Lifelog

I can't stop thinking about this question that James Clear asked in his [latest newsletter](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/december-15-2022):

What is your relationship with self-discipline?
What is your relationship with self-forgiveness?

That pairing of questions is so perfect. Self-discipline and self-forgiveness, like yin and yang, like fire and ice.

Self-discipline is what people often think they need when it comes to building a wholesome habit streak, say daily writing. Self-forgiveness is the other half of the equation people don't know about. You need some self-discipline to get started on a streak. But you also need self-forgiveness if you happen to break it. Breaking the streak doesn't make the habit any less wholesome, but it does feel sucky for a while, because that's how streaks work (as a disincentive). Self-forgiveness is the balm that soothes that suckiness, so that you'll bounce back and keep going all over again.

Self-discipline is putting in your best effort every day; self-forgiveness is forgiving yourself if you tried but wasn't good enough to win.

Self-discipline is being hard on yourself today. Self-forgiveness is being soft on yourself yesterday.

Self-discipline is the father. Self-forgiveness is the mother.

Too much self-discipline and you get too uptight or stressed out. Too much self-forgiveness and you get too lazy or ineffective.

Reflecting on myself: I'm weighted more in self-discipline. I could do with more self-forgiveness. My relationship to self-discipline vs self-forgiveness isn't balanced. And it's time to balance that out. As much as I practice self-discipline seriously, I got to also practice self-forgiveness as seriously.

That way, like the twin wings of a bird, I can truly soar.

The past few weekly recaps revealed an interesting trend. I'm filling out entire pages full of ideas for my Plugins For Carrd project.

It's like I'm sensing so many opportunities, chancing on new ideas for plugins, discovering business ideas to try, and things to optimise for Plugins.

But here's the weird thing:

I'd decided to drop my main project and no longer have any main projects.
I'd decided that all my projects will stay as small bets, even if they get big.
I'd decided to spend more time on Plugins For Carrd, even if it stays a small bet.

I'm not sure how the newfound opportunities figure in my decisions to keep things small, but everything about the reality seems to be contradicting these decisions.

I'm spending more time, yet I call it a small bet?
I'm working on it mostly, yet it's not my main project?
I have a deluge of new opportunities and ideas, yet I care about it being big or small?
I've been pulled forward all along by it, yet I'm telling myself to not push?

Am I in denial about the project? Indulging in self-deception or protecting some part of my ego here?

Or do we always have to conflate effort spent to a project's priority/size?

I think I've spent lots of time and effort on previous projects with huge expectations, yet nothing to show for. Perhaps I can now try spending *some* time and effort with little/zero expectations, yet show some degree of results/success.

Or maybe I'm simply not used to working hard on a product pulling me forward, while reining in my expectations and emotions for it?

I have many questions. More questions than answers.

Many contradictions and paradoxes.

I'm not sure where I'm going with this. Writing to figure it out and mirror back the hard questions to myself...

I asked a [question on Twitter](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1601215575828492298) about the pros and cons of discounts, and learned so much from everyone:

> "Discounts devalue your product, erodes trust." - True, or false?
>
> When would discounts be okay?
> When would it devalue/erode?

Here's me summarizing and trying to do justice to everyone's contributions:

### When discounts devalue your product
- When it's perpetually on discount (e.g. Udemy). People come to expect the discounted price as the true price, and no one would want to pay full price anymore. It also erodes trust as customers catch on that it's just a form of sales manipulation.
- Offering one simply because someone asked. This gives customers the impression that it's actually worth less.
- When the quantum for the discount is too high, e.g. 80%. Again, it hints at customers that the true value is lower for you to be willing to sell it at that price.

### When discounts are okay, or even beneficial, increase value/trust
- For purchase power parity. That's a discount that might in fact increase trust because it show you're being considerate to people in lower purchase power locales. Kindness is always good for biz.
- Timing and frequency matters. When it's occasional, or for celebratory occasions, like Black Friday, product/company anniversary, or to celebrate achieving a milestone of X number of users. People are more open to it and less chance existing customers will feel it's unfair since it's to 'celebrate' an occasional occasion. Maybe 5 or less per year might be a good rule of thumb.
- Discounts are often given only to new customers, and leave the existing customers out of the picture, which is a wasted opportunity to build more loyalty. So also give existing loyal customers something special, like beta access to some hot new feature or also a discount for subscriptions.
- When it's aligned to your brand, product, positioning, pricing, business model, market, price sensitivity of your customers, etc (e.g. "no discounts ever" Apple vs "always on discount" Udemy)
- When it's for a certain type of product among different products of one business, e.g. lead magnets. Any price point to acquire a customers at, is better than $0.
- When planning a price increase, give a discount for a week/month to anyone to get it at the last price. Be open and honest about the price rise, and the discount you can give right now. This move doesn't erode trust but increase it, because it shows you care for customers.
- Give a discount when upselling/cross-selling. When your customer buys a product, they get recommended related products at a discount. Or even cross-bundling discounts with other creators!

*What other situations would discounts be okay vs devaluing?*

Just minor text updates to the writing prompts, to test if the pipeline still works!

And to fix the announcement banner with new Google App Script link

I asked ChatGPT this question: "I have a goal to write at least 100 words every day. Please suggest a daily task list to help me achieve that goal."

What do you think of the reply? Legit? Was surprised it gave good standard answers 😆

"I may not have gone where I intended to go, but I think I have ended up where I needed to be." – Douglas Adams

This seems to be a recurring lesson in my indie solopreneur journey. Or even in life.

It always starts off with ambitions, aspirations and goals. Very specific goals. Very targeted means to get there. A purposeful stance I adopt going into it. And sometimes I do get there the way I intended, but the satisfaction isn't always commensurate with the achievement. Something feels off. I've won trophies in school where I wasn't thrilled on receiving it. I redpointed climbing projects where I felt more relieved than joyous. I achieved revenue targets for one of my businesses but got burned out.

Yet when I did not go where I intended to go but chanced upon buried treasure, I feel blessed and overjoyed. I wandered down streets in foreign countries feeling lost and not in the direction I feel I should be, yet discovered beautiful places and neighbourhoods that are etched in my memory for life. Indie side projects that have a life of its own and pull me forward despite my original intentions are often my best performing products. I never expected to meet a girl (or any girl) at the office, yet I did, and one thing led to another and now I married her and had a lovely child with.

Every time I ended up where I needed to be without intending to, there's joy.

Chance = Yay
Stance = Meh

Makes me think: Why set any goals or intentions at all? 🤔

I asked ChatGPT to convince me to start a daily writing habit in the voice of Shakespeare.

What do you think? Legit? 😆

Seeing all the indie hacker add GPT-3 to their apps is giving me major FOMO. [ChatGPT](https://chat.openai.com) had been the hot trending topic on the internet the past weeks. And you can actually train a version of the AI to suit your apps. The docs make it sound pretty [easy to do](https://openai.com/blog/customized-gpt-3/). So that got me thinking:

How would I use it? What AI-powered features would I add?

Just to brainstorm, here's my own list:

- An app to generate prompts for writing, based on your past writings. Paste a link to your Medium, Substack or Lifelog profile, and it spits back writing prompts and ideas based on the words and analytics of each post.
- A social good app to help laypeople find all public assistance initiatives and programmes by asking a question in plain English. AI gets trained on just the government websites, and the app only shows results from those sites.
- A conversational AI chatbot that gets trained on your SaaS's documentation and blog content, and only replies based on those content.
- A mental health bot app that chats with you based on your past journal writings.
- A speech writing app that helps you write speeches for people in the style and tone of voice based on their past speeches, e.g. write speech in voice of Donald Trump 😂

If you could create an AI-powered app, what app would you create?

I asked ChatGPT to convince me to start a daily writing habit in the voice of Donald Trump.

What do you think? Legit? 😆

So much of sleep quality has got to do with calming down before actually sleeping.

Yes there's stuff you should note *during* sleep—like thermal comfort—to ensure you sleep well. But I'm realising that the main barrier to good sleep quality in our modern lives seems to be about what we do *before* sleep, how we settle down the mind and body.

Our always on culture keeps us alert right to the minute before we drop off to sleep. All that blue light from our phone screen, TV and home lights in the evening and at night doesn't help. We mindlessly watch content that keeps us up till late, keeping our brains in wakefulness mode. Some even work out 2-3h before bed because that's the only time we have after work.

We had basically forgotten what good sleep hygiene is:

- Wind down routines 1-2h before bed to settle down
- Drink beverages like camomile tea to help you relax
- Do things that don't require electricity, e.g. read, talk, journal
- Meditate or stretch before bed to slow down
- No screens in evening
- Switch to warm lights in the house
- Dim down the lights in evening
- No exercise within 2-3h of bedtime
- Do relaxation breathing exercise upon lying down to relax more
- Chat with your family or partner to release any emotional energy you're keeping in
- Do quick journaling to download thoughts that's still on your mind, that you promise yourself to come back tomorrow
- Left field stuff: Use the Leela Inner Peace or Calm & Rest quantum energy cards

*What else can we do to calm down before sleep?*

Copying 90% of an existing business with 10% unique spin is so underrated.

Same reason why there's 10 different brands of orange juice in the supermarket all containing the same fruit inside.

There's always more room in the market than we assume, and people like more choices.

Yet for some reason many don't do it out of personal ego or pride. Or worse: They go the other extreme and clone entire websites/apps.

That got me thinking:

I should put my money where my mouth is and do it.

But thinking through, I did try it before:

- One 90:10 product is Sheet2Bio. It's 90% similar to all the incumbents like Linktree and Bio.Link, but the 10% differentiation is just in the Google Sheets as CMS. But it didn't do quite so well, or at least I haven't yet found the right value proposition for it and distribution channel.
- Lifelog is totally a 90:10 product too. It's building off what 200wordsaday was, with an added spin around writing about goals.
- Keto List Singapore is a 90:10 spin from NomadList, where the 10% is the targeting for keto folks in Singapore. It performed average in the initial few years.
- Sweet Jam Sites is so obviously a 90:10 spin from the conventional web design agency, but targeted for JAMstack sites. It never quite took off.
- Outsprint Design is 90% a consultancy service at it's base, with just 10% differentiation on business model, pricing, offering, and was my very first business that did well.

Indeed now that I ran through my key products, most of them are copied! 90% copied. Some hits, most misses. But that's the nature of the game. Copying guarantees nothing, just speed to market and validated market.

Goes to show, it's so easy to start products by 90% copying. But being truly unique and standout is a lot harder than you think.

Though not that being unique it matters all that much...

A gem from one of my favourite email newsletters of all time – the 3-2-1 newsletter from [James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/december-8-2022):

> “Look for situations where the energy is already flowing downhill. Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect. Create products that tap into a desire people already have. Work on projects that play to your strengths. And then, once the potential of the situation is already working for you, add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft. Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back. The idea is to sprint downhill, not grind uphill.”

“Sprint downhill, not grind uphill” is such a great and better way to describe this definition of [product-market fit](https://golifelog.com/posts/being-pulled-forward-with-product-market-fit-1669257663638) that I like to use – being pulled forward by a product.

Because that's how it feels like physically. With Lifelog and Sheet2Bio, I feel like I'm grinding uphill. With Carrd plugins, I feel like I'm sprint downhill. There's a significant and remarkable difference to how either *feels*.

In fact, let's run down the list of attributes that Mr Clear provided and compare that to how it feels for Carrd plugins:

- “Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect.” – I help people with their Carrd issues, and they are thankful or reciprocate. And so far, customers are reasonable and respectful of what they seek support for.
- “Create products that tap into a desire people already have.” – Carrd has some feature gaps which plugins plug well. Beyond gaps, I made plugins that's considered nice-to-have but people desire, e.g. the confetti plugin.
- “Work on projects that play to your strengths.” – It plays to my strengths because I know how to code, but not that good a coder to be a professional enterprise one. Helping folks with code snippets with limited scope and minimal functionality works to my favour. I also love using Carrd, and that adds to my strengths too.
- “...Add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft.” – I find myself willingly pulled forward by the work. Someone asks a question in a community forum, and I dive straight into it. Even though I have other work to do. There's something about helping others solve a painful problem that I'm fueled by.
- “Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back.” – I'm not sure I'm outworking everyone in the Carrd ecosystem but I certainly not wanting to take this "wind on my back" for granted. I still want to work on it and improve things. But even while this project is pulling me forward, I'm not making it as my main project but keeping it in side project status. That way I stay on my toes while not putting too much expectations on it.

What a great analogy. So much to fit in there.

Product-market fit is sprinting downhill, not grinding uphill.

I’ve always believed I needed a deliberate practice in anything I want to learn or get good at. Don’t just practice for 10,000 hours blindly, but be intentional about what you’re learning and be deliberate about how to improve and iterate.

While I’ve since moved away from deliberate practice as a sufficient formula for any sort of success as an entrepreneur, that’s not to say I don’t need any deliberate practice at all. It’s necessary, just not sufficient.

As an entrepreneur, how do you practice to get better at this entrepreneurship thing? What do you practice?

Cue the hidden benefit of doing a portfolio of small bets. Of chasing having so called shiny objects syndrome.

The more small bets you take, the more practice you get. The more products, services you launch and run, the more boots-on-the-ground experience you get on entrepreneurship. The more pivots you do for each product and business, the better you get at entrepreneurship

That’s why 2nd or 3rd time founders are looked upon differently from 1st time founders.

You’re an entrepreneur. You’re in the business of starting and running businesses. That’s your practice.

And practice makes perfect.

I wrote about getting some Black Friday deals for [quantum tech for sleep](https://golifelog.com/posts/quantum-tech-for-sleep-1669592548893) to help with my poor sleep quality.

And it arrived today!

The [Leela quantum energy frequency cards](https://leelaq.com/product/leela-quantum-frequency-cards/) are credit card sized metal cards that are charged with powerful, positive frequencies by world-renowned healers. I got the the calm and rest card to help with my sleep. What they said about it:

> The Calm & Rest frequency was designed and intended to support a much more relaxed and deeper calm and rest. Leela Quantum Tech is neither in the medical field, nor intends to be, so we also refrain from making any health claims. We can only pass on what others say about it. All test persons so far have reported that within about 1-5 minutes clearly noticeable relaxation occurred, that some described as if the Sandman came and did his magic. Several people tested it while still being in a conversation. After 5 minutes they had to put the card away so as to not want to go to bed right away. Then they picked up the card again when they were generally ready to go to bed and had very good night of sleep, deeper than normal. No morning issues were reported at all since the frequency disappears fairly quickly when you put the card away.

So right before bed I took it out, held it and then placed it under my pillow. I suspect reading those online reviews might have gave me expectations because I kept waiting for that sleepy feeling to wash over me, like some sleeping pill. But that didn't happen at all.

I just kind of went into sleep normally, at my usual sleep time (9:15pm) - not early like at 8:30pm. Had to get up once to go to the bathroom at 2:30am. Woke up at 4:45am as per my usual alarm. Here's my sleep chart:


- Sleep score: 82%
- In bed: 7h29m
- Asleep: 7h20m
- Asleep after 8min
- Heart rate: 78bpm
- Wake up mood: OK

Interestingly, I didn't feel too tired or sleepy 1h after waking. The sleep chart seems to be pretty good too - the peaks are regularly spaced and low (means normal undisrupted sleep cycles), with the only awake peak when I went to the bathroom. I was in bed for 7h29m and actually asleep for 7h20m, so overall that's means the sleep quality was quite good. In the past, 7+h of sleep usually trends with 70+% sleep score, so I think the 82% score was quite accurate. For contrast, just yesterday I was in bed for a similar period of time at 7h10m, but only asleep for 6h40m, and only got 74% score.

So I slept better last night with the sleep card. But was it a coincidence? How would I know?

This was just the first night. More observations to come!

I was inspired by what [@searchbound](https://twitter.com/searchbound/status/1598384995919446017) buying up descriptive domains of emojis with high search volume, and I went and did the same for emojis related to my products.

> Some context: Peter's a domainer, and his mode of operation is buying descriptive domains and building useful websites on them, usually job boards, e.g. VidaliaOnions.com, RanchWork.com, SEOjobs.com, BirthdayParties.com

I bought writingemoji.com (2.1k monthly search vol) and writinghandemoji.com (300 monthly search vol) for Lifelog. And plugemoji.com (1.0k mthly search vol) for Plugins For Carrd.

The hope is that I can somehow use them to generate organic search traffic for their respective products. To be honest, I don't know if it'll work! The search volume isn't super high unlike for heart emoji – 160k searches. But it sure sounds fun, and might be a good way to play around with tools and lead gens aka "side project marketing".

Other ideas:

- Promote my other products/side projects
- Affiliate links, e.g. to a Carrd subscription or to my Carrd templates
- Show ads from Google (but unlikely)
- Show ads of other indie hackers
- Collect emails for my products

Fun experiment! Let's see how this unfolds!

“F**k it I’m doing it” is the approach I want to do more of from now on. I want to catch myself saying this more often in the week, month, year.

Because every time a “f**k it” happens, that means I’m taking a chance, risking something. It means I’m taking the leap of faith out of my comfort zone to try something I’m not 100% competent in or certain about. It means I’m not over-thinking it, no paralysis by analysis.

It can feel disconcerting at first, because I’m more used to being intentional and purposeful. “F**k it” doesn’t at all feel intentional. It feels more like a puppy chasing after a car – it wouldn’t know what to do even if it caught up to the car and got a firm bite on it. “F**k it” means fortuitous.

But that’s what embracing opportunity feels like. That’s what following my nose and acting on intuition to a chaotic environment feels like. That’s what Bayesian thinking feels like.

Maybe it’ll end with nothing. There’s definitely a high chance of nothing fruitful emerging from chasing random cars on the street. But as with probabilistic approaches, more is more. And the more I go “F**k it”, the higher the probability of getting more wins.

So more “f**k it”, less “sit on it”.

I passed 700 days here on Lifelog recently. That’s almost 2 years of unbroken daily writing. Some thoughts:

Simple is best
I got a simple system for my content flywheel going. Telegram saved messages for collecting notes, ideas and links. Daily writing here on Lifelog to process those ideas and thoughts. I like that simplicity. Big note-taking systems using Notion and Roam never quite worked for me, even though it’s so popular. I’m glad I found a simpler way that worked for me that’s sustainable. That last line is key to longevity I feel.

The payoff is the process
The payoff is the process. I can take all day to talk about all the benefits of writing. Clarity. Content library. Connections. But those are after the fact benefits. The direct payoff is just the process of writing something down every day. Something. Anything. It feels nice. I reconnect with myself. That’s it.

Every day is still hard
Yet despite having systems, it never gets easier. Some days I still struggle to know what to write. Today was an example. Every now and then I get reminded of just how much of an infinite game this is. We’re never done done.

Doubtlessness
Despite how hard it can get, I seldom ever question why I do this. There was probably a period of time early on in my daily writing journey where I had doubts. Am I chasing a streak? I would ask. What’s the point of writing some random sh*t every day? Who would read? Why do I bother? All those questions, GONE. After 700 days streak—and more if you count the 2 year streak before I started on this streak—all those doubts are gone. I know I want to do this. And it’s not just because I’m committed. But because it’s gotten to be such a core part of me, like eating and breathing, that I no longer doubt it. Now that’s something. When was the last time you built a habit outside of normal survival habits like eating, drinking that you reached this level of doubtlessness? I can’t recall other habits I have that I’ve done with such unwavering consistency. Not even meditation. Not even mindfulness. Not even my hobbies.

There. 700 days. Well done, me.

Lately I'm been sleeping poorly. Again.

Every time when my sleep gets bad, 9 out of 10 times I know it's because I veered off my sleep fundamentals. It's not even about using the latest sleep biohacking tech or supplements. When the core basics are off, no tech can help.

And thinking through, I am indeed breaking many sleep fundamentals:

- Late dinner. Eating within 1-2h of sleeping affects sleep quality. And I eat late because i work late.
- Late cut-off for work. Usually I have an alarm reminder to get me off my compueter by 4pm. But usually I linger a bit till 5pm. Lately, I'm working till past 8pm. Baaad idea. The extra screen time and blue light, the ensuing late dinner, all clocks up to poor sleep later.
- Screentime at night, and before sleep. Usually once I stop work, I don't check my phone. But lately I'm doomscrolling after that, and even right before bed. The blue light isn't helping with getting me in the my
- Slacking off on morning walk and exercise. Exercise always helps with sleep. Sometimes I'm not physically tired enough at the end of the day, and it makes it harder to fall asleep.
- Stress. Recent consultancy gigs had been somewhat stressful, and that impacted sleep. On top of that, I'm working later into the day and through weekends. Not enough time to decompress.
- Too much caffeine. I recently switched to drinking local coffee, which is a stronger brew. And sometimes drinking it past 2-3pm.

This seems to be a lesson I circle back pretty often. You're never *done* done, even though you've learned it once. There's always new seasons, new challenges, new lessons, or old lessons relearned in new ways.

Sleep is such a infinite game.

Ready, shoot, aim.

That's how I'm going to do it from now on for my portfolio of small bets approach. Credits go to [@jasenf](https://twitter.com/jasenf/status/1598143751066914816) for the phrase!

In case you missed it:

Not "ready, aim, shoot", but "ready, shoot, aim."

Why shoot first, aim later?

This reminded me of the [Cynefin framework](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cynefin_framework):


Because for most new products, we're operating in the **chaotic** zone. Cause and effect are unclear and confusing. Responding based on prior knowledge has no guarantees. There's no way to truly validate a business or product idea until you actually launch it. [Validation is a mirage](https://world.hey.com/jason/validation-is-a-mirage-273c0969), as Jason Fried nicely put it:

> If you want to see if something works, make it. The whole thing. The simplest version of the whole thing – that’s what version 1.0 is supposed to be. But make that, put it out there, and learn. If you want answers, you have to ask the question, and the question is: Market, what do you think of this completed version 1.0 of our product?
>
> Don’t mistake an impression of a piece of your product as a proxy for the whole truth. When you give someone a slice of something that isn’t homogenous, you’re asking them to guess. You can’t base certainty on that.

That's why we use small bets in such chaotic situations. Because we want to act-sense-respond. Act first and fast by scoping something small, and make little steps to get to small wins. And from acting, we get data where we can make sense of the situation, and then respond to try to put more order in place and transform the situation from chaos to complex.

The problem is most people try to sense-categorize/analyze-respond. They assume launching a new business to be "known knowns" and "knowns unknowns", in the simple or complicated zone, where best practices are known to work, and cause and effect are straightforward. And when things go awry, they externalise and blame luck, the market, or their competitors. Most failures come from oversimplifying the problem into a domain that it is not.

So don't do ready, aim, shoot; sense, analyze, respond.

Ready, shoot, aim. Act, sense, respond.

No lessons. No threads. The payoff is the process.