Jason Leow

Saw this on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/swyx/status/1369103809201328130), on how to play long term games with health. Basically, how to age well:

> - No alcohol
> - More water
> - 8hrs sleep
> - 10k steps
> - Less sugar
> - Varied vegetables
> - Intermittent fasting
> - Fit friends
> - Practice gratitude
> - Practice stoicism
> - Wear sunscreen
> - Moisturize face
> - Floss & Mouthwash
> - Personal trainer
>
> Source: Reddit [r/fatFIRE](https://www.reddit.com/r/fatFIRE/comments/m0fht9/how_to_age_better/)

It's an interesting list. I try to practice at least half of it. No alcohol, more water, more sleep, less sugar, varied vegetables, intermittent fasting, practice gratitude/stoicism – I do these relatively well, or at least I try to.

"10k steps" is something I always wanted but currently hard to do for me due to the nature of working on a computer. Still daydreaming of living in a cabin in the woods with high speed internet next to my plot of garden.

"Fit friends" was surprising because of the latter "friends" part. You are who you hang out with. We all want to be fit but having friends who are will be double the motivation, purely by osmosis.

Wear sunscreen, moisturize face, personal trainer feels more on the vanity side, not something I'd care much for other than the most essential.

What I would add to the list on how to age well:

- Eat more red meat and fats
- Watch those vitamins and minerals
- 90% sleep scores
- Lift your body weight
- Family love and support
- Make love
- Having purpose, in life and [work](https://golifelog.com/posts/keep-working-1689473845981)
- Avoid drama
- Have a spiritual practice

*What else would you add to the list on how to age well?*

One of the less obvious, less talked-about reasons I want to transit to fulltime indie hacking is for my health.

With consulting, I have to head out often, eat out often. The schedule is irregular, the places I go to are unfamiliar. Often I wake up earlier than usual to commute to my client's office. I end up having to make poor food choices, disrupt my sleep rhythm, and work out less. Since starting on my consulting gigs in April, I can definitely feel the difference. I've gained weight and flab around the waist. My sleep scores are lower and inconsistent. Stress management is definitely sub-optimal.

Whereas during the months of the year when I don't have consulting and doing fulltime indie hacking, everything's more within my control. I can sleep and wake at the same time everyday. I can cook or buy food that's healthier and more familiar. I can work out every morning without fail. Very stable routine. A bit boring yes, but when I get bored, it's also within my control how I want to spice things up, do something different for the day. I'm generally more at ease, better rested, more taken care of.

So not just about time, location and financial freedom.

But health freedom as well.

Probably the most important freedom.

How I decided to stop pushing for growth for my plugins project, due to market size being too small and not a lack of distribution channels I’ve not tried:

I tried many channels over 9 months actually. Not just one, but at least 12 I think:

• Sponsorships
• Multiple social media platforms
• Free tools
• Newsletter/email
• Even ads

Even on the ones that worked well, referral traffic isn’t very high. The numbers are in the low thousands, not hundred thousands or millions. Google Trends doesn’t show any data for "carrd plugins" because search vol too low. On Ahref, average monthly searches for the past 12 months based on the U.S. is just 30. Not 30k searches, just 30!

So my gut instinct plus inferencing from imperfect data (from sales, questions, etc) tells me that the market size is too small. Not hard science I guess, but enough for me after 9 months to make a judgement call.

That it's time to keep it steady state for now and explore something else. Otherwise I might end up digging in one spot with low chance of higher returns.

I’m cognizant of shiny object syndrome and trying hard to not fall into that trap, but also don't want to get too hung up on one project that I spend too much time flogging a dead horse (happened to me, got scars to show for it).

Hard balance!

An old tweet from [@dvassallo](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1582380596395143169) about his criteria for small bets. A timely reminder as I'm thinking through and filtering out ideas for new products:

> My selection criteria for new business:
> - Can I bring this to market in under a month?
> - Can I bring this to market on my own?
> - Is this something people are already accustomed to buying?
> - Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost?
> Must be a Yes on all points.

To test if it's helpful, it's interesting to just run through my current projects and think from the initial days:

### Outsprint
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Yes, service businesses are easy to start. Low upfront capital. Just a business registration and a paying customer and you're off. You don't even need a website or logo!
- Can I bring this to market on my own? I 100% did. Even though it's a consultancy agency service, I scoped out a business model that works solo.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? Yes, gov folks were already commissioning many such projects. And there's an opportunity for a lower cost, smaller scoped model.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? Not including effort for some marketing, it's zero cost to upkeep. Services don't cost money maintain. Marketing is mainly face-to-face networking, word of mouth, and via LinkedIn.
- Conclusion: This checks off all the boxes and that's why this business is how I started and remains the only income stream feeding the family.

### Lifelog
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Nope I didn't. This was a big coding project. First time ever making a SaaS and a paid one. No experience whatsoever with Nuxt.js and Heroku. I learned everything on the job.
- Can I bring this to market on my own? Yes I did but just barely. Couldn't have done this without a lot of help from friends who are devs.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? On hindsight, not really. I thought there's a opportunity because there's a sizeable community in the prior 200 words a day platform. But it shut down because not enough paying customers. That should have been a red flag. But I would have done it in a heartbeat again even with benefit of this hindsight, because I needed and *wanted* a community and platform to write daily. What I would have done differently would be to have lower expectations and not overfocus on it, certainly not for 2 years.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? The cost is non-zero but affordable. Amongst my different projects, this projects costs the most to upkeep. But okay it's not expensive – at around $30/month is manageable.
- Conclusion: Saying no to 2 out of the 4 criteria is a red flag already. Could be why I continue to struggle with growth for Lifelog. But I'm happy with it's current status now as a passion project, as a weekend side project.

### Plugins for Carrd
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Yes I did. I didn't even have a website when I started. I simply posted a free plugin which I finished in a day on Carrd communities and started from there.
- Can I bring this to market on my own? Yes. Many Carrd communities found on social media platforms like Reddit and Facebook. I started by posting on Indie Hackers.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? There was no market for paid plugins yet at the time I started, but I validated there was some demand through my early free plugins, and interacting with customers who asked if I had plugins for some key features like a mobile navbar. What I didn't and **couldn't** have known is the size of the market and price sensitivity of customers, which I'm only just learning after 9 months of going hard on growing it.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? Minimal cost. Other than a Pro subscription on Carrd which was $19 per ***year***, it was just the effort for marketing and creating new plugins.
- Conclusion: It checks off all the boxes at the start, thus that could explain why it succeeded in the initial days. But I feel I'm hitting the upper limit of its potential now. So I'd say the criteria still holds except I might need a different/new set of criteria for assessing sustainability and long term growth? 🤔

### Sheet2Bio
- Can I bring this to market in under a month? Yes I did. I re-used old code from a F&B project I did. I didn't have sign up flows or payments integrated for the MVP. Even the landing page was raw HTML! (Which on hindsight was a risky bet – first impression matter)
- Can I bring this to market on my own? Yes I did. It's a relatively simple SaaS idea at the core.
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying? Not really. Linktree was free. Most link-in-bio tools are free. Having to pay upfront for access didn't gel with the anchor bias from the incumbent apps. The differentiating features like charts could have been too niche for indie hackers.
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost? Yes no infrastructure costs. Hosting on Netlify was free. But might not be true in long term.
- Conclusion: I think the 3rd factor was the dealbreaker here. And as it should. Without paying customers, it's not a business. Funny thing is, the other 3 factors are a yes. So not all factors are created equal.

So how I'd tweak the criteria for myself:

- Can I bring this to market in under 1-2 months?
- Can I bring this to market on my own skills, networks, resources?
- Is this something people are already accustomed to buying?
- Can I keep this on the market at almost no cost?
- Am I interested in this problem? Do I love hanging out with the community?
- (To assess after MVP stage, maybe 6 months) What's the market size for it, over long term?

I changed the timebox to 1-2 months because as an indie parent and with my consulting projects, I can't ship that fast. Having some interest in the problem/community is important factor for myself as an indie. I can't just build just for money. I don't need it to be my calling though, but some degree of interest has to be there. And the last factor is what I learned from my plugins project regarding market size.

*What other criteria do you consider for making your small bets?*

- Had to do some javascript gymnastics to be able to listen to the text inside TinyMCE editor, so that I can bring back typing sounds.
- 'Discovered' the Markdownit can also render HTML markup! How silly that I always assumed this to be so hard.

I think our modern relationship to work is broken. The mainstream narrative is to treat work as a necessary evil. And retirement to be the time when we can finally rest and no longer work. If you ask most people, if we had a choice, if our finances are taken care of, we wouldn't want to work another day. EVER.

But I've always had a problem with that.

I **love** to work. I work a bit even on weekends. I find it gives me life. It makes me come alive, feel alive, to be creating something. Anything. I'm in my element when I'm coding, designing, using my hands. It's fun, it's energizing, it's deeply actualising.

If I'm now super wealthy and no longer need to earn any income to survive, I'll be working 100% of the time just creating stuff. I've never believed in retirement. That sounds boring. I'll never retire.

But the current broken narrative makes me feel guilty, like I'm a workaholic for loving to work.

We need a new definition of work. We need a renewed relationship to work. Something which is healthy and wholesome, than a poison we tolerate.

And so far, no one comes close to what Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran—in *The Prophet*—had described:

> You work that you may keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth.
> For to be idle is to become a stranger unto the seasons, and to step out of life’s procession, that marches in majesty and proud submission towards the infinite.
>
> When you work you are a flute through whose heart the whispering of the hours turns to music.
> Which of you would be a reed, dumb and silent, when all else sings together in unison?
>
> Always you have been told that work is a curse and labour a misfortune.
> But I say to you that when you work you fulfil a part of earth’s furthest dream, assigned to you when the dream was born,
> And in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life,
> And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life’s inmost secret.
>
> [...]
>
> And what is it to work with love?
> It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart, even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
> It is to build a house with affection, even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
> It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy, even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
> It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead are standing about you and watching.
>
> [...]
>
> Work is love made visible.
> And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
> For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
> And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
> And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man’s ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night.

*Agree?*

I work to "keep pace with the earth and the soul of the earth". It gives me a sense of rhythm and seasons to my time here. It really does. Nothing better than waking up at 5am to get started on some deep work, in a calm and collected manner. It just sets my day up for joy and groundedness.

"Work is love made visible" – that's so beautiful, isn't it? I pour my passion, interest, and core bits of myself, into my work. If work was a person, you'd call those actions "love" for sure. And "in keeping yourself with labour you are in truth loving life" – that's totally how I roll. It's my way of loving the world, loving others, loving myself. Loving life.

Keep working.

Just because a project shows promise, doesn't mean you're obligated to double down all the way. It's an option, amongst many other options and opportunities.

> Your phrasing of “having the option but not the obligation to pursue wins” has stuck with me. Now I think when we don’t push a win further it’s probably our gut telling us that last 20% of optimization might take a lifetime and might not yield the results we think it will. – [@LBacaj](https://twitter.com/LBacaj/status/1679886071738376192)

Maybe this is how I should be looking at my Carrd plugins project.

Not as an outright ***failure*** but as a "good enough" win, even though it didn't bring me to the revenue goals I wanted.

Because I think I might have already hit the 80% of the win, and as Louie said, pushing the final 20% optimization might not yield the results I want. And that's pretty spot on to how I feel about my plugins project. After 9 months going hard on it building new plugins, trying different distribution channels and hitting ~$1k/m, the returns seems to be diminishing for the same amount of effort as compared to when I initially started pushing for growth and the [revenue tripled](https://golifelog.com/posts/i-tripled-my-revenue-for-plugins-1675388499473). I could double down on this one project for sure and keep hunting for the unlock that will bring me to $5k/m, but it's still ways off to bridge the $4k gap. Unlikely, I think.

Is achieving 80% of a project's potential a win, or a fail (even if I didn't hit my overall revenue goal)?

A win I feel. I can live with that.

> In 2019, most of my income came from a programming book ($140K sales). In 2020 from a social media course ($310K). In 2021 from freelancing ($220K). In 2022 from a discord community ($720K). If I had "doubled down" on my first win, I would have missed all other opportunities. – [@dvassallo](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1679884079112785921)

And maybe to Daniel's point, just because it showed promise doesn't mean I should double down, *single down* on it *all the way*. Achieving the 80% doesn't mean an obligation to pursue the remaining 20%. I can maintain steady state at 80% while I seek out other opportunities that can help me cover back the 20% I didn't pursue for this project, in another project. In all likelihood, another project will top up and go beyond the 20%.

I feel much better seeing my project this way.

A gentler, kinder perspective.

Been working on transiting over from [exploitation mode to exploration mode](https://golifelog.com/posts/exploration-vs-exploitation-1688956979721). Other than business as usual for maintenance and support, I've mostly stopped creating anything new for my existing projects.

And I'm getting bored. To the point of feeling antsy.

But I'm thinking this is a good thing.

Because isn't that what they say – let kids be bored, and they will then come up with creative ways to entertain themselves? I'm hoping for the same effect for myself too. It's more similar than different – I'm like an adult kid in an indie hacking candy store of a journey.

And when do I know I've transited over to exploration mode?

When I feel settled in it and having so much fun exploring that I don't want to go back to exploitation. Just like while on vacation – you still think about work in the first few days of the vacay, and by the time you're all relaxed and settled into vacay mode, you're having to return.

So far, not there yet.

I'm still antsy and want to "work". Looks like it takes time, because after all, I was hunkering down for a year. All that momentum takes time to slow down.

But the growing boredom is a good sign of being in the right direction!

Boredom is good.