Jason Leow

My side projects always seem to end up doing better than my main projects. The ones you least expect to succeed are the ones that actually do. Either this is cruel fate, or it's a deep lesson in there about how expectations can help, or hinder. For me, it hindered, because it was not easy to be emotionally equanimous about my products. Sometimes the deep desire for expression through one's product can help propell it to success. But in my case, when it comes to making something profitable, it hindered more than helped. It blinded me to the real world market realities. So since [late last year](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1591430940290535424), my 'hack' was deciding that everything on my portfolio of products is a side project. I dropped Lifelog back then as main project to side project status.

No more main projects.
Everything's a small bet.

But there could be the exception to the rule, as I recently learned from [@jdnoc](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1655558175838584833). He talked about how he should have went hard on Closet Tools when it was on the up and how:

> ...Focusing 100% of your effort on one project for a shorter period of time is still a small bet. You're intentionally capitalizing on it to hedge against future failure. Rather than treating your businesses like you're going to work on them forever, treat them like you're going to sell when the timing is right. The serial entrepreneur mindset is still within the small bets framework - "multiple streams of income" just not all at the same time.

I love the nuance there. Timeboxing your effort on a validated opportunity and not treating it like a baby are both very small bet-esque. And if a project's growing like crazy, continuing to treat it like a side project might be hindering its potential.

So there *are* exceptions to the rule, even though I now say no more main projects, even though between focusing on 1 product versus a portfolio of small bets, I always chose the latter. If there comes a time where there's a huge opportunity in front of me amongst my different bets that demonstrably show continuous growth and has the real world market data to prove product-market fit, I should focus on it for a time, instead of holding myself back just because "small bets".

No need to be dogmatic even if we mostly prefer small bets right?

Just do what works, because ultimately the endgame is freedom, not some silly status game of which camp are you in.

Talking about [things I had to unlearn](https://golifelog.com/posts/unlearning-greater-learning-1683428184962) on my indie journey got me thinking deeper about this particular one:

Info products are not “real businesses”.

I know that that's a lie – info products can be a lucrative business. I'm no longer opposed to creating it, so it's just a matter of finding the right idea or topic that fits. I know the right info product can bring in revenue fast, which is what I need right now. I know that it doesn't need months or years of work and can be instead done quickly within a month or two, which is also something that works for a timestrapped dad like me. I did launch them before, so it's not for lack of experience:

- Keto List Singapore
- Grant Hunt
- Safe Distancing SG
- VisualAid
- Coffice City
- Public Design Vault (defunct)
- Public Design Jobs (defunct)
- Space Nomads (defunct)
- Public Design FAQs ebook (never finished)

And best of all, I got a few info products in my pocket – 80% of each one had already been written because I write them out occasionally as learnings. But I never got round to putting them together to launch:

- A [series of learnings](https://jasonleow.github.io/200wordsaday/articles/counter-intuitive-things-i-learned-about-nutrition-while-on-intermittent-fasting-and-keto-423975f00843835a30/index) from starting out on a keto diet
- A [Twitter info product](https://golifelog.com/posts/tiny-twitter-hacks-i-learned-and-love-part-6-1674712438527) containing the various tactics and hacks I used to grow my account
- A resource ebook on [sleep biohacking](https://golifelog.com/goals/26), maybe for my sleep biohacking community

So why did I not launch them?

Something that [@DmytroKrasun](https://twitter.com/DmytroKrasun/status/1654585734819454977) mentioned was the counter pushback:

> But why not? I am not joking. You have your own take, and you might have an audience for it. If you see an opportunity, it might be it.

I replied, saying something like how there's so many of such Twitter courses available (like a good one is Dagobert's), just not sure if I can add anything valuable to the knowledge pool. But truth is, that's a shite reason.

Market saturation is a poor reason to not try.
Trying to be unique is a dumb way to not try.
Worrying about others is a silly excuse to not try.

So I've run out of excuses.

*So when?*

The hardest thing being indie isn't learning marketing/coding, but unlearning old reflexes. When I started I operated from an employee mindset, thinking the more hours I put in, the better the business. That didn't work out well.. (* cue burnout)

Hard work ≠ success

Years on I find I'm still unlearning that! Looks like it take a while to shake off those conditioned reflexes after decades.

Unlearning unhelpful narratives seems to be a rite of passage for every indie.

That got me thinking... *What else did I have to unlearn along the way?*

- Money is dirty
- Billionaires are scum
- Marketing is slimey and unethical
- A real business = SaaS
- Subscription revenue (MRR) is the best type of revenue.
- If the product is great, it'll market itself and I won't need to.
- The market is too saturated is a good excuse to not try.
- If I do these habits consistently (waking at 5am, cold showers, journaling etc) I will succeed at indie hacking.
- Info products are not "real businesses".
- {Popular indie hacker} is successful because he/she got a huge audience. It won't work for me.
- I need to set up a perfect second brain note-taking system, otherwise I'll lose all my good ideas!
- What if no one cares?!

I used to think all that when it comes to indie products. I was sooo wrong. Must be this, must be that. Artificial rules about how to run a business and build a product which seems to make sense but are totally removed from reality. Ultimately, my endgame is just freedom. It shouldn't matter how I do it, as long as it's legal and I like the work. Money is money is money.

"When you're living a good day, what is one habit that tends to be part of that day? Can you find time for that habit today?" – [James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/may-4-2023)

Intriguing question from James Clear's 3-2-1 newsletter. Made me think, and now I want to list out these habits and why they give me a good day:

- **Sleeping well** – 8h, with score above 90%. Waking up fresh and awake is the best feeling ever. That tends to decide how I'd feel for the rest of the day. If I slept poorly, even small challenges are a struggle. If I slept well, big problems are more manageable.

- **Meditation** – In the morning when I wake, and at night before I sleep. It grounds me, starts off my day in a calm and mindful manner. And that tends to decide the trajectory of my mood for the rest of the day too.

- **Creating something.** – Even just shipping a small feature or a plugin, or working on a creative project, a piece of writing, is super fulfilling. It could be done just within 1-2h in the early morning. Nothing makes me feel more accomplished than having *made* something out. Anything.

- **Eating well** – This is all too easy to screw up, and easy to go unnoticed, but when I eat well, I feel strong, alert but light, no bloat, no gas, no mental heaviness. If the first 2 sets the tone of the day, diet is the thing that can mess it all up.

- **Being out in nature** – My morning walks in the park is one thing that I've come to appreciate a lot. On rainy or busy days when I don't get to do it, I feel lesser for it. On weekends when I spend time outside instead of in shopping malls, I naturally feel better too.

- **Being out with my wife and son** – No explanation needed. Being with my loves, is always a joy.

That's it. Just 6 things.

Calling it now. You first heard it here:

**The 10x AI-powered developer.**

I'm generally cautious about being overly bullish about AI, because there's so much snakeoil hyperbole right now. But I also recognise that my restraint is not homogenuous. For specific niches and use cases, I actually feel pretty excited and optimistic about it.

Like for software development.

Two types of tweets that's been recurring in my timeline that made me think so:

1. Non-technical folks who never coded a day in their life shipping apps like nothing
2. Devs who know code but become 10x more productive

Like Charlie here. A maker but don't know how to code. Now making apps using [ChatGPT and Replit](https://twitter.com/charlierward/status/1637887392626384903?s=20):

> Everyone’s laughing at all the ChatGPT threads, but I (a man who can’t code), just built and shipped a functioning and IMO useful Chrome Extension in ~45 minutes using just that and @Replit - it was the weirdest feeling ever.

He even [showed us](https://twitter.com/charlierward/status/1638303596595892224?s=20) how he did it:

> You asked for it, and here it is.
>
> "How I built a functioning Chrome Extension in 10 steps and 45 minutes, with no coding experience. Using ChatGPT + Replit."
>
> Let's dive in people. 👾

Adam's a dev, but he made [a year's worth of apps in one month](https://twitter.com/adamlyttleapps/status/1653603465757855744?s=20):

> Last month I shipped 9 new apps ✨
>
> (a year of apps in a single month 🤯)
>
> My secret?
>
> ⭐️ Boilerplate created by GPT-4(better results)
> ⭐️ Debugging with GPT-3.5(faster)
> ⭐️ Bigger bugs in GPT-4(smarter)
> ⭐️ Icons by Mid-Journey
>
> Then: I polish clean it up and release it ✨
>
> 

Two great examples demonstrating how powerful AI can be if you know how to work it for your specific niche or industry. With *real* proof of work and output. But I don't think normies will be able to do it just yet. You do need to be relatively well-versed at prompting, knowing the ins and outs of how ChatGPT works to be able to get to production-ready apps, and be savvy enough to navigate the bugs and errors that crop up. But it just goes to show how low the barrier is now and can go in the future.

And I thought nocode was great for lowering the barrier to entry for coding.

Now with AI it's like writing code in plain English!

I was a competitive sportsperson in school. All my life in school till early adulthood, I believed in mind over body. Great quality to have for sports and grades, but brought to extremes, the downside is that I became pretty disembodied.

And that disembodiment is the root of my chronic stress, burnouts, acute to chronic health conditions right now.

Lately I've been trying to learn to be more embodied, specifically in exericse, diet and sleep.

The first big epiphany: After decades of being disembodied, it’s not easy to listen to the body because I’ve wired myself to ignore the whispers the body sends me, until it becomes screams (in the form of acute/chronic health conditions). I simply didn’t have the capacity and capability to listen, so it’s hard to use the body as an indicator how to act at first, not because body is unreliable but my listening was unreliable.

So in the beginning, trying to be embodied gives mixed signals, and seem like the whole "listen to your body" advice is ineffective. If the connection between your mind and body is a relationship, there just isn't much trust at the start.

That's why having rules and structure in the beginning helps. Like when I started on keto, I followed the rules strictly. Now after more than 3 years, I'm getting the hang of intuitive eating, of catching and trusting what the body tells me. Similarly for sleep - after 3 years of sleep biohacking, I'm starting to know when I need more rest and naps.

Gradually, then suddenly.