Jason Leow

Sundays are rest, and talking about rest. It's so important to know when to rest when you work for yourself.

I've always thought rest is just unplugging, but recently learned there's 2 types:

• rest - unplugging, stop draining the battery, passive rest
• rejuvenation - charging the battery, gives energy, active rest

Rest is when we have a digital detox, putting your phone to airplane mode, leaving it at home, and not going online for a week. Rest is not working and not thinking about work. Rest is staying home and chillaxing, or taking a restful long nap. Rest is waking up after 10h of great sleep, all sleep debt repaid. I imagine reading a book, writing a journal, cooking a meal, having a nice, slow, mindful lunch. Rest is Sundays. Rest is passive. Rest stems the energy outflow, so that there's not more output than input.

Rejuvenation is different from rest. Rejuvenation is active. It's like investing money – give energy to gain energy. Rejuvenation is a walk in the woods, a swim in the sea. Rejuvenation is going for a comfortable run and feeling more alive and alert after. Rejuvenation is doing art, working with your hands, working on a weekend project. It's being totally embodied in an activity that captures not just your attention but your soul. Rejuvenation expends some energy but tops it back up with more.

And we need both. Rejuvenation is not better than rest, nor is rest.

I tend to like doing rest first, to recover and slow down a bit, especially after an intense tiring project or season. Then as I start to get bored or restless and feel my energy levels returning, I get into rejuvenation to top me back up and beyond. And that brings about the next season of intense building again, which then empties me out. Rinse and repeat again.

So in code speak:

Rest !== rejuvenation
Rest && rejuvenation

Next: Solve the page jump scroll issue when mobile nav menu switches to fixed position

Where are the 70-80 year old indie hackers?

Honest question, because I would really love to know. And follow them, learn how they're living their life while still indie hacking. I don't know anyone in their 70-80s who's on Twitter and building in public.

Are there any *at all*? Or do indie hackers just retire and do something else?

I want to know, because in 20-30 years, I'm going to find out. And just super curious if indie hacking till you're 70-80 is even possible. Would I be too sick or frail to even sit on a chair in front of a computer? Or would I rather be playing with my grandkids? Would I still need to work? What if I gotta still hustle then? If I'm still indie hacking, would I still be building for profit, or building for fun?


I asked Midjourney about it, and generating this image had been fun. It also prompted some daydreaming.

I frankly wouldn't mind that kind of 'retirement' lifestyle. A cabin in the woods, but not off grid. Near enough to the city for healthcare, but far enough for peace and quiet. A rustic place, yet having all the infrastructure of modern urban apartment. Starlink, wifi, computer, air-conditioning. A few hours of indie hacking work in the morning, out in the front yard. Building products for fun, for joy, for social good. When tired, I take break tending to a tomato and herb garden. We eat local produce that's in season, cooked fresh every day. On hot summer days, go swim in a lake. On cold rainy snowy days, snuggle in the cabin reading.

That's nice. Very nice.

Not a bad way to be a 70-80 year old indie hacker.

Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Carrd/comments/11tolto/responsive_nav_menu_using_just_carrd_elements_no/

Facebook:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/carrdusers/permalink/1258747714723282/?mibextid=qC1gEa

Indie Hackers:
https://www.indiehackers.com/post/responsive-nav-menu-using-just-carrd-elements-no-custom-code-needed-1deabe9d06

If AI is replacing all our jobs, what opportunities should you look for?

High 'touch' work, that requires physical skill or human connection – plumbers, farmers, nurses, therapists, social workers.

High tech work, that requires super technical/specialised skill – like building rockets, AI, robotics.

And within a continuum of human employment, avoid the jobs in the middle because the middle is the part that will be hollowed out by AI. The assumption is that many jobs in the middle are easy to automate. If your job—any job—requires just a ChatGPT query to get done then it's likely to get disrupted. Not 100% of course, but many.

So what does this imply for indie solopreneurs? What opportunities are there for us indies?

- **Work on human relationships.** Be authentic in personal branding and marketing. Build trust with customers. Show personality and embrace your weirdness. Provide first class "human-powered" support. Collaborate. Show empathy, be kind. Be helpful, stay nice. Humans still like to interact with other humans – that's not going to change.
- **Make something that AI can't easily generate out of the box.** The success of a product isn't just the code or the marketing copy alone. It's also human creativity in finding a great niche/opportunity. It's combining technologies in interesting ways. It's working on hardware, software, wetware together. AI can't replicate those.

It's being things AI can't be that we will stand out.

Be unlike AI.

Be even more utterly human than we are right now.

I've been having a launch problem. Built too many plugins, but launched too little. In February, I want to build build build. But I forgot it needs to be paired with another critical action:

Launch launch launch.

And I made 7 plugins recently, but lanched only 1!

What's holding me back? The classic dilemma of work I enjoy versus the work I don't enjoy.

I love building and creating, but don't enjoy making the tutorials for it. That's always been the weak point in pipeline for me. I procrastinate procrastinate procrastinate till like 1-2 months later before the guilt of not launching finally snowballs into a big enough mass to get me to act.

So what can I do? What hacks can I try to ensure I don't skip on work I hate?

Help me out here:

- Lower the bar: Every day do one ridiculously small task at a time.
- Leverage inspiration: Write the tutorial immediately after making plugin.
- Outsource: Hire a copywriter to write the tutorial (but requires familiarity with the code)
- Commit: Recognise the ridiculousness of this problem and just f**king do it.

I think I know which solution to choose now.

I used to have lots of preconceived notions of what I want for my products and what I don't want. Trawling through my old writings back when I just started indie hacking, I once [wrote these](https://jasonleow.github.io/200wordsaday/articles/how-do-i-make-a-million-dollars-6-running-a-calm-not-crazy-business-250065d54061da0c67/index):

> So here’s me saying “no” to how I would want to run a calm business on the internet, hereon:
>
> - I’ll stay a company of one. A solo business. No investors, no business partners. Less co-workers, less drama. But occasional (good) freelancers are fine.
> - Health and fitness as NUMBER 1 priority. What would your schedule look like if health was top priority? No, seriously. Reschedule a meeting, a call, a task or anything if I don’t have enough sleep and exercise.
> - Work normal hours. Work 4, or even 3, days a week. Be lazy.
> - Tell customers upfront (politely) that support is available only during work days and work hours in my timezone. No weekends, no late nights.
> - Self-help by default, as much as possible. Help customers help themselves.
> - Build relationships. Know customers by name.
> - Don’t use “we”, use “me”. Act small, not corporate. Be intentionally tiny, but human.
> - No empty promises just because “the customer is always right”. Just to polite and honest about the difficulties.
> - No roadmap. Get customers to buy what the product is today, not what it is in the future.
> - Set a upper revenue/profit limit. Close shop for the day/month/year when that’s achieved. Go travel, surf, spend time with family.
> - Be lifestyle business proud. I am in this for the lifestyle.
> - No growth (buying more assets, ads, hiring) unless it’s cheaper to do so.
> - No growth hacking for growth’s sake. Intentional and selective growth, where it makes sense.
> - Automate, automate, automate. Use bots, cron jobs, scripts, or even VAs to remove manual hassles as much as possible, as early as possible, but not too early.
> - Leverage tech as default for scalability, beyond the bottleneck of me. Labour, if it can’t be automated, and last, capital.
> - No open startup data, without context. Envy and jealousy are easier on the internet than inspiration, if context is not set properly. Be transparent selectively, where it makes sense, where it authentically helps.
> - Email by default, call for discussions. No coffees, no meetings unless it’s an emergency. Just simply say “My calendar doesn’t allow. Hope you are well.” Don’t apologise, don’t say sorry, just say no nicely but firmly.
> - Profit from Day 1. In the black over in the red, always. When in the red, it’s always crazy. Calm is in the black.
> - Have fun. The moment you’re too serious about your goal, you’re inching it out of reach. Set a random, funny goal alongside your big one.

No this, no that.

Okay, some might still apply because they are based on certain core values that's tied to my personality and outlook on life. But for most other business-related ones—like no ads, profit from day 1, email by default—it's simply not grounded in reality and context. It just something that sounded nice in theory, something that I wear because "I'm an indie hacker", but has no basis in any experience in the market or real life. Frankly, they're just newbie naivety.

Few years on, for my Plugins project, I'm actually trying affiliate marketing. I just published my first [guest blog post](https://starrt.co/blog/mobile-responsive-nav-menu). I'm kinda partnering with other Carrd makers to cross promote. I bought ads. I'm spent $150 on one sponsored ad on a fellow indie maker's newsletter – the single biggest reinvestment I've made so far (I used to keep every cent). I run upsells, and try out promo codes. I'm thinking of how future projects could be set up for acquisition/sale.

Essentially, I'm trying anything that works.

I mean, sure I've still got a baseline of ethics and boundaries I wouldn't cross. Like no cheating, manipulation. Nothing illegal or grey in the law. No ponzis. Stuff that most people can agree on. But beyond that, everything's open to exploration. No lame rules, unless it's been proven in the realities of a real market. No utopian ideals and borrowed narratives on how things *should* be done, instead focusing on what the data shows that *needs* done. No over-identifying with a label or a group of people. No undue emotional investment in my "baby".

No inhibitions. No preconceived notions.

Just doing it what needs to be done, my own way. Just focused equanimity.

I like this.

It smells like I've grown up a bit as an indie hacker.

So I went viral on LinkedIn recently. The post was about a topic close to heart – [inclusive design](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jasonleowsg_ux-a11y-accessibility-activity-7037632969997520897-VOcE). It's posted one week ago and it's still going around. Some stats so far:

- 280k impressions
- +1943%↑ in impressions for past 28 days
- 4682 engagements (+1780%↑) for past 28 days
- 3.7k likes
- 174 comments
- 378 reposts
- ~500 new followers
- 842 profile views

This is my top viral post so far, beating out the past viral posts by 20x! I should be thrilled, right?

Yet, I'm hardly happy. In fact, the past two weeks had been stressful, paired with heightened anxiety and frustration.

Because there were a number of comments that were harsh and critical. They said they were offended. I admit, I made some honest mistakes in the way I framed it the wording of it that could have been interpreted in an unhelpful, ablelist way. I tried my best to take it on the chin, engage them politely and humbly, thank them for their feedback, made the necessary edits and footnotes so as not to mislead, and tried to adopt a growth mindset to learn.

The funny thing about the human mind is, in comparison, the positive comments outnumber the harsh ones by a huge margin. Most of the comments and reposts were kind and thankful. Someone even empathised about the harsh critique in another comment:

> Hey, I appreciate you being brave enough to put it out there. You got some pretty harsh critique in the comments. Kudos to you for taking it as a learning opportunity.

Yet, new harsh comments kept coming and that's all I remember. They made me feel like I had committed a grave, unforgiveable sin. I felt small and worthless after interacting with them. There's one instance where I felt he was injecting ill intent and malice where there was sincerely none.

It's exhausting and depressing. I was only trying to share about a topic and framework close to heart, and try to contribute some awareness to the topic of disability. I did some projects for it in the past, and wish to contribute more to it in the future. I was genuinely excited to learn more.

I'm not so sure now.

It's just not worth it. I generally try to avoid drama. I have enough challenges as it is in daily life, like putting food on the table.

I'll probably take a break from looking at LinkedIn for some days. Then review again.

The price of going viral on LinkedIn...

Some products are better suited for a portfolio of small bets approach than others. A recent reply from [@imgracehuang](https://twitter.com/imgracehuang/status/1634789422808854530) on Twitter got me thinking:

> When I consider what projects to work on, I prefer the ones which require upfront effort but no recurring effort. This way, I can do one thing at a time but do once.

Upfront effort versus recurring effort – what a neat way to sum it up!

I’ve actually been thinking a lot about this approach too, when thinking about my next project. Just that never found the words to describe it so well.

Digital downloads like info products, PDFs on Gumroad, one-time license for software, or code snippets like my Carrd plugins, seems perfect for this upfront effort approach. SaaS, on the other hand... requires too much recurring effort, in terms of building/updating features, maintenance and support.

I guess that's why in the indie space some folks object to the portfolio approach. They are usually SaaS makers who can't see beyond their own SaaS projects that a different world of indie solopreneurship is possible. And those arguing that a portfolio of small bets work in all contexts also fail to realise it's just "an" approach, amongst many others.

Ultimately, it's up to the maker's own preference. What are you optimising for? What's your end game?

For me, I'm aiming for lifestyle. Something that allows me the life I want, rather than me having to build my life around it.

A one-time payment product with low support/maintenance, requiring substantial upfront effort but low recurring effort, something I can mostly build once and sell multiple times. That allows for a lot more freedom of lifestyle. Compared to SaaS, where you got to even bring your laptop along when you're on vacation, or need to be on alert even at 3am because server crashed.

So, I think I nailed one of the criteria I want for my next product.

High upfront effort, low recurring effort.

We just went to hang out at the airport yesterday. Yes, it's a weird thing we do in Singapore. Our airports are like destinations in itself. Shopping mall, food, and entertainment all rolled into one. Of course it helps that our airport looks like this:


Airports always had a special place in my heart.

Before the pandemic when I worked at cafes everyday, I used to enjoy coming to the airport to work. The vibe here is just different. There's an air of excitement, anticipation, and aliveness that comes from people who are either departing for overseas travel or arriving as a visitor. I love soaking in that buzz. Even if I wasn't travelling, just being there gives me a feeling of hope and optimistism for life. Seeing visitors from other countries marvel at my country gives a funny sense of pride, and allows me to see my own country through fresh eyes.

The departure and arrival halls are one of my favourite places to hang out and people-watch. There you see human affection and love in full display. People saying goodbyes with longing in their eyes to one another at departure. Folks arriving and scanning the crowd for their loved one with a confused look in their eyes, and then the surprise and joy of finally finding them, and the hugs that follow.

If you want to restore faith in humanity, airports are the place to be.

I woke up today and chose violence. The [replies to @dvassallo's tweet](https://twitter.com/dvassallo/status/1634244815012646914) got me fired up to call out bullshit. There were lots of comments that due to @tdinh_me's 76k audience, he could launch anything—even a to-do app—and it'll fly off the shelves.

That's such a cop-out. A defeatist attitude. And missing important nuance.

A [simple answer](https://twitter.com/tdinh_me/status/1634242744016314368) to counter all that bullshit about audience size:

He launched another AI product called askcommand when he had 50k audience and it flopped. Nobody cared. If his audience size was so all-powerful, tell me, where were they when he launched askcommand? Did they suddenly miss his tweets about it?

Fuck no. They ignored it.

Because it wasn't interesting or compelling. Because it didn't solve a problem or painpoint. Because it didn't have a market. Could be one or a combination of the reasons stated.

Audience isn't some silver bullet to solve all your product problems.

Audience is an accelerant. But if the product isn't even moving at all, there's nothing to accelerate.

Audience helps speed up success if you got a compelling product to start with. If you don't have a compelling product, no amount of audience will save you. It's not a silver bullet. In fact, having a huge audience go dark on it is actually an even more reliable indicator that it didn't work and you should drop it. And even if you have zero audience, building a compelling product in public will in parallel build an audience, sooner or later. It’s tempting to brush off successes like this to someone’s audience size. That’s a defeatist cop-out. You’re missing the real lesson here:

Do interesting shit, get interested attention.

So get your fucking priorities right, people.

All this building an audience bullshit is getting into all our heads. Hindering more than it helps.

Fundamentals, fundamentals, fundamentals.

Do the right thing > do the wrong things right
Build the right thing > build an audience

Prove me wrong. This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

Bring it mf.

It finally happened to me. I always knew there's platform risk on Carrd. I mean, any platform has risk. When you build a house on someone else's land, there's always a chance they can rug pull you in unexpected ways.

For me, building plugins on Carrd had these risks:

- The platform might have a change of mind and no longer allow plugins
- They decide that my plugins infringe on their trademark
- Site gets deleted or lost somehow (like Heroku)
- They build new features that effectively make my plugin(s) obsolete

The fourth risk is the most real and probable. And it just happened. One of my best selling plugins—the mobile navbar plugin—became obsolete because recent new features on Carrd meant people can now make their own mobile responsive navbar using available Carrd components. No custom code required no more. It doesn't do it perfectly, but good enough. Good enough that my plugin no longer makes sense. The real kicker is realising that if I was the customer, I wouldn't buy my own navbar plugin.

Sigh...

I always expected it would happen, sooner if not later. But encountering it in real life just hits different, over pondering a theoretical possibility. I mean, it's not like I'm upset with the platform or founders in any way. I'm still grateful that they're open minded and cool about my plugins. I guess this is just grieving over that eventuality that now became reality.

That's why I was in a conundrum about my [new free Carrd template](https://mobilenavbar.carrd.co/) and [tutorial](https://mobilenavbar.carrd.co/#tutorial) about the new way to create a responsive navbar in Carrd. It felt like by launching it, I'm also killing my older plugin. But do I really have a choice?

Stay with the times, or be left behind, they say.

The tough choices of an entrepreneur. Kill your baby to give birth to a new one. Who can do that without hesitation?

After various iterations, I realised we can now build a mobile responsive nav bar using just Carrd elements! No custom code required. (Might be killing sales on my navbar plugin here haha 😅)

Demo:
https://mobilenavbar.carrd.co/

Tutorial:
https://mobilenavbar.carrd.co/#tutorial