onoing, and another one coming up in Q3. So there's a bit of breathing room now.
Relieved, yet excited to finally get started on yet another new product!
But on other days, I feel held back by it.
I was inspired to make the [animated chart gif generator idea](https://golifelog.com/posts/product-idea-animated-chart-gif-generator-for-twitter-1689904564092) and been trying to start it for some weeks now, but with ongoing consulting projects, it's hard to even sit down to get started.
I'm still grateful for the ability it gives me to feed my family. But sometimes can't help but feel like my progress could be so much faster if I could focus.
With consulting and freelancing, your runway is theoretically infinite, it reduces the stress of survival, but it takes time away from your indie products. It's hardest when inspiration clashes with commitment.
With just indie hacking, I get so much freedom for my health, time, and creative autonomy. But it can't feed my family yet. It would be so stressful to depend on it.
Pros and cons, hard trade-offs I guess.
Only just yesterday I managed to close one project with the client. There's still one onoing, and another one coming up in Q3. So there's a bit of breathing room now.
Relieved, yet excited to finally get started on yet another new product!
π΅ Sold yet another single license testimonial slider Carrd plugin (US$15 via Payhip-Stripe)...thanks bdaburns!
Sent project report template to client
π Completed Iteration workshop for client. Project finally completed after 2 months!
Day 936 - Twitter β π - https://golifelog.com/posts/twitter-x-1690235891623
The end of an era. Sigh.
I know, I know. Change is the only constant. Yet it's never easy when it actually happens. I tweeted out my first tweet on 6 Nov 2014, got more serious about it in the past few years.
It's been almost a decade on the platform. And while my usage on other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram had only ever downtrended, I've only ever increased my usage on Twitter. That says a lot about the staying power. At least for me. Because posting updates on my life, vanity selfies and all doesn't last. Having practical utility from peer support and collective learning is more sustaining. I don't think I will ever stop needing to learn how to indie hack β there's new things to pick up at every stage, and there will be always new people to learn from.
While these changes on the platform are unsettling, I hope they don't kill the community aspect of it. The really smart people are still here, but many are leaving. I hope the exodus will be stemmed somehow even through the chaos of Elon Musk trying to find profitability for the app.
Right now, I'm looking forward to staying on the platform for the peer learning.
By the way, some semantic woes:
What do we call tweets now? Xaps (like zaps)?
Are we all ex-es to each other now?
How weird if to say, "Oh I saw it on π"...
π€£
I know, I know. Change is the only constant. Yet it's never easy when it actually happens. I tweeted out my first tweet on 6 Nov 2014, got more serious about it in the past few years.
It's been almost a decade on the platform. And while my usage on other social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram had only ever downtrended, I've only ever increased my usage on Twitter. That says a lot about the staying power. At least for me. Because posting updates on my life, vanity selfies and all doesn't last. Having practical utility from peer support and collective learning is more sustaining. I don't think I will ever stop needing to learn how to indie hack β there's new things to pick up at every stage, and there will be always new people to learn from.
While these changes on the platform are unsettling, I hope they don't kill the community aspect of it. The really smart people are still here, but many are leaving. I hope the exodus will be stemmed somehow even through the chaos of Elon Musk trying to find profitability for the app.
Right now, I'm looking forward to staying on the platform for the peer learning.
By the way, some semantic woes:
What do we call tweets now? Xaps (like zaps)?
Are we all ex-es to each other now?
How weird if to say, "Oh I saw it on π"...
π€£
Sent photos+text for analogous inspiration from site visit to client team
Created typewritertext Carrd plugin on a whim - https://typewritertext.carrd.co/
Adapted via Infini Pixel - https://codepen.io/infinipixel/pen/WNgyLpB
Renewed domain uxstoryboard.com
Completed and sent slide deck to client for Iteration workshop tomorrow
Deployed fix for typing sounds on new rich text editor
Had to figure out how to use `editor.on` from TinyMCE instead to listen for the keydown event.
editor.on('keydown', this.playSound)
editor.on('keydown', this.playSound)
Day 935 - Reading: Virtue or vice? - https://golifelog.com/posts/reading-virtue-or-vice-1690154915762
I love reading. I love books. I feel people in general could read more. People seem to stop reading altogether after they stop school, which is a shame.
But are books and reading really such a universal good that it can do no wrong?
Yes. Any virtue in excess, practised to extremes becomes vice.
Thrift in excess becomes cheapskate.
Reading in excess becomes intellectual vanity.
Reading in excess becomes intellectual vanity.
Like how this [tweet](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1682876856347815938) triggered a wave of counter comments why something as good as reading gets hate:
It's not hate for reading itself. It's how you use reading as a habit.
There's reading for practical application, for learning and chasing curiosity, for just the fun of it, and there's performative reading for vanity metrics, for the 'gram. Inferring from that photo, if you're reading 1 entrepreneur/productivity book per week for one year and defending that you're reading to apply it and learn, who are you kidding? How much can you apply from spending 1 book per week? The hard limit here is our time. How much time is left to apply all those lessons after reading *1 book per week*? Any application is likely superficial.
And let's face it: If you're reading those kind of (non-fiction) books, it's likely you're reading it to reach a goal. Maybe you want to be an entrepreneur. Maybe you have a goal to start a business, or if you started one, you're hoping to reach some level of profitability. Reading 1 book a week won't get you there.
Look, I'm all for reading. Like I said I love to read and I love books. If you read for fun, knock yourself out. But if you're reading to help you reach a goal like to be an entrepreneur, maybe like, apply some moderation instead?
Read a few good ones, apply it, and spend the rest of the time executing like hell. Then come back to reading and learning where you feel your knowledge falls short.
Entrepreneurship isn't an academic, theory-based vocation. It's a practitioner-/skills-based, pragmatic vocation.
Taking advice or reference from your business professors in a university ain't gonna cut it.
But are books and reading really such a universal good that it can do no wrong?
Yes. Any virtue in excess, practised to extremes becomes vice.
Thrift in excess becomes cheapskate.
Reading in excess becomes intellectual vanity.
Reading in excess becomes intellectual vanity.
Like how this [tweet](https://twitter.com/levelsio/status/1682876856347815938) triggered a wave of counter comments why something as good as reading gets hate:
It's not hate for reading itself. It's how you use reading as a habit.
There's reading for practical application, for learning and chasing curiosity, for just the fun of it, and there's performative reading for vanity metrics, for the 'gram. Inferring from that photo, if you're reading 1 entrepreneur/productivity book per week for one year and defending that you're reading to apply it and learn, who are you kidding? How much can you apply from spending 1 book per week? The hard limit here is our time. How much time is left to apply all those lessons after reading *1 book per week*? Any application is likely superficial.
And let's face it: If you're reading those kind of (non-fiction) books, it's likely you're reading it to reach a goal. Maybe you want to be an entrepreneur. Maybe you have a goal to start a business, or if you started one, you're hoping to reach some level of profitability. Reading 1 book a week won't get you there.
Look, I'm all for reading. Like I said I love to read and I love books. If you read for fun, knock yourself out. But if you're reading to help you reach a goal like to be an entrepreneur, maybe like, apply some moderation instead?
Read a few good ones, apply it, and spend the rest of the time executing like hell. Then come back to reading and learning where you feel your knowledge falls short.
Entrepreneurship isn't an academic, theory-based vocation. It's a practitioner-/skills-based, pragmatic vocation.
Taking advice or reference from your business professors in a university ain't gonna cut it.
test
test
Day 934 - Luck razor and other unconventional razors to follow - https://golifelog.com/posts/luck-razor-and-other-unconventional-razors-to-follow-1690078959401
Saw this list of unconventional philosophical razors on Facebook, and immediately thought of applying some of them to indie hacking:
"In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (βshave offβ) unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions." β Wikipedia
Bragging Razor - If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume itβs half what they claim. If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume itβs double what they claim.
Great principle to use when reading tweets. Itβs almost always overplayed or downplayed, and assuming 2x more or less is helpful.
High Agency Razor - If unsure who to work with, pick the person that has the best chances of breaking you out of a 3rd world prison.
I like this one, especially when collaborating. Even better for co-founders. If you get a low agency person, chances are, youβll have to high carry the team through. In a startup, you canβt have deadweight.
The Early-Late Razor - If itβs a talking point on Reddit, you might be early. If itβs a talking point on LinkedIn, youβre definitely late.
I think Twitter is somewhere in the middle between Reddit and LinkedIn. Sometimes you donβt know if something on Reddit is too fringe to take off. But once it takes off on Twitter, you can be pretty sure itβll take off soon elsewhere. E.g. AI, ChatGPT. It was months after the Twitter threadbois had done βChatGPT is the next big thingβ to death before I started seeing them on LinkedIn.
Luck Razor - If stuck with 2 equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line. I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix. In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision Iβve ever made.
So true. My favourite razor out of the whole list. This applies to products too. And marketing approaches. Between 2 equal options, choose to make a product that gives more luck surface area. Or make a feature that produces potentially more luck surface area. Like how Mailchimp had referral badges at the bottom of every email sent out by their users.
Talebβs Surgeon - If presented with two equal candidates for a role, pick the one with the least amount of charisma. The uncharismatic one has got there despite their lack of charisma. The charismatic one has got there with the aid of their charisma.
As a manager, I once hired an extroverted, smooth-talking junior executive over a more reserved one. But they both made it to the final round. We chose the former, and the latterβs resume got picked up by another team. We had the benefit of observing how both worked even though we didnβt hire one of them, and ended up regretting.
What other unconventional razors do you use?
"In philosophy, a razor is a principle or rule of thumb that allows one to eliminate (βshave offβ) unlikely explanations for a phenomenon, or avoid unnecessary actions." β Wikipedia
Bragging Razor - If someone brags about their success or happiness, assume itβs half what they claim. If someone downplays their success or happiness, assume itβs double what they claim.
Great principle to use when reading tweets. Itβs almost always overplayed or downplayed, and assuming 2x more or less is helpful.
High Agency Razor - If unsure who to work with, pick the person that has the best chances of breaking you out of a 3rd world prison.
I like this one, especially when collaborating. Even better for co-founders. If you get a low agency person, chances are, youβll have to high carry the team through. In a startup, you canβt have deadweight.
The Early-Late Razor - If itβs a talking point on Reddit, you might be early. If itβs a talking point on LinkedIn, youβre definitely late.
I think Twitter is somewhere in the middle between Reddit and LinkedIn. Sometimes you donβt know if something on Reddit is too fringe to take off. But once it takes off on Twitter, you can be pretty sure itβll take off soon elsewhere. E.g. AI, ChatGPT. It was months after the Twitter threadbois had done βChatGPT is the next big thingβ to death before I started seeing them on LinkedIn.
Luck Razor - If stuck with 2 equal options, pick the one that feels like it will produce the most luck later down the line. I used this razor to go for drinks with a stranger rather than watch Netflix. In hindsight, it was the highest ROI decision Iβve ever made.
So true. My favourite razor out of the whole list. This applies to products too. And marketing approaches. Between 2 equal options, choose to make a product that gives more luck surface area. Or make a feature that produces potentially more luck surface area. Like how Mailchimp had referral badges at the bottom of every email sent out by their users.
Talebβs Surgeon - If presented with two equal candidates for a role, pick the one with the least amount of charisma. The uncharismatic one has got there despite their lack of charisma. The charismatic one has got there with the aid of their charisma.
As a manager, I once hired an extroverted, smooth-talking junior executive over a more reserved one. But they both made it to the final round. We chose the former, and the latterβs resume got picked up by another team. We had the benefit of observing how both worked even though we didnβt hire one of them, and ended up regretting.
What other unconventional razors do you use?
test
Added customer sites (that use said plugin) to mega navbar plugin landing page for more social proof
Day 933 - Two deaths - https://golifelog.com/posts/two-deaths-1690014425233
> At a deathbed, if my patient can communicate, they show theyβre dying two deaths: the one theyβre dying & then the death of the life they really wanted to live. But in their dying, some are also free. To tell me who they are. What they wanted. Who they had to hide. Finally free. β [@jsparkblog](https://twitter.com/jsparkblog/status/1681807434044649472)
This really hit hard. I use Twitter mostly for indie hacking. All my follows are indies. But occasionally you come across an account that's pure light. This is one such account. Of a Korean American as a hospital chaplain. A hospital chaplain offers spiritual guidance and pastoral care to patients and their families as patients are near their end. Compared to his tweets, my indie tweets feel crude and superficial.
Back to the heavy tweet...
It reminded me of the famous saying by Confucius:
> βWe have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.β
If you never had a chance to live that said second life, you have two deaths waiting for you. The physical death and the death of a life which you never lived out.
I think this about sums up all my striving. Why I work so damn hard to fulfil my dreams. Not just indie hacking, not just revenue milestones, not just profitable products, but all the freedoms I seek β [health](https://golifelog.com/posts/health-freedom-1689728459633), time, location, creative freedom. And everything else too - falling in love, having a family, being present to my child, caring for my parents, traveling and seeing the world. If I don't do all those, I risk dying two deaths. And I'm mortally afraid of that. We don't know if we get another chance after this life ends.
So the ultimate endgame for me, is that I die only one death at the end.
That would be the dream.
This really hit hard. I use Twitter mostly for indie hacking. All my follows are indies. But occasionally you come across an account that's pure light. This is one such account. Of a Korean American as a hospital chaplain. A hospital chaplain offers spiritual guidance and pastoral care to patients and their families as patients are near their end. Compared to his tweets, my indie tweets feel crude and superficial.
Back to the heavy tweet...
It reminded me of the famous saying by Confucius:
> βWe have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.β
If you never had a chance to live that said second life, you have two deaths waiting for you. The physical death and the death of a life which you never lived out.
I think this about sums up all my striving. Why I work so damn hard to fulfil my dreams. Not just indie hacking, not just revenue milestones, not just profitable products, but all the freedoms I seek β [health](https://golifelog.com/posts/health-freedom-1689728459633), time, location, creative freedom. And everything else too - falling in love, having a family, being present to my child, caring for my parents, traveling and seeing the world. If I don't do all those, I risk dying two deaths. And I'm mortally afraid of that. We don't know if we get another chance after this life ends.
So the ultimate endgame for me, is that I die only one death at the end.
That would be the dream.
Scheduled weekly newsletter to publish on Saturday later today - https://jasonleow.substack.com/p/health-freedom
Updated SMTP relay domain in Heroku API app from sendinblue to brevo - https://developers.brevo.com/docs/changes-in-smtp-relay-address
Completed half day user testing workshop for client
Tech support to help customer substantially customize his mega navbar
Day 932 - Product idea: Animated chart gif generator for Twitter - https://golifelog.com/posts/product-idea-animated-chart-gif-generator-for-twitter-1689904564092
Emerging trend I'm seeing: Creating sleek media for your tweets seems to be a thing now.
- [Typeframes](https://typeframes.com) creates stunning animated text videos for products
- [Screen Studio](https://www.screen.studio/) creates beautiful high quality screen recordings to demo your products
- [MRRartpro](http://mrrartpro.com) makes retro-nostalgic ASCII charts for Twitter, LinkedIn or text messages
- [Gifstat](https://gifstat.com) makes lovely gifs with animated number counters to show your stats
But this had been done for the longest time on websites already. Bar charts, line chart, pie charts, everything. Mainstream media websites would show data visualisations for trending topics of the season.
Maybe it's time to bring this into the hands of individual creators and indie hackers on Twitter?
**An animated chart gif generator for tweets.**
Every indie hacker shows line charts of their revenue. What if we could upload a spreadsheet or plug in to Stripe, and generate the data into this animated chart to create a gif that you can share on Twitter?
In fact, it doesn't have to be just for Twitter. It can be for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. Any social media platform. And it doesn't have to just be charts. It can be for any sort of data visualisation, even the fancier sorts like a bar chart race.
Chart.js is a Javascript library I can leverage on to create these animated charts. [Flourish](https://flourish.studio) is already doing this in a massive way, so maybe there's already demand. Something simple and clean like [Data Gif Maker by Google News Lab](https://datagifmaker.withgoogle.com/) would be awesome:
This might be a fun weekend side project to do. Targeted at my Twitter audience. No expectations, even if some revenue is nice. Best part, I will want to keep it going to use it for myself.
*What do you think? Got potential?*
- [Typeframes](https://typeframes.com) creates stunning animated text videos for products
- [Screen Studio](https://www.screen.studio/) creates beautiful high quality screen recordings to demo your products
- [MRRartpro](http://mrrartpro.com) makes retro-nostalgic ASCII charts for Twitter, LinkedIn or text messages
- [Gifstat](https://gifstat.com) makes lovely gifs with animated number counters to show your stats
But this had been done for the longest time on websites already. Bar charts, line chart, pie charts, everything. Mainstream media websites would show data visualisations for trending topics of the season.
Maybe it's time to bring this into the hands of individual creators and indie hackers on Twitter?
**An animated chart gif generator for tweets.**
Every indie hacker shows line charts of their revenue. What if we could upload a spreadsheet or plug in to Stripe, and generate the data into this animated chart to create a gif that you can share on Twitter?
In fact, it doesn't have to be just for Twitter. It can be for LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook. Any social media platform. And it doesn't have to just be charts. It can be for any sort of data visualisation, even the fancier sorts like a bar chart race.
Chart.js is a Javascript library I can leverage on to create these animated charts. [Flourish](https://flourish.studio) is already doing this in a massive way, so maybe there's already demand. Something simple and clean like [Data Gif Maker by Google News Lab](https://datagifmaker.withgoogle.com/) would be awesome:
This might be a fun weekend side project to do. Targeted at my Twitter audience. No expectations, even if some revenue is nice. Best part, I will want to keep it going to use it for myself.
*What do you think? Got potential?*