Lifelog

> If you're a ship lost at sea, look for the lighthouse of curiosity. – [@itswillmyles](https://twitter.com/itswillmyles/status/1677993411381436417)

Okay then. So what am I curious about these days? What am I keen to learn more about? What am I curious enough to want to go build something?

Some broad niches:
- Serverless functions
- Telegram bots
- SaaS built entirely on plain vanilla Javascript
- Sleep management
- SaaS swag
- Twitter tools (risky, yes I know)

Some specific ideas:
- Build a tool for sleep, e.g. sleep cycle calculator, sleep directory of tools and resources
- Telegram bot for anything, e.g. a bot to calculate streaks, or post recurring messages on my behalf
- A Nuxt.js SaaS boilerplate with associated backend tech stack (Postgres, Heroku) for myself to be able to quickly launch products
- A plain vanilla Javascript tech stack for SaaS
- A HTML-CSS-JS boilerplate for myself to quickly launch directory sites for any niche
- A Twitter long form tweet preview formatter for seeing where the "see more' breakpoint is
- Other Twitter tools like tweet backups, animated visuals/media/charts
- A Google Sheet backup feature for Lifelog where each post is automatically added to a Google Sheet (if you so choose to)

Curiosity-driven development combined with the F it mindset of launching would be a lethal combo.

Watch out.

I think I've been in exploitation mode for so long, I 'forgot' how to be in exploration mode. Maybe that's why I'm stuck.

I just need to stop exploiting for a while, and ease back in to exploration.

It's kinda like if you're in a job, you're working really hard to meet deadlines before going on leave for vacation. Then on Day 1 of vacation, you find you can't relax. You're still think about that email you sent to Meredith. You're tempted to check your inbox. You check your messages in case your boss sends you any messages. And you ask what the hell is wrong with you. And then by the time you have to go home, you feel like you've only started feeling relaxed and settled into vacay mode.

Maybe it's not some huge mental block but just a matter of taking time to transit.

Stop pushing on my current projects. Stop aggressively marketing. Take it easy a bit on the pedal. And start looking around at the scenery. Scroll through feeds, take time to check out what other indies are doing. Seek out sources of inspiration elsewhere, in real life. Be on the lookout, sniffing for new opportunities, things that make me curious. Read. Tinker with fun lame projects.

That's it.

Explore, not exploit.

Thinking through how I'm [stuck](https://golifelog.com/posts/stuck-1688696682065), I think the best way to describe it is by borrowing a similar concept in writing:

Writer's block.

> Writer’s block is a phenomenon experienced by writers that is best described as an overwhelming feeling of being stuck in the writing process without the ability to move forward and write anything new. – [Source: Masterclass](https://www.masterclass.com/articles/what-is-writers-block-how-to-overcome-writers-block-with-step-by-step-guide-and-writing-exercises)

It's the best thing I've found to describe how my 'stuckness' feels like.

IMHO, writer's block usually arises from:

- Fear/anxiety, of not being perfect, of opinions of others, of contraints/rules
- General lack of inspiration, a dry of creativity
- Apathy, fatigue, from working or writing too much
- Feeling disengaged from the writing because it doesn't interest/align

Perhaps from the recognition that this is some form 'hacker's' block comes possible solutions. There's well-known ways to overcome writer's block, so I could try out the same for my own creative block?

The same Masterclass article offered some solutions, so adapting it to my hacker's block:

- Take a break. I've been charging forward so the past few months on plugins. I'm in a do-do-do mode. Perhaps it's time to take a step back, top up my creative tank by seeking out inspiration.
- Do something thoroughly mundane. Apparently monotonous tasks like cleaning, showering, gardening, walking, are great for unblocking because the brain goes into autopilot and the creative part can daydream. Maybe I can try this together with taking a break. Just go for walks, swim in the sea, hang out with my kid, not worry about work.
- Jump ahead by making new products without worrying about whether it will bring in revenue or help me with my goals. Just create first, and maybe it will cascade into something else. Ready, shoot, aim.
- Do something else, act on an idea that I've always wanted to make but never had time for, revenue-generating be damned. It could be something fun, something pro bono, something for social good. Anything. Just like point #2, it can bring about tangential opportunities or discoveries.
- Create a deadline. Artificial time pressure can bring about a focus. I always felt that that's the true secret to the 12 startups in 12 months challenge. The focus within a small timebox is the real benefit, the forcing function we need to force ourselves to not over-analyze and just ship things.
- I always enjoyed freewriting. Just writing without pause in a stream-of-consciousness sort of way, not second-guessing myself or concerned about proper words and grammar is really freeing. What's the equivalent of freewriting for indie hacking? Just sitting down, and make the first thing that comes to mind. Don't care about anything else. Just do first, talk later.

*What else do you do to unblock yourself creatively?*

Recently read this post by [Paul Graham](http://paulgraham.com/greatwork.html):

> People show much more originality in solving problems than in deciding which problems to solve. Even the smartest can be surprisingly conservative when deciding what to work on. People who'd never dream of being fashionable in any other way get sucked into working on fashionable problems.
>
> One reason people are more conservative when choosing problems than solutions is that problems are bigger bets. A problem could occupy you for years, while exploring a solution might only take days. But even so I think most people are too conservative. They're not merely responding to risk, but to fashion as well. Unfashionable problems are undervalued.
>
> ......Working on an unfashionable problem can be very pleasing. There's no hype or hurry. Opportunists and critics are both occupied elsewhere. The existing work often has an old-school solidity. And there's a satisfying sense of economy in cultivating ideas that would otherwise be wasted.

It's intriguing. Got me thinking: What's an unfashionable problem? Especially for indie hackers?

That's easy. Anything that's not AI right now. 😂

Ok but a few spaces I see from other indie folks:

- @poppacalypse creating a online ordering app for F&Bs. Not one-time payments, not MRR, but a % cut from each payment.
- @DmytroKrasun making a screenshot tool for other makers and startups
- @greglim81 writing ebook and courses on coding on Amazon
- @yongfook creating automated design software for developers
- @jakobgreenfeld doing service on cold email
- @Kamphey as the Google Sheets guy
- @searchbound selling onions on the internet, and his job board for ranches
- @dannypostmaa selling component templates for Figma, Webflow, Tailwind (not his AI apps)

The more I listed, the more I realised, that's what most indies are doing, isn't it? Unfashionable problems.

Just problems and opportunities that opened up to them at the right time, right place. Problems that they were perhaps uniquely positioned to solved. Opportunities that maybe only they saw.

Not what's fashionable, not what everyone sees.

What's *my* unfashionable problem? 🤔🤔🤔

A few days ago I wrote to think through about the [hard truths about my Carrd plugins project](https://golifelog.com/posts/hard-truths-about-my-carrd-plugins-project-1688521643237). It didn't feel good for sure. That's the thing about writing. It makes me confront what I was only vaguely aware into a full-on contact sport.

Almost overnight the project went from favoured child to now yet another 'failure'.

Okay maybe I'm being overly dramatic here. It's not a *complete* failure. More like not performing to what I need, which is $5k/m ramen profitability. It's a project I will still keep building and running. But it definitely failed in helping me hit my goal.

Despite all the caveats, the proceeding days after writing it out, I felt low, like I was nursing my wounds. I felt like I failed yet again. Did I shoot myself on the foot again by thinking too much, or is this a hard truth, reality-confronting moment?

I think it's the latter.

Fact is, it's taking too long to get the results it showed so far. Like it or not, that's what's real and true, my feelings about it be damned.

Okay so what's next?

Truth is, I'm stuck. Okay I said it.

I've been stuck for some time now, actually. And maybe I need to write about this too now, to confront it.

I have no new ideas. I feel like I'm inside some invisible bubble barrier. I know I want out, but this barrier is walling me in. Somehow. I don't know how, I don't know what, I don't know why. All I know: It's there. I'm still stuck, even though I *want* so badly to get unstuck.

It's not just an intellectual thing, like lacking ideas (which is true but not the complete picture). It also feels like a feeling thing. Like there's a certain fear perhaps, hesitation or even procrastination.

What do you do when stuck?

- Take a physical and mental break?
- Seek out creative inspiration?
- Explore what makes you curious?
- Write more?
- Talk to your therapist?

*What else?*

There's this poignant scene from The Office US where Andy was saying, “I wish there was a way to know you're in the good old days before you've actually left them.”


Things ain't easy on my indie journey right now. The past few years had been pure struggle. All these [hard truths](https://golifelog.com/posts/hard-truths-about-my-carrd-plugins-project-1688521643237) are hard sh*t to deal with.

All tough questions.
No easy answers.
No handholding here.

All the while looking on either side at others getting through it with ease.

Sometimes you feel like rage quitting.

But somewhere in the future, a future me will be looking at this moment now and saying what Andy said.

These are the good old days.

That I will reminiscience at my struggles and look upon them fondly.
That I will re-read the writings here, and wonder what the hell was I thinking.
That I will pine to live this day, this moment, all over again, if I had the chance.

These are the good old days. And I've not left them yet.

I can still act now, to not miss them.

In the past 9 months since I went hard on Carrd plugins project, I've achieved these:

- In at least 12 distribution channels, not counting the occasional guest blog post
- 19 new plugins launched, more if I count those not published
- tripled my revenue, and looking to hit $1k from my plugins revenue alone in the next few months
- took over first page (7 out of 10) of Google for "carrd plugins"
- built up street cred/personal brand as the Carrd plugins guy

But there's some hard truths I need to face:

- **Small market:** Plugins continue to sell, but not at a volume that can help me reach my goal of $5k/m soon. Ahrefs tell me that the search volume is just 30 (i.e. average monthly number of searches for “carrd plugins” on Google in the US alone). Google Trends can’t even show me any data. So even while my SEO game is great, the search volume—and by inference, the market size—is just too small perhaps. By “small”, that’s of course with reference to my $5k/m revenue goal. After 9 months being on so many channels, realistically speaking, the most I can expect from this project is a slow and steady growth in small increments. Not reason to drop it, but not a good reason to focus on and keep hammering at it either. I need to try new bets where the market size and/or revenue steps are bigger.

- **Little to no moat:** The competitive advantage, or moat, around this project isn't huge. All it takes is someone who some dev experience to come in and start making plugins to compete. The dev don't even need to be very experienced or senior. Over the past few years, there's always been devs coming in and dropping out. But as Carrd gets more popular, I'm sure more will come. Who knows, maybe even copycats.

- **Unsustainble community contribution:** The current way of actively contributing to communities might not sustainable in the long run. It does take time and effort. Right now it's still manageable. But as the user base grows, there's more questions being asked. And there's a bit of a Schrodinger's cat paradox going on here too – my mere presence actively answering questions is bringing in more people, leading to more questions, and vicious cycle. I might have to start looking for more scalable ways, e.g. trying out ads, on Google, Facebook, Reddit.

- **Platform risk:** This is probably a remote chance, and the Carrd folks are super nice, but I'm still building on someone else's platform. Like how in March this year I had one such [black swan event for my mega navbar plugin](https://golifelog.com/posts/platform-risk-on-carrd-1678417360475). That in itself is a great reason to explore products that does not depend on a platform for it's existence. An example could be creating plugins for any website instead of just one platform.

I love this project, I love the product, the founders, the community, and I want to keep building plugins for it. But it's dawning on me that I cannot put all my chips in this project now.

I got to keep shipping new projects, to land on something else that has a bigger market, more revenue, and sustainable.

The time is now.

My first tweet to hit 1M impressions!!! 🤯🤯🤯


A blow-by-blow breakdown of the [breakthrough tweet](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675089127841071105):

- I read this [HN post](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076) before, and recently re-read it. Resonates every single time.
- Decided to screenshot it and save it in my Telegram Saved Messages as reference.
- The story kept running in my head, kept thinking about it.
- A QT by @levelsio about GDP and hunger for success made me associate it with this HN post, decided to reply it there. The reply got many likes.
- Didn't know what to tweet for the weekend, so thought that since this post keeps running through my head, I should just tweet it out and put a close to it. From experience, writing and publishing it helps to close the circuit, stranegly.
- Didn't try to be be clever or witty or controversial. Or anything at all. I literally just wrote what resonated with me, and shared it. It didn't even try to give any so-called "value".
- It started slow but after a few big accounts QTed it it started to take off. Seems like it resonated with them too.
- Realised I started a Twitter war on class struggle, even though I never intended it to be. I guess topics like that just trigger a lot of positive and negative responses, especially on Twitter. It's got a life of its own now, nothing I can do. 🤷‍♂️
- Many replies completely missed the point. Some took the analogy literally. My top favourite is probably "Why does the middle class only get ***one*** throw?!" Like, dude, it's metaphorical not literal. 😂
- Survivorship bias is rampant even though many disagree with the analogy, when they said they're not from rich family/poor immigrant/family lived with dirt floor/etc but they made it due to grit and agency and all the nice sounding words associated with "meritocracy". A minority of outliers doesn't mean the system as a whole is equitable. In fact, I'd argue that rags-to-riches stories have become weaponized to maintain status quo of wealth stratification.
- Another reading comprehension problem - the HN post is "dangerous" because it affirms a defeatist attitude in poor. Nowhere does it argue for that. It's just plainly states high probabilities of success from having easier access to resources.
- Decided to not reply every single reply or QT to maintain sanity and stay away from toxic/lame arguments.
- Built on the tweet and QTed something more useful and practical on Day 3 – how [indie hackers can get more throws](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675818408385052673).
- Got maybe new 200-300 followers from this. I would normally be excited af, but most replies are from waaay outside my Twitter circle so unsure if the followers are even folks I would normally even *want* to chat with...
- First time seeing my tweet keep going even after 48h. It went out on 1 July, and 3 days later it's still going strong. Past 100k impressions after Day 1, >700k impressions after Day 2, and now 1M after Day 3.
- No fancy tips or tricks to share, no $999 Twitter course to pitch here. As with most viral content, you can never reproduce it. Only thing I will say that this affirms:
> Twitter hack: Spill your heart out and don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks. – [@LaddLaddLadd](https://twitter.com/LaddLaddLadd/status/1675235283036504070)

And "Twitter is dead", they say. 😂

It's been 4 months since I first crossed the $1,000 monthly revenue milestone. Initially I thought it was a one-off fluke, even though revenue had been climbing slowly but steadily close to the $1k mark in the past months leading up to the month of March.


That's the thing about one-time payments as revenue – you'll never know what you're going to get. There's always a nagging doubt that this month could be the fateful month where you didn't acquire any new customers, and your sandcastle comes crashing down. It's weird when you contrast that doubt with one-time revenue with the optimism of monthly recurring revenue – by itself, customers can still churn, but yet we tend to *expect* MRR to be more reliable and steady.

When can we start to feel more assured in our hot seats and say with confidence that we passed a revenue milestone, when your business model is mainly one-time payments?

I don't know.

But sometimes I like to think that this "I don't know" is a good thing. That I don't take things for granted and start feeling complacent. Because accepting that you can win big with asymmetric bets that will take off like a rocket, also means you might lose it all in an asymmetric black swan event that rug pulls everything you built up under your feet.

The bold might thrive sometimes but only the paranoid survives.

The trick seems to be knowing the best time to be either.

There's this great Hacker News analogy about how [entrepreneurship is like the carnival](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15659076#):

> Entrepreneurship is like one of those carnival games where you throw darts or something. Middle class kids can afford one throw. Most miss. A few hit the target and get a small prize. A very few hit the center bullseye and get a bigger prize. Rags to riches! The American Dream lives on. Rich kids can afford many throws. If they want to, they can try over and over and over again until they hit something and feel good about themselves. Some keep going until they hit the center bullseye, then they give speeches or write blog posts about "meritocracy" and the salutary effects of hard work. Poor kids aren't visiting the carnival. They're the ones working it.

[I'm that middle class kid](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1675089127841071105). I had my one throw, but now trying to afford more tickets for more throws, through things like freelancing.

All the while just hoping I'll never have to go back to working at the carnival.

The funny thing with being middle class is that our situation sets us up to not even try. We're neither here nor there. Comfortable enough to fear losing it all, not poor enough to want to risk it all. So doing this whole indie hacking thing so far feels like swimming against that narrative current.

But try I will. I think us indies can get more throws in by making it as cheap to do so:

- bootstrap and keep infra costs low
- pre-launch to minimize building wrong things
- make small bets, commit to big bets after better data
- move and live in low cost location
- freelance at the side to extend the runway indefinitely
- spouse works in a job while another tries a business

The carnival analogy ain't watertight, but the best part about it is:

Guess what the indie hacker's favourite ride at the carnival is? The rollercoaster.

LOL. #dadjokes

My new intention for every week in July:

Say "F**k it I'm doing it" at least once a week.

Why?

I'm a chronic over-thinker. I think it there's benefits to thinking deeply, especially in an era of fake news, misinformation and media manipulation. But a virtue brought to extremes becomes a vice. Or when in the wrong context.

The wrong context here is this whole indie hacking thing.

Success here depend much on a bias to action. To the point of being almost foolhardy. So the instinctual reflex must be to act. But my first instinct is to think. Deeply. Take a bit more time.

Over time, the missed opportunities accumulate. Deep thinking becomes passivity. Passivity turns into procrastination.

I think myself out of a business, basically.

Not good.

Damn it, it's like I'm just not built for indie hacking. So much to unlearn and let go of. So many of my existing strengths are actually weaknesses.

I need to be hungrier. Like on an instinctual level. If one was truly hungry, they grab whatever, whenever. Grab first think later.

So... for July, that's what I'll do.

Act first, worry later.
Ship more, think less.

At the start of my birthday month, I talked about how I missed that calm and centered self-assuredness, how I want to come back to myself. No more feeling disembodied. Back to mindful presence. Mind and body aligned. To truly live, and to celebrate this gift of yet another year of being alive and well.

I had a super busy month juggling consulting and indie hacking, but I think I lived out the month aligned to those broad intentions.

I felt more centered for sure. None of the anxiety and stress that plagued me for the past few months. It's wild that it could be all due to a [chemical imbalance!](https://golifelog.com/posts/mind-that-magnesium-1685414275146)! Sometimes I don't want to believe it's just so simple, but more and more I'm convinced it is, and could be the hidden cause of all my past depressive episodes. It could all just be conjecture, but it feels relieving to know. That all along maybe my mind's not as broken as I thought.

If anything, the possibility offered through that realisation is probably the best birthday gift I could get.

Onwards to July!

---

📈 Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $119 (↑$10)
💵 One-off revenue: $928 (↓$46)
💰 Total revenue: $1047 (↓$36) (4th month in a row above $1k!) 🎉🎉🎉🎉
💸 Total costs = $170
⚖️ Total profit: $877 (↓$16) (excl. consulting revenue)
💎 Profit margin: 84%

I started Side Project Weekends in March, so that's about 3 months ago. In that time, I built these new things for Lifelog:

- hover md preview
- esc key shortcut to md preview
- rich text editor
- preview button
- typing sounds
- saving status
- screenshot
- scheduled backups
- heroku stack update

3 months, 9 features. Average 3 ships per month.

Which kinda makes sense, because I would ship a bunch of features, somethings break or create more bugs, and then I would spend week #4 fixing them.

I hit a snag in beginning of June when I tried to [over-analyze what I should build next](https://golifelog.com/posts/not-all-features-are-created-equal-1685873032170), but since switching back to ["ship more, think less" mode](https://golifelog.com/posts/momentum-driven-development-1687606035650), I feel the momentum back again.

Not all the features were mission-critical features. Some were for fun, like the typing sounds. Some were helpful, like the rich text editor. Others were invisible, like the backend infrastructure updates and backups. I'm painfully aware that there's many high-value features that Lifelog folks had requested and waiting for, but I had to make the tough decision to trade off and balance user needs and developer needs. The idea is: Better to keep building what keeps the momentum going than building what might stall the building. ***Some progress is better than no progress.*** The hope is that eventually I'll get to the high value features (like a WYSIWYG editor).

Overall, I'm satisfied with the progress. More can be done, better features can be built, but maintaining the momentum is key at this stage.

I want to make a new product, but I'm struggling with ideas on what to build.

Yet when I turn my head and look at my Carrd plugins project, I am—on the contrary—overwhelmed with ideas for new plugins. The funny thing is, I'm not even looking out for them. People literally hand them to me on a silver platter, sometimes directly (like "Hey have you thought of making this...?"), mostly indirectly (like "I got this problem, any help?").

The contrast couldn't be more stark.

That's the biggest benefit of being plugged into a community. If you're happy solving problems for the community, getting new ideas is easy peasy.

Like how I just launched a randomizer Carrd plugin today. The conversation that seeded this literally happened a week ago. A friend and fellow Carrd maker Mark Bowley asked me about it, I saw the opportunity right away, and built a MVP the next day. And today, I launched the plugin.


Maybe I should stop trying to think of something new to build from a vacuum, but instead find a new community I'm interested to be part of, and solve problems *for them*.

No need to think of strategies, do market research, speak to potential customers, think about technology trends.

Just be immersed in a community, be part of it and try to be helpful.

That's it.

You know you got a habit dialled down when you don't have to force yourself to go do it. No need for habit hacking. No need to design the environment. No mental tricks or hoops to jump through.

I've always struggled with making myself exercise in the morning. It's early, I'm still sleepy, I prefer to work, I got to get the kid ready for school. Many reasons I give myself. But seldom 100% true.

But what I do know is I feel better 100% of the time after I exercise in the morning.

It's just that it's not always easy to tap into the posthoc feeling, or memory of that feeling, before doing that exercise. Or maybe it just takes time to truly **embody** that memory, that feeling, not as something intellectual or a mental discipline thing, but to intuitively feel it in my bones and gut just how I truly enjoy it.

That inflection point seems to have happened just recently.

I know it when it goes from "I *should* do it..." to "I *want* to do it...". It's the same with other infinite game type of habits, like diet and sleep, I find.

So now I got the habit part of it dialled down. Next, to actually get the outcome – being [fit af](https://golifelog.com/goals/213).

All the [talk on Twitter](https://twitter.com/daniel_nguyenx/status/1672569199368228870?s=20) about shipping fast as an indie hacker got me thinking:

*Do I ship too slow?*

Went and did a tally to check my shipping speed: I actually launched ~20 Carrd plugins in 6 months so far in 2023. Started 13 new distribution channels \*.

For Lifelog, about 8 features shipped (considering I only decided to do Side Project weekends starting in March).

So I do launch pretty fast!

Just that Carrd plugins are probably a narrow niche and tiny market, so progress and results might be slower.

So it's not just about shipping fast but in the right niches and opportunities too.

I should launch more *different* bets, even while I continue to build and grow my existing products.

I like how [@daniel_nguyenx](https://twitter.com/daniel_nguyenx/status/1672952233401647104?s=20) talked about it here:

> Launching more is a valid strategy. Though I believe “blindingly launching more” won’t make us better entrepreneurs. Between a) putting all your effort into a bad idea and b) launch as many products as possible, there should be a good middle ground. Launch a few small-scale products short term while doing customer development/validation for a longer-term one. This is what I’ve been doing. I’m still trying to validate a B2B SaaS idea that could potentially reach $10k MRR. In the meantime, I’m launching multiple “fun” products: BoltAI and a couple other. All under a same category: business productivity.

Blindly launching fast is one of those rookie mistakes every indie has to learn via trial by fire. And I like Daniel's approach of small scale, short term bets alongside a longer term big bet. Best of both worlds! I'm somewhat doing that already and plan to dive into that approach even more.

Now looking for a new short term small scale bet to bite into!

But tracking my writings and tweets where I mention wanting to try a new project, I've been thinking and talking about it for a few months now. That's overthinking already. I need to just try and launch stuff.

Anything.

Just ship more. Now.

---

> \* New distribution channels for my plugins project:
> - Substack
> - Twitter
> - Discord
> - Tumblr
> - IG
> - Tiktok
> - Sponsorship ads (jannis, ayush, katrin, mark x 2, zite, kevon)
> - Upsells
> - SEO - domaining,
> - Lemon Squeezy, Payhip
> - Affiliates on Gumroad, LS
> - PPP on Gumroad
> - Guest posts on Starrt