Lifelog

I've always liked this particular definition of product-market fit:

When you get pulled forward by the product, instead of constantly pushing with little to no results.

But I've never quite sat down and thought through what it really looks like, so here goes – a mix of real world experiences and opinions, based on my journey running the only product that's pulling me forward - [Plugins For Carrd](https://plugins.carrd.co):

### What it truly means to be pulled forward due to product-market fit:

- When people want to help you succeed, like telling you great opportunities or connecting you to the right people with the opportunities. E.g. just yesterday someone tried to connect me to collaborate with another Carrd creator. Just today, someone told me to create keyword alerts on Twitter for "carrd", so that I can engage and share links - *why didn't I think of that before?*
- When I don't do much marketing yet the sales continue to come in. True story for my plugins project. The first 1-2 years I didn't do much active marketing, because it was a side project. But yet the sales kept coming despite.
- When I'm constantly pulled forward by new ideas and opportunities, to the point where I feel like I'm just reacting reflexively (in a good way). E.g. I saw someone do a RT hack to the Black Friday launch tweet, and immediately I had to just go tweak my launch tweet before it got sent out. Or someone asked a question about how to create a feature or solve an issue in Carrd, and I. Have. To. Go. Create. It. Now.
- When customer enquiry/support gets overwhelming. Ok not there yet for me, but even now with 3-4 sales per week, I'm feeling the additional customer support load. Imagine when I'm doing hundreds of sales a week or day!
- When I enjoy the work. Ok this is more founder-product fit but I feel it does link back over to product-market fit, because to make the product fit the market you need to iterate and improve it over time, and it's only sustainable over long term if I enjoy the work. Work like creating new plugins, helping people with their Carrd problems, talking to others about Carrd.

*What other things do you think indicates product-market fit?*

A gem of a tweet from James Clear:

“Mastery requires both impatience and patience. The impatience to have a bias toward action, to not waste time, and to work with a sense of urgency each day. The patience to delay gratification, to wait for your actions to accumulate, and to trust the process.” – @JamesClear

Replace “mastery” with “success” and now I understand better why my lack of results in my indie solopreneur journey been frustrating for me – because it requires navigating a delicate tension between patience and impatience, when all the while I’ve been just full-on impatient in everything.

That impatience is necessary, but not sufficient. My bias towards action helped me make lots of progress in terms of output, but not outcomes. The outcomes bit is where patience is necessary. Yet patience in results alone is not sufficient either. If I didn’t hustle and continually improve, patience would just lead nowhere.

Both are necessary, but either on their own is sufficient for success. And I got to hold both polarities together, with nuance. It’s like holding a slippery fish – not too tight a grip, but not too loose either, else the fish will find a way to jump back into the sea.

Expedite everything. Expect nothing.

Little epiphany today: For the past 10 years since going self-employed, stress had always been the root cause of all my welbeing issues.

Relationship issues? Stress.
Chronic ailments? Stress.
Junk food issues? Stress.
Poor judgement? Stress.
Sleep problems? Stress.
Weight gain? Stress.
Low energy? Stress.
Gut issues? Stress.
Brain fog? Stress.
Injuries? Stress.
Stress? Stress.

Stress within a certain dosage is fine. It's stress that's not managed, relieved and let go off that becomes chronic and toxic.

And I've been trying to manage all the secondary problems that emerge due to stress, but doing nothing to tackle the root cause which is stress itself. No wonder I feel like I'm constantly threading water and only barely keeping my head above water. I've just been playing whack a mole on the symptoms all along!

So what's the external factors causing of all that unresolved stress?

- Not enough money, gigs drying up during pandemic
- New role, new responsibilities as father and provider
- Not getting the results I want as an indie solopreneur
- Not exercising, taking breaks, decompressing

Now I know. Many things I can influence and act on. A few things I can't control and change.

Act accordingly.

Used to worship the MRR gods, but now I wanna be this guy 😈


Truth is, showing MRR progress no longer makes sense to me.

It’s a relic of SaaS indie hacking, which I followed just simply because other indies are doing it. The only MRR I have right now is Lifelog, which only accounts for part of my portfolio of bets. My main income stream continues to be from my consulting, which comes in bigger, one-time sums but infrequently (like a few times a year). My Carrd plugins are small, one-time payments but more regular through the month. And also random one-time, seldom repeatable gigs like website design etc.

MRR is no longer an accurate indicator of my progress because I’m so diversified. I need something that shows that diversity… or not.

Truth is, more and more I’m questioning if sharing revenue updates and milestones are even helpful. Is it more harmful than helpful? How does it benefit me other than getting more likes and impressions? Does it even help others? Do I want people to follow me because of my revenue?

Increasingly the answers to those questions are – No.

Minimal downside, minimal upside. But the downside will only increase as the revenue goes up. Many indies beyond $10k are starting to stop showing their metrics too as it gives competitors a one-way intel into your business.

Also coming from Singapore/Asia, it always feels weird to openly share how much you’re making. Growing up it’s always been culturally taboo, and if you make a handsome amount of money, talking about it can come across as a douchebag. It invites jealousy, envy, and unwanted attention.

Right now, I’m thinking of at most showing annual revenue, or none at all… 🤔

But leaning more towards just nothing.

There I said it. I don't know how things had evolved to this stage, but I'm glad I added more nuance to that naive youthful idealism.

Sure, money *beyond* a point doesn't buy happiness. If you're shooting to be a billionaire to be happy, you're overreaching. But money does buy happiness, to a point and through many things. And the reality is, that point is a lot higher than we think, and we can buy a lot more happiness with money than we want to admit.

Money can buy:

- my products earning revenue makes me happy
- a nice meal outside with my wife, kid and parents, enjoying great food together
- a trip to Bali, Japan or some place we've never been, creating lovely memories
- a staycation where we have fun as a family
- healthy food and supplements that helps us feel healthier and happier
- financial freedom, and not having to stress about money
- sleep tech to help me sleep better, and feel more well rested and happier in the day
- biohacking equipment to help me develop a better quality of life
- courses, tools, conferences to learn new skills, enjoy the love of learning, not just for myself but for my child
- a nice home to shelter not just our bodies but our hearts
- supporting the livelihoods of my loved ones
- decent shoes, clothes to feel confident about myself when out
- a chance at a better life

All these would make me happy.

And there's so much more that money can buy that leads to happiness.

Why did I ever think that money doesn't buy happiness?

Where did I learn that from in my youth when I've not even earned a dime before? Nor suffered the pain of not having enough?

Youthful idealism, borrowed from some lame woke corner of society then (before "woke" even became a thing), taken on wholesale without nuance and understanding, and worst of all, believed with no direct experience to back up any of it.

Don't buy into that bullshit that money doesn't buy happiness.

Money does buy happiness.

And what happiness money can buy is often all the happiness we need to live a happy life.

Finally got on Substack.

👉 jasonleow.substack.com

I’m been meaning to move over from Revue for months. The email deliverability is so bad on Revue – it kept showing up in people’s spam inbox. I learned from the experts that Substack has the best email deliverability amongst the different platforms, so it’s a no-brainer.

But why today? Due to the rumours that Twitter’s going down. If the mothership goes down, I’m sure Revue would too. Moving to Substack that was an initial far-off hedge that’s becoming more real of fulfilling it’s purpose as the Twitter saga unfolds.

It’s also timely because I’ve been meaning to increase the frequency of my newsletter, from monthly to weekly. More real stories and musings from my indie solopreneur journey. I started with a monthly rhythm because I didn’t know if I could do a weekly one, and the last thing I want is to give myself work I hate and begrudge writing it. So I thought, since I’m already writing my monthly reviews anyway, I could repurpose them as sort of an update to those interested in following my indie journey. But now that I’ve published monthly for a while, it’s feeling more doable to up the cadence. Weekly is more engaging for the audience, the experts say, so it’s worth a shot. Besides, I already write pretty regularly about my products here on Lifelog. So it’s really a matter of repurposing some of them over to Substack. And with so much content already written here, I doubt I’ll have any issues making the weekly deadlines. Planning to publish one every Saturday!

Substack Saturdays, it’ll be!

Crazy hypothesis about why my Carrd plugins project clicked:

It’s a small bet project containing many smaller bets within.

It’s started as a side project, a small bet within my portfolio of products. Though I’m now putting more focus into it, I still consider it a side project, a small bet. Within that project itself, I’m making many plugins to sell, each a small bet in its own right. This is where it gets meta – many small bets within a small bet.

Maybe that’s the secret! I get to push out many bets within the project, and test which one works better, which one doesn’t, and make more plugins that work well. For example, because of the success of my free accordion plugin, I made another one in a different design. Likewise for the paid navbar plugin – I made a simple version, it sold well, then based on feedback, I created a separate upgraded version the meganavbar plugin.

The versatility from having many small bets within the Carrd plugins projects also gives me more opportunities to share links to them in online Carrd communities, because they solve different problems and painpoints. My indie twin @ayushtweetshere like to say, “Put more buy buttons on the internet.” So I went to count all the buy buttons for my most successful project so far… There’s THIRTY FOUR of them! So there’s a bit of in-built virality to them.

But of course, not all plugins work well though. Some are too niche, too specialised to have widespread appeal, like the video button plugin. So not everything works, but all in a day of work when it comes to using the diversified small bets approach – expect wins and fails. But the great thing about that is - the wins and fails are small. I don’t spend more than a few days making each plugin. Most of them are done in 1-2 day. In fact the work that takes longer (and less enjoyable) are the tutorials I have to create for each paid plugin.

It’s so interesting to analyse this project, how it has it’s own path that’s not similar to common best practices in indie hacking.

Perhaps that’s the key.

That it finds its own way.

Yesterday was a good day.

I had 4 sales of my Carrd plugins. I never get 4 in a day, that’s why it’s a good day.

I attended my first in-person conference in a long time.
I got to see and try out new technology (yes that Boston robotics dog).
I had a great steak lunch with my 2 design mates.
There were free flat whites all round at the conference.
I meet many familiar faces for the first time - people I worked with remotely for the past 3 years but had never seen face-to-face.
It was a lot of fun at work that I’ve not had in some time.

I just finished well for my non-profit consulting project, and in discussion with more work next year.
I’m working on a smaller gig right now working with a client team whom I really enjoyed working with.
New leads are coming in for my consulting for next year. A tender bid for a government Ministry project. A link up with another. An adjunct lecturing opportunity for next year.
I’m finishing up my consulting for the year, and can’t wait to get back to coding. In fact I’ve already started building a markdown preview mode and a rich text editor for Lifelog.
Got a Black Friday deal for Carrd plugins coming up next week.

It was a good day. A good week. A good past few months.

Things are looking up. Rounding off in a nice way for the year…

And I am truly grateful.

Something I’m doing for my Carrd plugins business that I found super refreshing:

Just help people with expecting any returns.
Just good old customer service.
Just being giving to a fault.

No fancy mind tricks.
No lame shortcuts.
No growth hacks.

Just old school basics.

People like it. I love it. Win-win.

It’s amazing how old school basics like this are so simple, effective and fundamental, yet mostly ignored as advice. Everyone’s wants the shortcut, the silver bullet, the elevator pitch. Just being helpful? Nah boooring.

It’s also a great reminder for myself – this was how I started building my first businesses, and this was how I enjoyed it, worked with it, succeeded with it. Nothing has to change. Just because I create products now, not services, doesn’t mean the old ways are outdated and the new hacks are better. It doesn’t have to. Products now are just a single touchpoint in the entire chain of touchpoints that a customer experience. An experience which also includes services.

In the end, people buy products but like dealing with people. And a pleasant exchange, a helpful reply, a delightful outcome, are critical parts of that.

Sometimes, that's all you need for a good business.

I’m probably weird for doing this… but I like keep my projects alive forever. But always felt peer influenced to abandon it in order to “focus”. If the costs on your attention is zero, do you need to kill it? If the financial costs and effort for maintenance or tech support is low to zero, I just keep them on. Because you’ll never know if the growth opportunity can come later. Sometimes the product failed because it was before its time. Maybe at a later time, the market or something about it will trend and it will get successful then.

I’ve personally experienced this twice.

The Grant Hunt bot was a social impact project I made early on in my indie journey. It’s a directory of local social impact grants that non-profits can search on to find grants to fund their social good programmes. I made it, it didn’t quite get popular or viral, and then I just left it alone for a few years, no coding, no marketing it. Then later when the pandemic arrived, a philanthropic funder wanted to fund it to be updated to the latest grants so that non-profits can benefit during that time of crisis. If I had killed it early, I wouldn’t have had that chance to revive it for the pandemic!

The other project was Sheet2Bio. Truth is, Sheet2bio was like the third iteration of an idea. It started with me making a Carrd plugin that pulled data from a Google Sheet to display some data and charts. I left it there after making it for fun. Then after talking to a friend in F&B, that evolved into Restobio, a bio link contact page for the F&B industry. Restaurants could update their Google Sheet easily that then updates the contact bio link page to share important links to their website, order page and social media pages. I built out 1 bio link page for 1 local restaurant. But I wasn’t from the F&B industry, so I didn’t know how to market or grow it, so it went cold. But I kept it alive and left it alone. Finally, early this year I had an idea to make a Google Sheet version of the personal bio link page, and launched it. Got many users, and 1-2 paid ones. Wasn’t a great success, but it fared better after 3 pivots! Who knows what the next iteration will bring!

So moral of the story:

Hoarding is good.

Hoard your projects, if costs are low. Let it lie low and wait for the ripe opportunity to pounce back to life.

They say, you miss 100% of the shots you don’t take. But you can’t take the shot if you killed it too early.

I lazed through the entire Sunday morning yesterday in bed, just chillaxing and watching Youtube videos. My wife and kid were away at her mum’s. It was chilly from the rain. I snuggled up in bed, under a toasty blanket, just consuming cheap entertainment.

Lame, I know.

What a super unproductive way to spend a nice Sunday. And probably unhealthy too – so much screen time and cheap dopamine.

But I enjoyed it immensely. I realised I’ve not done that since… I can’t even remember the last time I had the time and space to do that. I’ve not given myself the permission to just be lazy for so long. Even on my day off, I’m working, caring, fulfilling obligations and responsibilities. For the past 3 years.

I need more of this.

It’s not about chillaxing in bed watching Youtube. It’s not about being entertained, nor the content being consumed. It’s not about being alone.

It’s about giving myself permission to just be lazy. GUILT-FREE permission.

So much of my stress is wrapped up in my roles and duties. Letting myself off the hook for a day or half, is one of the best ways to decompress and manage those stress levels.

Be lazy.

"Big companies and repeat entrepreneurs struggle to go from zero to one because they refuse to restart at zero." – [@naval](https://twitter.com/naval/status/1578435113766961153)

This is something I've been musing over, something I feel I want when it comes to my indie solopreneur journey.

*What does it truly feel like to restart from zero?*

- Spending the past 3 months away from building my products gave some perspective. I guess this is the kind of detox that helps you restart. Maybe 3 months isn't enough to actually go all the way back to zero, but too much and I fear I might forget altogether.
- To read other advice, tips and hacks on the internet and go, "We'll try and see" instead of lapping it up like a puppy dog. Healthy skepticism.
- To get disapproval and negative opinions from others—peers, friends, even folks you look up to—and not flinch. Same healthy skepticism.
- To have beginner's mind and ask "Why not?" instead of "No that's not how it's usually done." I kept thinking back at a decade ago when I just started and I was just making things up, improvising as I went. I want to go back full circle, to that blank slate.
- Not having assumptions that I know anything at all, and not having expectations that things will happen how I envision it.
- A state of relaxed focus, a kind of flow state, where I not too tight in my focus, yet also loose enough to look up and about, to see other opportunities popping up. Even relaxed enough to go for stroll online or offline to flaneur and wander.

Restarting from zero, now.

One of the ‘secrets’ to @levelsio’s productivity is how he git commits straight to production with CMD+D:

"I commit with CMD+Enter git shortcut, no commit messages, straight to production. When I am coding I might be committing 3 times per minute or more etc. Uptime 99.99% no issues. I’m a bit different though 😅 This isn’t advice"

That resonated because that’s what I want to do too. I remember when I was coding Sheet2Bio, I enjoyed the process so much because I could play with code on Codepen, then edit the code directly in Github web and commit directly to production with a click of a button (Netlify takes care of everything). None of that nonsense of logging into Heroku, firing up terminal, writing a commit note, waiting for code to bundle while praying that nothing breaks, deploying to a staging site, and then repeat everything for production. All even if it’s just a single line of code, or a random style change.

That whole process is a barrier to constantly improving and working on my projects, like Lifelog. Whereas for Sheet2Bio when I was building it I was committing multiple times per day, because it’s all just HTML, CSS and Javascript!

I think Sheet2Bio opened up my eyes to what I prefer when it comes to coding my own products, even if that’s not considered industry best practice. @levelsio own self-taught approach resonated because it showed how it’s possible to build products that way.

With serverless and edge computing becoming more mainstream and convenient, I can imagine this approach to be easy to adopt.

Is it possible to build secure, performant SaaS using HTML, CSS and vanilla Javascript? No Javascript frameworks, no bundles, no npm. No installing of special software just to start coding, or to deploy. Everything goes to Github, and something like Netlify or Cloudflare will continuously deploy on a code commit.

Can’t wait to experiment more in this!

I hated a 9-5, so I quit and started working 24/7 on my own products. 😅🙃

The irony isn’t lost on me. And the funny thing is, this story is way more common amongst founders than we admit. But I’m a willing victim here. Truth is, ownership of my misery changes everything. I own all the pains and gains. I can adjust my schedule and workload if I should so choose otherwise, not at the mercy of someone else. Everyone’s less free due to having to work, but I get to choose what will make me less free.

It’s the freedom.

Of course the caveat is: the 24/7 is not the aim here. It’s a consequence of (hopefully) a founder in the early stages of his startup. Burnout is real. Not here to make small of the ill effects of 24/7 hustling. No badges given here for coding late at night till early morning, working on weekends, missing out on major life events like your child’s birthday or wedding anniversary. I do recognise the early days building a business needs some hustling, but I’m constantly seeking to balance with family and personal time. Hard but trying.

I’m only human. When I do have to burn the candle on both ends, I whine and grumble. But taking a step back, I wouldn’t trade it for anything else. I’m living my best life and career, and I want to balance it better all the more to keep having this chance to live it.

The easiest part of it all – working on your own thing often doesn’t feel like work.

I can do this all day.

Black Friday’s coming. Some things I’m looking out for:

• Carrd subscription for 100 sites! I’ve looked forward to the yearly BF sale on Carrd for a few years now. It was 40% last year – a substantial discount in BF land. This time, I’m not just renewing but upgrading too, to 100 sites. Need more space to hold all those templates I’m making and all the expansion plans for my Plugins For Carrd business!

• The defining buys this BF is probably all from Leela Quantum tech. I don’t understand enough about the tech but it seems to have a noticeable effect on me after trying the HEAL capsule and prosperity card. They have 25% off for BF now.

- The [travel bloc](https://leelaq.com/leela-travel-car-bloc/, a quantum energy generator to protect the household from harmful energies and provide vitalizing quantum energy and supportive frequencies for general well-being.
- The abundance card for both me and my wife to help us create abundance in our life, and unblock any scarcity deficits.
- The calm and rest card for sleep. This will be interesting for my sleep biohacking! With such poor quality sleep lately, I’m quite looking forward to experimenting with this.

• The Mute snoring tech starter pack was a nobrainer immediate buy for me as I recognised it solved a clear and present problem for my sleep – my nasal passage narrowing when I lie down, making it hard to breathe and causing the snoring issues I had all along. Mouth taping didn’t work because I still needed to breathe somehow, and I would unconsciously tear them off in my sleep. I’ve been using Mute for some months now, and I can feel an incremental improvement. It’s not a huge lifesaver, but I can feel it helps open up my inner nasal passage a bit more. Definitely worth investing in getting a few more as backups. No BF discount spotted yet!

So what Black Friday buys are you thinking of? Do share!

A list of good reasons to not compare with other indie hackers on Twitter or any social media platform:

### Highlights reels vs reality
I'm comparing their highlight reels with my B-roll reality, their wins with my fails. Everyone airbrushes their projected image on social, so it's not a realistic apple to apple comparison anyway.

### Different stages of progress
I'm comparing people at different stages in their career. You'll never compare the wins or losses of a senior C-suite executive with a junior manager in his first job since college, so why should we compare that way between 2 entrepreneurs? Their 10 year journey to get to that point is not comparable to my 2 year milestone.

### Different starting lines
Unless they went to the same school, had similar upbringing, and same socio-economic environment growing up—basically your biological twin— there's not much basis for comparison. It's not a level playing field, never was, never will be. Someone from a rich family, rich country, great business environment, will always have an unfair edge. Our starting lines are all different.

### Different finishing lines
Everyone has different goals, even if they are direct, near-identical competitors. We start at a different starting lines, and we have a different finishing lines. Entrepreneurship isn't a race where everyone is running on the same track. Hell, we all aren't even in the same race, even for direct competitors! If my goal is about freedom, does it make sense to compare with someone who's goal is to make money? If I had only $5k monthly revenue but I achieved my goal of freedom, am I lesser off than someone with $100k monthly revenue but not yet achieved his goal of $1M?

### Different market conditions
Market conditions, supply and demand, larger economic forces beyond your control, all determine how well your product does. If your product is in a different market from someone else, even if both are indies, there's probably way more factors outside both of your control than we would like to admit. Uncertainty makes the grounds for comparison shaky.

### Different life situations
Everyone's life situation is different. I'm comparing my results from having to care for a toddler kid, being sleep deprived, and having many mouths to feed versus a single guy, no family responsibilities, way lesser time constraints. I'm starting the entrepreneur game in hard mode already, while the rest are in easy mode.

### Big life things vs little tactical things
Comparing the big things simply does nothing productive, and does no good for my mental wellbeing. So why do it? Caveat: Compare the little, tactical things though – like compare how someone markets their product with mine, so that I can learn. If it's strictly learning purposes with no emotions involved, it's okay.

*Any other good reasons we shouldn't compare with others?*

Why bring it back? Because:

"Short-form content to get the Attention
Long-form content to keep the Attention"
- @AlexLlullTW (https://twitter.com/AlexLlullTW/status/1589264849858691072)

Some hits and misses but the results look awesome nonetheless! Don't think I'll ever design my own app icon ever again 🤯

https://www.amazon.sg/dp/B0BLG1F5MW/ref=cbw_us_sg_dp_ags?smid=ARPIJN329XQ0D

OK I’m done with the old approach of working on weaknesses in order to improve and grow.

Maybe it’s just age. Maybe it’s experience.

I don’t know for sure, but I’m getting a nagging doubt that my old ways aren’t working, yet I’m still expecting results (because “show up every day”). That’s Einstein’s definition of insanity.

No more.

I’ve been beholden to that paradigm, because it had worked so well for me in the past. In sports especially. I learned that—as an athlete—you are only as strong as your weakest link. Because performance is a consequence of different attributes coming together – power, endurance, mental qualities. They are all chain-linked and pulling in the same direction like a chain when you’re performing. And where it breaks is always at the weakest link in the chain. People intuitively avoid working on their deficit areas because it feels bad. If someone is has good endurance, they keep using and working on it because it makes them feel good. In sports I’ve gained lots of improvement by working hard on those weak links. That’s how I’ve approached work and career. Focus on deficits, the strengths will take care of themselves.

But I realised this might not be true for indie hacking.

Because in sports there’s rules of the game, and the factors that lead to success are relatively straightforward and predictable. Anyone with the most power, endurance, technical skills and mental prowess wins.

But there’s no such straightforward formula for success in entrepreneurship.

In fact, for every best practice, you can find someone who succeeded without it. Every business 101 fundamental, you can find a business built without it.

You need to go to college, have an MBA. No – college dropouts are now billionaires.
You need lots of venture capital to succeed. No – bootstrapped startups are winning too.
You need an audience. No – ads, SEO, network effects can bring you to profitability too.

In a complex, unpredictable and diversified space like entrepreneurship, there is no weak links. Because there are no rules. No assured attributes that predict winning like in sports. Success is mostly opportunistic and random. Luck plays a major role even though most do not like to admit it.

So there’s opportunity for everyone to win, because the market accepts so much diversity. Just playing to your strengths is sufficient.

Hate money? Don’t bother with unlearn money mindsets. Just do business for my own reasons which I love.

Hate marketing? Then stop doing it. Don’t tweet 3x a day, write 1 thread a week, and all that nonsense. Just be fiercely authentic and genuine, help others, share whatever I feel I want to share and talk about.

Hate all the noise? Don’t worry about best practices and just do what I intuit to be working for me and my business.

Hate the fear of judgement? Don’t worry about how others opine of me. Let them accept me as I come.

I’m so past working on my deficits.

I’m just going to leverage on my strengths and assets, and go.

Strengths > deficits

Biohacking is often very physical or tech-related, but for biohacking stress, I think there's lots of mindset and mental tricks that help. Stoicism is making a comeback recently and the Stoic's practical and inner ways to handle stress that [@dailystoic](https://www.instagram.com/reel/CkoxFiYA4qn/?igshid=MDJmNzVkMjY=) talked about seems to be pretty spot on and relevant for stress management:

1. Focus on what you can control. Most of the thing that stress us out has nothing to do with what we can influence.
2. Prepare for it in advanced - not just do positive visualisation, do negative visualisation. "The blow you can anticipate lands the least heavy." - Seneca
3. Journaling - Write in morning what you're stressed about, and in evening, review how the day went, what you did. Did I really need to be so worried. Did my worry make anything better?
4. Have a hobby, different from work, from kids. Put some of that stress energy to good use.
5. Laugh at life, don't cry about it. Life is absurd rather than terrible.
6. Memento mori - almost nothing is worth worrying about in light of your fragile mortality.

I'm definitely guilty of overthinking things I can't control to the point it is more amplified than it seems. Always asking if it's something outside of my sphere of influence will be helpful in not letting stress run crazy. I just saw a [useful visual](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:6995154047271936000) on what I can control and what I can't:

In my control:
- My boundaries
- My thoughts and actions
- The goals I set
- What I give my energy to
- How I speak to myself
- How I handle challenges

Out of my control:
- The past
- The future
- The actions of others
- The opinions of others
- What happens around me
- What other people think of me
- How others take care of themselves

Having more-than-enough advanced preparation for me definitely helps. For my consulting gigs, I often arrive 1h earlier to settle into the space and be ready. Preparation is also about setting the right expectations and mindset going in. As I've realised recently, [expectations can help, or hinder](https://golifelog.com/posts/expectations-1667690041647) – good to calibrate from the onset.

Writing here is my journaling in a way. But Maybe I should consider something analog and offline, where I can write 100% without inhibition.

I've failed at finding hobbies multiple times. So much that I gave up on hobbies. Maybe the word "hobby" is hindering. Maybe what I need is simply to do something different. Switch up the form. Sit at the desk too much. Go do some work with my hands. Tasks are too intellectual and cognitive? Do something wildly creative for a change – paint, draw, create. Too much solo work? Go work in teams for a short while.

I'm definitely too serious when it comes to life. Laughing at life would help. Having a sense of humour about failures and difficulties, making light of things, having a laugh at myself – all great ways to uncoil that stress spring building up tension within. My shitpost tweets are often attempts at this. Maybe that's why they work so well!

Lastly, memeto mori gives the overview effect on the planet that's our life. Just take a step back and a deep breath, and know that a year from now you might not even remember what you're stressed about today.

Stress biohacking, the Stoic way.

Expectations is spice. It makes things taste better. But used on the wrong thing, it makes things worse.

Expectations get me to my goals faster. If I expect my product to improve 1% every day, I expect that my daily effort will bring me there. If I expect that hard work will eventually get me to my goals, then I will work hard. Cause and effect, and the expectations of that cause and effect.

It works when expectation is aligned to reality. Only when aligned with reality.

But that isn’t always true, and when it’s out of whack, expectations hold you back than push you forward.

If there’s no product-market fit, working hard is working hard on the wrong thing, going in the wrong direction. Expectations that hard work will pay off won’t change the reality that you’re moving in the wrong direction, and will never hit your goals. No amount of reality distortion will change that. The sun will never rise from the west, no matter how much I believe it.

When I expect something to be my main project that will liberate me from 9-5, my expectations would be to keep hammering at it, keep trying to grow it till it does. It’s the Chosen One. I will reach my goal if I had faith and keep going. But it was on the wrong path from the start. No amount of growth hacks, promoting and selling will change that reality. No amount of faith will ever get you there.

So right matching of expectation to product or goal, is mission-critical. Basically, being realistic, and having good judgement to not let what I think I want cloud what’s really happening.

Lifelog suffered that. For too long I’ve expected it to grow just because I expect it to. Because it’s my first ever SaaS, my main project, my Chosen One. So I kept going. I’m pretty stubborn with keeping at things until it hits my goal. But I was so wrong this time. I was blind to the reality and the data I was shown. That it won’t grow till some big changes are made. More features to be built. Less expectations to be had. Little presumptions for MRR growth. Perhaps after that it will stand a chance.

So, no more expectations. It’s holding me and Lifelog back.

I’ll get back to before I had expectations, and just see the product as it is, as what it does, right now.

Just watch and see.