Lifelog

Just saw this insight in [James Clear's newsletter](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/september-29-2022):

"In sports, one of the primary sources of advantage is choosing how to play the game.
In life, one of the primary sources of advantage is choosing which game to play."

For the longest time, I just played the game the same way everyone else played, in sports and in life. I was an athlete and also played lots of sports in school. All sports and games had their own rules, and you didn't get to decide which rules made sense to follow and which ones didn't. We don't get to make the rules, we had to just accept them as they are and win or lose against them. Same for life in those early years. You just went to school, and complied. Those best at compliance get rewarded, gets called a "good boy or girl". Again, no student makes the rules in school. And after years in school, even if you were given the chance to make rules as a student, you wouldn't even know how. This is worse in good students. I was a good student.

So it's easy to imagine the downstream impact... After more than a decade in such an environment, the muscle memory is set, and you go on in work and life the same way. Just following the rules of whatever games you find yourself in. And the only choices or freedom available to us is choosing how to play the game.

*We've never been invited to even consider which game to play in.*

This I find, is the one thing I'm constantly having to unlearn and relearn in entrepreneurship. The hardest thing about entrepreneurship for me had been how there's really no rules. There's not even a standard game.

It's like a footballer, basketballer and golf player came together to play a game with each other based on the game rules they follow separately in their own field, and the only thing they had in common is that they all deal with a round spherical object.

That's entrepreneurship.

And therefore lies the danger – the moment you try to emulate any one of your entrepreneur heroes, you might be unwittingly getting yourself into someone else's game. Where you (again) have to play by someone else's rules. Just like in school.

I want otherwise now.

I feel a strong desire to align this whole entrepreneurship thing to my own inner game. I want to invent my own rules, play my own game.

Sure, I still want to learn from others, feel inspired by stories of other indie solopreneurs. But selectively and mindfully. And with a discerning eye. Collective learning that helps me play my own game better, not get pulled into someone else's game.

So... ready player one (and only)!

What was one thing that you sucked at but grew to be passionate about?

I dare say it’s coding for me.

I truly sucked at it. Like an abusive relationship, I fell in love and fell out of love multiple times. Each time starts with lots of enthusiasm and optimism, but always fizzles out into boredom, then frustration. Every time, we broke up. I told myself, “I’m just not good at this sort of work. It’s too technical, too logical, too much like Math.” I hated it.

But somehow I kept going back. I still wanted to make products, even though I hated coding.

I tried. Then I tried again.

One day, by fluke of luck and circumstances, it stuck. I did #100daysofcode. I made loads of tiny apps that can be made in a day to a few days, for learning. I had a mission to help other writers find a home by building a writing SaaS. I listen to coding podcasts to pivot my identity, not just learn new knowledge.

It crossed the threshold from “I suck at coding. I hate coding.” to “Oh that’s not so bad. I might enjoy this.”

Now, I enjoy the figuring out process. It’s like a fun puzzle, and I don’t rest till I solve it. I often use it to help others, in my Carrd plugins especially.

I can now say, I’m passionate about coding, about developing software.

There’s few things in life where I sucked at something but stuck through it and emerged with passion at the end. In fact, I’m not sure I can come up with anything else besides coding.

But this does show that it is possible… to suck at something but grow to be passionate about.

Sometimes, you don’t need to start with passion.

Sometimes, passion finds you.

Setting intentions for October:

### Gratitude
- I liked how I was grateful for the consulting gig in Sept and just focused on delivering it well. Some love practising gratitude by journaling, but that always felt forced to me. How I prefer to express gratitude – through actions. So maybe Oct can be similar – find something I'm grateful for, and focus on doing it well out of gratitude.
- Not difficult to come up with one. My consulting gig is still ongoing, in the final stages of post-production, report-writing. I'll continue to focus on that.
- On top of it, there's a shorter consulting gig for 1 week in mid Oct - will also focus on being grateful for it.

### Alignment
- [Alignment](https://golifelog.com/posts/alignment-1664233941852) is working. Being genuine in how I want to project myself online and how I live had been a deep source of satisfaction. It feels good. I want to continue aligning to my inner compass this way.
- [After having this epiphany about how I succeed when I help others](https://golifelog.com/posts/i-succeed-when-i-help-others-succeed-1663551944694), I think I'm onto something big here, for myself. That could be the driving mechanism I can make my product(s) succeed. Just find a way to consistently help people directly. The rest will follow.

### Groundwork
- Lay groundwork for product work to come in Nov
- Prepare mentally, think through what I want to do, how I will review and do things differently. I feel a new, different season coming. A new season to how I work on my products, how I show up, how I project myself, how I connect.
- Plan how I will do things differently, not based on what someone successful said but based on real data.

Onwards.

📈 Current MRR (all from Lifelog): $119 (↑$10)
📊 One-off revenue: $351 (↑$6)
💵 Total revenue: $470 (↑$16)
🏦 Total profit: $430 (↑$16) (excl. salary and consulting costs)

👀 Tweet impressions: 240k vs 254k vs 183k
💙 Likes: 2.1k vs 3.1k vs 2.8k
💬 Engagement rate: 3.9% vs 4.2% vs 4.9%
🏡 Profile visits: 36.6k vs 43.1k vs 38.2k
📣 Mentions: 996 vs 1726 vs 1441
👣 New followers: 211 vs 254 vs 141
📧 Emails: 36 (↑4) subscribers

My one goal in September:

Go all in and do well for my consulting gig.

And looking back, I think I achieved that. I prepared myself for the physicality of the consulting by taking self-care seriously, sleeping enough, taking long naps on rest days, eating well, eating more. And then committed my 100% to the consulting work. Feedback from the client had been pretty positive.

I also feel more relaxed and feel less burdened by expectations about growing my products. I like this. It opens up mindspace to have more fun, to take risks, and be opportunistic. That’s how I always preferred to work, and somehow it’s falling into place all on its own. Not sure what changed that led to this.

Overall I’m thankful for a fruitful September, with more opportunities on the horizon. Grateful for being provided for.

New learning about Twitter algorithm. Tweeting alone isn’t enough. I just tried it on the @golifelog Twitter account. Just tweets. 1 quote tweet a day. No liking or replies to other accounts.

I did that for about a month as I was busy with my consulting.

The result? Zero new followers. Zero likes on any of my tweets.

ZERO.

In fact, my follower count started going down because there’s always a base of people were unfollowing.

Then I got less busy, and continued doing the same (1 quote tweet per day) BUT plus liking other tweets. An occasional reply.

The difference is pretty significant: More new follows. People liked my quote tweets.

My hypothesis from this?

The Twitter algo doesn’t show your tweets to your followers if you don’t engage with other accounts.

That’s why just tweeting alone isn’t enough.

Caveat: Of course, if you just like and reply but tweet zero of your own stuff, you won’t give people a chance to know what your account is like, and they’re less likely to follow. So tweets still matter as a basic hygiene practice. It just isn’t the pivotal thing when it comes to growth.

It’s not called social media for nothing. The social aspect is the prime activity, not broadcasting or content creation.

Replies + likes > tweets

People love asking advice from successful people. They all want to know the secrets to their wealth, fame and achievements. How did they do it? What was different about them? How can I be the same?

But here's the thing: ***Successful people are likely the worst people*** to ask advice from. Not because they're bad people in an ethical way. But this:

> Successful people have trouble answering the question "what's the one thing that worked for you?" because they did SO MUCH STUFF it's hard to pinpoint which one worked best. Like shooting 1,000 times and asking which bullet hit. No clue.
>
> – [@OneJKMolina](https://twitter.com/OneJKMolina/status/1574122810154295300)

By their success it's highly likely they are prolific and productive. That's usually what led them to their success. But because they are super productive people, they would have done a lot. Tried many ideas. Executed on loads of hacks. In that complex dynamics of trying so many things in an equally complex business environment, it's likely hard to have 100% certainty which efforts led to which results.

I know. You know.

It's like the saying of throwing spaghetti on the wall and seeing what sticks. You know something stuck. But we can never be sure why, or if it's just [plain dumb luck](https://golifelog.com/posts/its-plain-dumb-luck-all-the-way-down-1663717145073). All you know is to keep trying.

Trying to get some deep insight into that chaos in order to replicate it, is just difficult, if not impossible.

And by the same reasoning, don't believe them if they tell you that ONE thing that led to their success (even if you're the one who asked).

Better yet, don't ask that kind of question that invites post-hoc narrative shaping (intentionally or unintentionally). Seriously, reality is 100-x more nuanced and complex. Most of the time, they might not even know. But because you asked them and they want to appear polite and because as a "successful person" they want to appear to know their sh\*t, they force an answer where there's usually none.

If you fall for it, you become a victim of insight porn.

I like to see advice more like ideas for doing your own experiments. That way you don't blindly apply them. You test them, analyze, discard what didnt work in your context, refine what worked, to make them your own.

I like to ask questions that gets to the broader context:

- What did you try but didn't work?
- What factors contributed to your product's success but you felt was outside of your influence?
- What was the business environment like then for your product?
- What was your life stage and family situation like?

Ask for facts. Ask for direct experiences and stories. Don't ask for opinions or inferences. Make your own inferences and discern your own patterns from the raw data, not the constructed interpretation of the data.

Tl;dr - Don't believe 99% advice, ***especially*** from prolific, successful people.

Weird. I felt emotional pinning a tweet to my Twitter profile. First time ever.

*From pinning a tweet.*

This is the [tweet](https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1562801975967641601) in question:

> I once wanted my products to earn $1,000,000/year
>
> Now I'm happy with this
>
> 

I wrote a post in August based off this tweet, about how [life is made of memories not money](https://golifelog.com/posts/memories-not-money-1661467751049). And that feeling had since grew within, from a faint whisper to a loud rally cry.

That this is who I am. This is how I roll.

That this is authentic to my motivation behind on indie solopreneurship now.

And this is how I wish to align my internet presence and real life to.

No more pitching of products in the pinned tweets.
Less of selling and marketing on Twitter, more genuine transparency and authenticity.
Lower the noise on building an audience, crank up the volume on building my best self in public.

Then, [give 10x before asking 1x](https://golifelog.com/posts/give-10x-ask-1x-1662073070823).

I find the FOMO on needing to constantly market loosening its grip inwardly. I care less now. I've let it go...mostly.

I just want to log my journey, grow as a person, build relationships and have fun.

Alignment, online and offline, inwardly and outwardly.

And it never felt more right.

I never felt prouder.

I often say I'm in indie solopreneurship for the long game. That I'm committed to a decade of trying at this to succeed. And observing many other successful peers, they do seem take a decade to get to some place noteworthy.

But I recently realised it's not really about time spent. Playing the long game is just a mind trick to manage my expectations. It's all an inside job. Outside, in physical reality, time is relative. [Time isn't the problem. Effectiveness is.](https://golifelog.com/posts/time-isnt-the-problem-effectiveness-is-1664063381663) Playing the mental long game simply helps me to be more effective by lowering my expectations, by not being impatient and seeking suboptimal short cuts. The long game helps me perform better by being more objective, less swayed by emotional ups and downs of the entrepreneurship journey. It essentially helps me get out of my own way.

So the long game isn't about actually spending a decade on something.

It's simply about *being willing* to spend a decade. Whether you do end up spending a decade or just a few years has nothing to do with it. External time is inconsequential.

The long game is a mind game, not a time game.

Just after I wrote about [100 days left of 2022](https://golifelog.com/posts/100-days-left-of-2022-1663995320403), I see this [pop up on my feed](https://twitter.com/khemaridh/status/1573469789216854016):

"Don't be fooled by the calendar. There are only as many days in the year as you make use of. One person gets only a week's value out of a year while another gets a full year's value out of a week."

It's crazy how that's so darn true, yet everyone loves focusing on time as a measure of value.

Time is relative.

Time is not the problem. Effectiveness is.

It's not how hard you worked.
It's not how long you worked.
It's not how much experience you had.
It's not how committed you were to the long game.

It's how effective you were in those hours you worked.
It's how much value you brought in within that time.
It's how you truly moved the needle by doing the right things.

In fact, I dare say... the most effective people don't work the longest hours.

But they might not work the shortest hours either, or are lazy.

The most effective people just work a lot less than we normally assume of them.

And that's because we're so enamoured by some moral narrative that hardworking, longest-working people should be, will be rewarded fairly.

That's what the people benefiting from our hard work and long hours want us to believe.

So now repeat after me:

Time isn't the real problem.
Being effective is.

"There are 100 days left of 2022. What could you commit to for 100 days to finish the year strong?" – [@evielync](https://twitter.com/evielync/status/1573136866425044993)

A great question from Ev on Twitter...definitely got me thinking.

*inb4: Yes I get that it's an arbitrary number. Why 100? Why not 101? Why not 10? But 100 has a nice round number ring to it. Let's take it easy and have some fun with it...*

The easy way to look ahead for the remainder of 2022 is to review my goals and intentions from the start of 2022:

[My aspiration for 2022, in one word: Alacrity](https://golifelog.com/posts/alacrity-1641079911090). To move forward with brisk and cheerful readiness. To truly thrive.

[2022 intentions, in 8 forms of capital](https://golifelog.com/posts/2022-in-8-forms-of-capital-1641014096319)

💵 Financial: Hit $200 MRR from all my products by 31 Dec 2022, through small doggedness.
⚒️ Material: Meaningful materialism for health.
🌲 Living: Move more, feel fit.
💡 Intellectual: Follow my entrepreneur nose.
💪 Experiential: Learn about web3 and AI.
👥 Social: Serial 1-on-1 Twitter conversations.
🎨 Cultural: Pivoting identity to wealth subculture.
⛩️ Spiritual: Mindful familyhood.

All my fears, concerns, aspirations and wishes in the form of [open questions for 2022](https://golifelog.com/posts/open-questions-for-the-year-ahead-1641344137895):

• Will I live up to the year with alacrity?
• How long will I take to hit $200 MRR?
• Will I ever hit $5k revenue in my life?
• Will I ever make enough money off my products to support my lifestyle and family?
• What other products can I make?
• What other products do I want to make?
• What’s my next big thing?
• What’s my next product for tech for good?
• Do I still have what it takes to create something profitable and popular?
• When will I embody a wealth mindset?
• Do I have what it takes to get rich?
• Will I be able to grow my savings back to what it was?
• When will I finally get over myself about investing?
• Will I ever nail my sleep to 90% consistently?
• Can I ever get back to a fitness level of my 20s or 30s?
• How do I bring familyhood to the next level?
• When will things go back to normal?
• When can we travel again?
• What’s my spiritual path like ahead?
• Will I ever go on retreats again?
• When will I finally feel like I’m thriving, not surviving?

### So how do I plan to finish strong for the last 100 days of 2022?

What I DON'T want to do for sure:
- Launch yet another big bet with huge expectations
- Do nothing and launch nothing
- Hustle to $200 MRR
- No web3 or AI for now

What I want to do:
- Better health, fitness
- Continue with overhaul of [my indie approach](https://golifelog.com/posts/is-the-indie-maker-playbook-dead-1661221071495)
- Get back to [values, not passions](https://golifelog.com/posts/values-greater-passions-1663371060665). Main value: [Altruism. I succeed when I help others succeed](https://golifelog.com/posts/i-succeed-when-i-help-others-succeed-1663551944694).
- Plan for travel again, to feel that sense of hope and anticipation.

I just completed my consulting project yesterday. I really wanted to do a good job with it. I wanted to give my all. Yet this time, my all didn’t include sacrificing my sleep, health and sense of wellbeing.

And that felt gooooood.

Since forever, since my early years in sports especially, doing my best and giving my all was often associated with ignoring pain. When you run long distance, you learn to ignore the pain signals your body is sending you to keep going. You can rest when it’s over. Over time that’s become my default mode of operation.

I disembody. I ignore pain and push on. In work. For my projects. In my career. In life.

For a time that served me well, I went the distance in work where others dropped off. I worked till 3am in office. I worked evenings and weekends. And I was rewarded for that. It further affirmed that I was doing it ‘right’. It might have been right… for a time. For that stage in life where I was young and can take beatings. But over the years the beatings accumulated, and my health began to suffer in my late 30s.

Now I’m 43, and it’s plain as day that I can’t keep doing that no more.

So I made sure I was just as committed to sleep and health during this project as I’m committed to the project objectives. I slept 8h for 1 month leading up to the start of the project to get my energy back. It worked. I continued to commit to good sleeping habits throughout the project. I made sure I ate well, ate more. Self care was as important as client care.

And I made it through. Mostly intact. Caught the flu the day before a big three day workshop, but miraculously got well enough the next day to proceed. Got a sprained shoulder the next week (from bad posture while standing to facilitate discussions), but got some treatment and it’s better. Still exhausted though, but relieved.

So giving my 100% but with self care is possible.

I mean, I know it’s possible in theory. But I’ve never experienced it practically. I’ve certainly not sought it out intentionally. I’ve always given my all, then try to rest and recover after. This time I managed to balance both, two seemingly polar opposites.

It’s not either health or hard work.

It’s health AND hard work.

This really shouldn’t need to be said. But humans are funny. I’m imperfect.

At least this time, at a ripe old age of 43, I managed to get just 1% less imperfect.

I recently switched over to just one tweet a day. And I must say, I’m surprised that it’s so enjoyable.

There’s always something about the elegant simplicity of one. An apple a day keeps the doc away. All-in-one. Hole in one. In one fell swoop. One in a million. One for all all for one. When one door closes another one opens. One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind. The One.

Just one tweet a day has that same elegant simplicity.

I’ve always felt that if I were to start over on Twitter with zero followers, tweeting once a day would be my approach. Now I’m back full circle.

One a day also has that compelling habit-building ring to it. It just feels easy hearing it. Just one day one tweet! Amongst habit-building hacks, keeping the barrier as low as possible is one of my top favs. We have 100 words a day on Lifelog. James Clear talked about going to the gym to do just one rep. Just one tweet a day is a great inner accountability contract to maintain the long game. Even though I’ve been tweeting daily for more than a year now (I lost count), audience-building is a long, infinite game, and anything to help with sustaining the journey is worth it.

To make the long game even more sustainable, I use the thoughtful replies I reply to other accounts as tweets themselves. This way, I got my tweets queued up one month ahead! I found the right flywheel where I can keep the tweets flowing without feeling like I’m over-stretching or stressing myself.

And the best part: After doing 2, 3 or more tweets per day, one a day feels easy. And when a game is in easy mode, I have more bandwidth to fool around and have more fun doing Twitter (instead of feeling like it’s a job sometimes). I can shitpost or joke around more. I have more capacity to deepen relationships. I have more time to learn from others.

Because ultimately that’s what I’m on Twitter for - relationships, learning, play.

Instead of feeling like I’m working for Twitter.

I wrote [yesterday's post](https://golifelog.com/posts/reality-bends-to-how-aligned-we-are-inwardly-1663630873350) insinuating that it was all my own doing and effort that brought me all the recent new opportunities for my consulting business.

But the hard truth is...... I don't feel like I did anything much. It felt like all luck.

People say there's luck we can influence and plain dumb luck.

Luck we can influence are all the things I said I did that lead to the new opportunities:

- Daily posts on LinkedIn to build a brand/audience
- Engaging the posts of more local folks on LinkedIn
- Going on a local podcast for visibility (it brought 1 lead so far!)
- Fixing my consultancy website contact form
- Having face-to-face meetings with leads for better impression
- Actively reaching out to past contacts for work

It looks like I did a lot, and therefore I was rightly luckier due to that, isn't it?

No.

The deciding factor here is that I've done most on that list in the past too. Even recently, like a few months. But that didn't bring me leads. There's no guarantee that these specific set of activities brings in more opportunities. It so *happened* that in the larger scheme of things, COVID is lifting and government is starting to have capacity to consider service improvement projects again. I had no idea when or why that was happening. This property of the system is emergent on social forces beyond my comprehension.

More and more I find that "luck we can influence" is just a narrative of power we artificially ascribe to ourselves, over forces we can't control in actuality.

It's BS basically.

Denial.

What I was doing was just to be prepared. But those actions had no bearing whatsoever on the opportunities that come along. It's like tilling the soil and planting seeds and then expecting the rain to come on cue. We can't influence rain, so how can we influence when luck lands?

At the end of the day, it's really all just plain dumb luck. There's no such things as luck we make ourselves.

But one thing's for sure – if I didn't till soil and plant seeds, even when rain comes I wouldn't be able to benefit from it. If I didn't prepare as I did, perhaps opportunities in the form of potential clients wouldn't seek me out when they were ready.

To me that's as much the extent we have over our lives and career.

I do what I can. But it's ultimately still up to God. Or the Universe. Or chance. (Pick the higher power of your choice).

Ultimately, it's plain dumb luck all the way down.

My consultancy business [Outsprint](https://outsprint.io) had been going well lately:

- Currently on a consulting gig with a local non-profit working on an issue I'm passionate about - helping low income families have better social mobility.
- Just met a government Ministry to talk about a potential project coming up to help a vulnerable group. (This came via exposure from doing a podcast)
- Reached out to a previous contact to conduct training for a local polytechnic, with possible one coming in November. The epiphany that I actually do [enjoy training](https://golifelog.com/posts/fighting-for-nothing-1663287755784) led to this.
- Got another meeting lined up with another government Ministry to explore potential to be on their panel of consultant experts.
- Partnered with a local governance institute to offer training for other foreign governments.
- Exploring another possible consultancy gig with a government organisation to do service design for local public service centres.

The fires of COVID are put out, and now government is starting to have capacity to consider service improvements and innovation again.

Seems like things are really opening back up again.

My efforts on brand-/audience-building on LinkedIn seems to be helping me land more leads for work, despite the fact that I have less than 1000 followers. The surprising thing is: most of the opportunities are coming to me.

All of a sudden, I can see an optimistic future ahead.

Funny how things can swiftly turn around, once you're aligned inwardly. Reality bends not to how strong our minds and our intentions are, but to how [aligned, congruent and coherent we are within](https://golifelog.com/posts/i-succeed-when-i-help-others-succeed-1663551944694).

Onwards!

Two days ago I wrote about how [values triumph passions](https://golifelog.com/posts/values-greater-passions-1663371060665) when it comes to my career and work. Writing it out was super helpful. I realise now that helping others is an important part of who I am and how I work.

Like how I dropped everything just now to help a customer with her Carrd plugin. That wasn't even on the menu for my deep work session this 5am morning. But when someone asks, I help. It's a natural drive and instinct. (Of course, sometimes for the worse when the other party is out to take advantage of it).

I wonder if perhaps that's why my Plugins project worked better than others. I'm constantly helping people with it. There's a steady stream of help requests for it, either directly to me or via the communities I'm actively contributing to – Reddit, Facebook.

Likewise for my design consultancy Outsprint. It's social impact focused, so the mission is all about helping society and for greater good. The process is also about helping government agencies and non-profit organisations be more user-centric. I've always enjoyed helping them, and recently realised that I also [enjoy coaching others](https://golifelog.com/posts/fighting-for-nothing-1663287755784). All about helping.

Even Lifelog started out altruistically. We were a homeless bunch of writers and I stepped up to fill the gap. But interestingly after the initial launch, I didn't have a mechanism to help people continually so it waned.

In fact, it was the same "helping others" reframing that helped me in marketing. I struggled with marketing initially because it felt like slimey hardselling. Later I reframed it to leverage on the personality trait I have – I enjoy helping others. So marketing got reframed to more about helping others succeed, using my product. It got waaay easier after that!

My social impact products made during COVID did really well because they were 100% altruistic. All the more social proof.

Entrepreneurship is often about building an empire to many. But for me, the overarching principle had always been – entrepreneurship is about helping others. The hope is that if I help enough people, the profits will follow.

**So the big epiphany here:**

Perhaps things didn't work out for other products because I didn't have a ***mechanism to help others on a consistent basis.*** When products happened on a mechanism to help others, it worked better. When it didn't, it slowly faded away, because I didn't feel needed. There's no exchange of energy. I feed on the energy of others seeking help. They appreciate and in return I benefit from the social capital.

Again and again, it comes back to helping others. The common thread is altruism.

I think I'm on to something here!

I wake up at 4am. Dead quiet. If 4ams are quiet, Sunday 4ams are ten times quieter. I get up immediately. No snoozing, no lazing in bed. I don’t need to, because I slept early at 8pm. All 8h of restful, peaceful sleep. 99% score on my sleep tracking app aligns with how rested I feel when I wake. I jump out of bed, eager to start my day doing something I love.

I wash up, and then meditate to the cool morning air. It’s such a great way to anchor myself. Then some espresso, and I’m off to my laptop for some writing, coding. Deep work and flow ensues. I lose track of time. Yet I’m having so much fun working on my passion projects. I do my most important work for the day, before people are even up on a Sunday.

It’s 8am. The family rouses awake. We make pancakes. Have tea. Eat slowly and mindfully, enjoying presence as much as pancakes. Then we change, and head out outside. A trek through a forest, a stroll down the beach. Somewhere in nature. We picnic lunch right there, just being glad to be outdoors, sharing our sandwiches with ants. We dive into the sea for a swim. We dip out toes in the forest river for fun. The great outdoors, our playground.

Back home, and we dim the lights and enjoy a movie together, through a lazy delivery dinner. Pizza, ribs, wings, whatever. The children go to bed, then after cleaning up we all head to sleep. It starts drizzling. The soft sounds of the rain, lulling us to sleep.

A perfect Sunday.

Struck by Adam Grant’s tweet:

"Following your passion is a luxury.
Following your values is a necessity.

Passion is a fickle magnet: it pulls you toward your current interests.
Values are a steady compass: they point you toward a future purpose.

Passion brings immediate joy.
Values provide lasting meaning."

– @AdamMGrant

I’ve always conflated passion with values. They often seem to walk together in the work that I enjoy. But it’s true, what he said. They are not the same.

I’m passionate about indie hacking. But what I truly value about it is freedom, being able to work on my own terms.

I’m passionate about writing. But what I truly value about it is a reflective, examined life.

I’m passionate about design thinking (through my consulting work). But what I truly value about it is social impact and helping others/society.

In all the three scenarios above, the former can evolve or get eliminated, but the latter had always been there.

I value freedom. I’ve been doing that even before indie hacking. I started my own business in consulting to do just that, even before there’s such a thing called “indie hacking”. Maybe it’s what I do now, but in future that might change. The flavour of the day: indie solopreneurship. Who knows what next?

I value a reflective, examined life. I meditate, I go for Zen retreats, I do weekly recaps. Writing is just part of it. Writing had always been part of it, just that I’ve never wrote this consistently for so long. Who knows what next?

I value social impact in my work. I love helping others. Before design I was working in a large non-profit organisation planning services for the social impact sector. Before joining the non-profit, I volunteered my time for charities, painting houses, spending time with elderly in nursing homes. Then now I do social impact by using nocode tools to create pro bono solutions to social issues, like during COVID. The passions always changed. Who know what next?

This was pretty illuminating for me to write it out. Because so long as I follow my values, I’m safe. I’m congruent. I’m aligned. I’m happy. I don’t have to hold on so tightly to the passion of the day. I don’t have to identify too much with my current job, role, trade. As we can see, those passions change. Inevitably, they always do.

Passions change. Values stay.

Values > passions

What’s one thing you’ve always been good at but for the longest time you fought against, for reasons that’s now strange once you realised it?

Mine is training and coaching.

I fought against doing training for my consultancy work. I always enjoyed doing the work, not training others. I did it only rarely, only when there’s a compelling benefit I can’t pass up, like say a chance to travel to train others. I fought against training and coaching opportunities for the longest time. In fact, all 10 years since I started.

Despite the fact that people tell me I’m good at it. People who observed and worked with me through it. Fellow trainers. Trainees who went through my courses.

I’m not sure why I fought so hard against it.

Sure, I’m an introvert. I get depleted when putting myself out there. Sure, I don’t think I make a good teacher. And when I do teach others I’m always the reluctant teacher. I think I make a better do-er. That’s the stories I tell myself.

But the story I’ve been ignoring in plain sight - I also gain energy when people are appreciative and grow from the process. Lots of energy. I enjoy sharing things I know. I love answering questions. I love co-exploring questions for those which I have no answers for. Above all, helping others is powerful for me. Being able to help others drive me.

Coaching others do all that.

Why have I been fighting this for so long? Was it all for nothing?

Looking back the reasons feel almost lame.

Inwardly, I feel light and delighted, when I think about letting the old stories go and embracing coaching.

I’ve always been a student of life, and the best way to be a student is to try to teach – you’ll realise real quick how little you know.

I’ve always been a teacher. To myself.

Because of that, maybe I can make a good teacher to others too, by sharing what I learned as a student trying to be a teacher.

Time to just f**king embrace it.

I've been posting at least twice a day since I started getting serious on Twitter. Two daily tweets are the pillars of my content strategy:

- 1x indie hacking related tweet at 9am in US (East Coast)
- 1x writing-related tweet 3h later at 12noon

Basically, the second tweet was to market Lifelog. It worked a bit in the initial days. I would tweet about writing stuff, the benefits of writing for creators, how it helps, how to do it, etc. Then I got kinda bored of it, and it also wasn't getting much views. Plugging my product daily also felt too much. So I switched to sharing screenshots of my daily writings, accompanied by a single tweet to sum it up, followed by a follow-up tweet with the link to the actual post on Lifelog. No plugging. Just showing how I use it. Showing the work instead of selling the product. Seemed to bring in occasional signups, but none stuck around. Most days, the screenshot posts don't get much attention. Only when I write something interesting about indie hacking, it gets more impressions and replies.

Suffice to say, Twitter as a distribution channel strategy for Lifelog needs a serious relook. Perhaps the indie maker playbook for this product isn't effective no more?

- Should I consider ads?
- Start an email newsletter?
- Create content funnel?
- Give give give – create free tools and help other more?
- Re-scope the marketing to be even more niche?
- Build new features to add fresh energy to the app?
- Try SEO?

In fact, my entire approach to Lifelog feels tired, and in desperate need of a facelift. I should build more features. There's some quality of life improvements that's been requested that I've not come round to.

Come Oct/Nov, when I'm done with my consulting, I'll review and experiment more.

For now, I'm stopping my second tweets about writing/Lifelog. And let the indie hacking tweets bring people to my profile to click on Lifelog.

Just one tweet a day. Simple.

I run a portfolio of products, ala the portfolio of small bets approach.

The whole idea is that diversity mitigates risk. A portfolio prevents the classic all eggs in one basket problem. But some folks hate it. They prefer to focus and go all in on one thing. They prefer concentration as an approach.

I’m on board having focus, just not too much.

Focusing on just one thing feels like it’s too much. 1 is just 1 away from 0. If a black swan event occurs—Apple bans you from the App Store for no reason, a fire burns down your store and all your inventory, or a massive competitor shows up—you lose.

But as much as I love diversity as a hedge against risks like this, there’s also such a thing as too much diversity.

“The more positions you have, the more average you are.” – Bruce Berkowitz
“You can diversify yourself into mediocrity.” – John Neff
“Diversification covers up ignorance.” – Bill Ackman
Source: mastersinvest.com

It’s really a spectrum, isn’t it? Concentration on one end (with a minimum of 1 big bet), and diversity on the other end (with maybe hundreds of small bets). The trick is to find somewhere in between:

“Diversification may preserve wealth, but concentration builds wealth.” – Warren Buffet

Don’t have just one thing. but don’t spread yourself too thin.

How thin is thin - it’s entirely up to your capacity.

Have a couple of bets to start. Try, experiment, market, push them. Prioritize the 1-2 that have potential, but keep the rest going, or try new ones, or spin off from the good ones. Have concentration and diversification.

You can have both, but in varying degrees as you progress.