Jason Leow

I started keto in September 2019. It's been almost 4 years, and how it had evolved since! Lately I'm moving through yet another phase, so I thought I should do a recap of how it's unfolding:

- **Year 1 - Strict keto phase**: It started with strict keto. Just 20g of carbs per day, high fat, some protein. And 16/8 intermittent fasting. Just following all the rules to the tee. No fruits except a few strawberries or blackberries. I got keto flu initially, recovered from it, but it was still hard. I got through by keto bakes and treats, and lots of coconut yoghurt. I lost 10kg in 3 months, went down 2-3 notches on my belt, but it was too much. I looked too guant and thin.
 

- **Year 1 - Maintenance keto phase**: I got slightly less strict. Tried to put back some of that lost weight but increasing some carbs from keto bakes, cruciferous vegetables. Stopped IF. Still didn't touch the bad boys like rice, sugar and milk. Still high fat, moderate protein. I gained back some water weight, started to look more normal.
 

- **Year 2 - Meat heavy keto**: Interesting, the body started to crave more protein at this point, so I went to high protein, moderate fat. Had more fatty pork, ribeyes, and leafy vegetables. I felt more satiated, and less queasy from not taking in so much fat. This was where the keto bakes started to taper off too, as sugar alcohols started to mess with my gut. The surprising thing was: I gained back all the lost 10kg of mass, but not the dad bod and belly (my clothes continued to be loose). Seems like the body was taking in all that protein from years of undereating protein and building it back into the body. I slowly lost interest in greens, and stayed on the meat.
 

- **Year 2 - Carnivore**: Then I went all in on carnivore. Mainly just meat and fat and eggs. No milk still. Almost no vegetables and fibre – when I eat it it's a bite or two in a week. It's pretty hardcore, but I started to develop a better sense of what my body needed. That embodied intuition was growing. Some days I would fast in the morning. Then when I started to feel tired or weak in the morning, I would stop fasting. My gut issues all but disappeared – no more bloatedness, no farts, queasiness or any issues at the toilet. It's the best it's ever been while on carnvore.
 

- **Year 3 - Low carb**: Somewhere along the carnivore path I contracted COVID, and felt like I needed to have some carbs during that period. I just fed what the body needed – rice, fruits, fibre. Thus began the experiments back into carbs again. This sounds like a low carb phase but actually it felt more like mostly carnivore, sprinkled with some carbs here and there. I started taking some fresh milk in my coffee. Butter was morning breakfast. I had occasional cheat days—around once a week—where I took some sugary treats after my main carnivore meal.
 

- **Year 3 - Intuitive paleo**: Now I'm following more intuitive eating. Foods-wise, more like paleo. Whole foods like meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds. I still stick to more fatty meats, leafy vegetables and low sugar fruits, some nuts. I still avoid most processed foods, sugar, soft drinks, ice cream, though I treat myself on some days. I limit my intake of grains and carbs like rice - around a few mouthfuls, depending on how I feel that day. Some days I don't take any grains altogether if I'm feeling 'off'. My gut is protesting more now especially during festive periods, so occasionally I go back to carnivore mode to rest the system. The best part is, I check in and listen to my body during every meal now. I've finally established a better relationship with my body. I got more embodied. The weight is still off, and yet I feel mostly fine on a higher carb routine. To say it's intuitive paleo phase lacks nuance actually. Truth is, I switch between keto, carnivore, and paleo based on what my body tells me. These ways of eating are now tools in my toolkit.
 

I think this journey that started from keto to now intuitve eating was really about getting back to a better relationship with my body. To become less disembodied. To stop emotional eating.

3 years on hitting year 4, I finally feel like I'm getting somewhere.

Thank god.

Them startup founders: We're happy to announce we just raised $100M for our startup!

Us indie hackers: Look mom, I earned $1 from the internet!

We're not built the same.

Here's a totally biased take on why that $1 is better for most of us:

- That $100M isn't even yours to take home. It's mostly for hiring 10x developers, buying ads on Google and Facebook, and the remaining for a cool office. Most of them earn nothing for years, all in hopes for an asymmetric payoff (if it even does). That $1 is all yours to keep (of course, not accounting for taxes yet).
- That $100M comes with lots of strings attached. Too many, including giving away your first-born. That $1? Only what was promised in the sale.
- You just got yourself a boss (your VC funder) with that $100M. I stay being a boss with that $1.
- The more you raise the more you lose freedom. The more you earn the more you gain freedom.
- Getting that $100M means you signed up to work as a slave with zero work-life balance for the next 5 to 10 years. Earning that $1 means you are getting towards better time freedom and balance *within* the next 5-10 years.
- Being happy with $1 keeps me grounded and real. Drinking the tech startup Koolaid of changing the world, going big or going home, makes me lose sight of reality.


*What other reasons are there to go for that $1?*

They say, "Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication". It's easy to over-complicate. Making things simple is 10x harder.

Products are like that.

What we often think customers want: Clean design, cheap price, cool branding, latest tech stack, 100 Lighthouse score, etc. But that's because we take cues from successful indie folks who do all that, and assume they are successful because they do that.

So we complicate.

But lately I realised that being focused on what the customer says rather than what the indie influencers say, is way simpler. Way more effective. Speaking to customers, engaging them on their issues, and hearing directly from them their feedback, gives a clearer picture on what truly matters to customers: Helpful product, fast support.

See proof – Exhibit A 👇


That's it! That's all to it.

This isnt a one-off email. It's just an example of the many others I get after heloing and talking to them. In the end, it's very simple for customers. It's just us who over-think it, and over-complicate things, when we look to the wrong people for direction.

Focus on what your customers say is the best way to simplicity.

[UPDATE] Switched back to Publer. Zlappo isn't working.

Burnout seems increasingly common amongst indie hackers and creators. Every month I see someone on Twitter say they're leaving, deleting Twitter or taking a break (and never come back).

I'm feeling it too, not just Twitter but everything. But having been through it a couple of times, I think I know how to manage it and get through it without drastic measures. Sometimes it's due to working too hard or too long without a break. Sometimes, it's feeling disengaged from the work because you're 'forced' to do it, or failing too often. Other times, it's the exhaustion from office politics or difficult colleagues/supervisors.

Thing is, we often associate burnout as physical burnout, like from working too hard. It's so much more than that. This post by [@addyosmani](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/addyosmani_motivation-productivity-wellbeing-activity-7060855435334995968-YuvN) shows there's 3 others we never knew:


Interpreting this for indies:

- Mental burnout:
- Staring at your screen for long hours resulting in cognitive strain.
- Working with phone notifications on, so constantly context switching and distracted.
- Being perfectionist about your product, always feeling like the product is never good enough and the resulting constant dissatisfaction/

- Physical burnout:
- Can't sleep because you're constantly 'on', replying to support emails at night, getting woken up by pings
- Working 12h days, 7 days a week, no vacation, because you're going "all in".
- Lack of exercise and movement from sitting in chair

- Social burnout:
- Seeing everyone's MRR tweets and feeling like a total failure.
- Getting embroiled in toxic online drama and outrage.
- Chatting with too many people, spending too much time on Twitter.
- Self-doubt from seeing and comparing how everyone seems to be doing well.

- Emotional burnout:
- Chronic stress from constantly hustling, needing to hit revenue goals for investors or yourself. Might manifest as constantly feeling tired and drained despite getting enough sleep.
- Can't bring yourself to do the work, no motivation.

Listing it out this way made me realised I definitely experienced more than 1 type in the past. It's a complex issue, and an even more complex condition. Not something you can just sleep it off.

Considering using Zlappo for my design-related posts (on Twitter & LinkedIn) for #outsprint instead 🤔

Proof of work 👇

[James Clear's](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/may-11-2023) has a knack for asking interesting questions. In his latest newsletter, this one struck me:

> What's the one action that moves the needle more than 100 other actions? What's the one choice that renders 1000 other choices irrelevant?
>
> Most things are not worth optimizing. Master the big moves and move quickly and peacefully through the other stuff.

That got me thinking:

What are some of these "most things" that are not worth optimizing in indie hacking? What do *I* try to optimize frequently that are actually not worthwhile doing so?

Things frequently optimized that are not worth optimizing:

- Refactoring codebase to achieve clean code. No customer cares about clean code (obvious caveat is of course, if you're selling a boilerplate to other developers).
- Getting to the last few points of Google Lighthouse score, because there's not much difference in terms of a user's experience between 98% and 100%.
- Optimizing your second brain note-taking systems when 99% of your notes are unused or applied.
- Making a product perfect (but not launching). Perfection is the enemy of great. If your product is perfect but no one sees or uses it, does it exist?
- Rewriting tweets multiple times before publishing. For ephemereal tweets with an average lifespan of 24h-48h, you're over-doing it if you had to rewrite and edit it multiple times before publishing. Your tweet just needs "good enough" level to send out.
- Spending weeks editing a blog post. Similar point above re: tweets. You can tweak the blog post using feedback after publishing.
- Sleep biohacking without getting enough sleep time (e.g. 8h). I do a lot of sleep hacks, but nothing beats just getting enough sleep hours to start with. The rest are just toppings. I didn't have a choice when it comes to sleep hours back when the kiddo was still a baby, so the hacks helps me keep my head above water, but they are only stop gap measures.
- Getting a LLC, bank account, logo, before you have a product. No you don't need those things. Get a product out first. Get interested customers.
- Perfecting the business plan. The plan will change the moment you launch. Yes, have a rough plan, but you don't need to get to 100%.
- Getting likes, impressions, followers. Those metrics doesn't always translate to revenue. If it does, yes knock yourself out and chase it. But very often, our customers are not directly on Twitter, so going viral on social media isn't mission-critical.

*What are some other things you frequently optimize that are not worth optimizing?*

Been feeling off. Like I need some deep rest. Could be burnout...

A dear friend asked me yesterday: What does rest look like to me? What image comes to mind?

Immediately what came to mind:

I'm back in Ubud, Bali. Alone. Like I always do at the end of the year for one of my personal retreats, before fatherhood and the pandemic. I wake up in my villa. No sounds of traffic, just birds chirping, the blades of the rice plants rustling in the fields. Dawn's just breaking. I can see Mt Agung in the distance. I sit for a while in meditation just soaking this in. Next, breakfast at one of the lovely cafes in Ubud central, serving food made with wholesome, organic, local produce. My body sings from eating that. Then I laze away the morning at my favourite coffee place, sampling their local single origin. *What should I do today? What adventures call out to me today?* I decide, on a whim, to ride the scooter to the beach. Traffic's crazy along the way, but interspersed with occasional rides through sleepy village roads lined with coconut trees on both sides, and ripening rice fields in the background. It's bliss to ride on the wind through such beauty. I hit the waves. Maybe surf a bit. Swim and float around, letting the sea do its soothing magic. I end the day sitting on the beach, watching the impossible sunset of yellows, oranges and purples. Content. Calm. Rested. Alive.

*What does rest look like to you?*

The latest issue of the [Small Bets newsletter](https://open.substack.com/pub/cattlenotpets/p/use-optionality-dont-hoard-it
) struck a chord.

Tl;dr – Counterintuitive but true - reducing optionality actually makes us happy, or happier.

It made me think about all the time when I hoarded. It could be anything - money, time, online articles, artefacts. The more I hoarded, the more optionality I had. But in itself, optionality just sits there. You need to use it, act on it, in order to truly enjoy the fruits of your optionality.

And that's the whole point of the newsletter article – after building up optionality, you got to reduce it to enjoy it, to let it make us happy. And the most important decisions in life is when you act on the optionality and reduce it, *intentionally*. So many ways to say this:

- Money can buy happiness, but up to a point. Beyond that, more money doesn't make you any happier. You got to use it.
- Having more choices is nice, but too many choices we get paralysed. If you have too many brands to choose from, it actually gets *harder* to choose.
- Having constraints is helpful for creativity and decision-making. You'd think being creative requires unbounded space, but actually that makes it harder.
- Less is more for contentment and life satisfaction. Why does living life simply make us happier? Reducing optionality.

The caveat the author pointed out in the comments is this:

> Optionality isn't bad, it's a focus on unnecessary optionality AND not recognizing the costs of gaining the optionality that's bad. Small bets addresses both of these points because you listen to your own motivations and the bets you place are small, therefore have lower costs in time and opportunity cost. And as your small bets succeed, you gain skills which do give you more optionality. But the gaining of that optionality is something you would have done anyway. The Small Bets philosophy brings means and ends closer together in my head.

In and of itself, building up and hoarding some optionality isn't a bad or un-virtuous thing. The question is: "At what cost?"

That made me think deeply about how—even though I prefer building a lot of products as small bets to mitigate platform risk—beyond a threshold point, the extra optionality is costly in terms of mental bandwidth, time and energy. So reducing some optionality—be it timeboxing the effort, or scoping the feature set down, killing dead projects—is actually helpful. (The other side of the coin is when you just focus on 1 bet, you have no optionality, which is not ideal either)

So to be happy or happier, build some optionality so that you can get to reduce it.