Lifelog

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.

I did it. I finally did it. I hit 100% score for sleep!

Writing this down for record and remembrance:

Date: Monday night 12 Sep 2022
Sleep tracking app: Sleep Cycle iOS app
Sleep score: 100%
Went to bed: 8:48pm
Woke up: 5:06am
In bed: 8h 17m
Asleep: 8h 7m
Asleep after: 9min
Heart rate: 67

This was despite me having a sore neck for the past few days and not being able to move freely to sleep on my side. This was despite me being slightly unwell and exhausted from my consulting last week.

It was tough sleep last week. I was at 83% (my normal range), then went to 58% after a particularly intense day of work, then built it back up to 74%, then 82%, then 85%, then 88% (yesterday), and then 100% today. It took me 5 days to get back up.

But the number of days here wasn’t the critical factor here. It was the commitment to self care. To prioritize taking care of myself, at the expense of all other things like fun and play, even some family time.

All my past sleep problems, and poor health resulting from sleep deprivation, were simply a prioritization problem. I felt I could sacrifice sleep for other things. I thought it was a commodity that I could trade off freely without consequence. This is a pattern of behaviour right from my 20s till now. I guess I’m only truly starting to learn this lesson now, after two decades. Only “starting to learn”, because I still fall into the trap of my old ways from time to time.

Sleep is the first mover.

Writing this to remind myself of what matters.

### Vanity metrics:

- Likes
- Impressions
- RTs
- Replies
- Page views
- Clicks
- Followers
- Email sign-ups/subscribers
- Mentions from press
- Praise from peers
- Free users
- Revenue 😱

### Valuable metrics:

- **Positive testimonials** from customers that shows you're adding value to their lives.
- **Negative feedback** from customers who's invested enough to give feedback. Also shows that there's still room for improvement.
- **Paying customers** – Not to be mistaken with free users. When people open their wallets, they have skin in the game. It's the difference between heaven and earth.
- **Profit.** Note I didn't use "revenue". Because it's easy to earn $1M. Just spend $2M on ads. Profit is the what's sustainable. Profit is what makes your thing a real business.
- **Number of people you helped.** This group could be your paying customers yes, but it shouldn't be the entire group. Help other indies, other non-users, help grow your industry. Volunteer or do pro bono. Give without asking.
- **Your quality of life.** If your business isn't improving your life, why are you doing it? Sure, maybe we got to hunker down and hustle for a time to make it succeed. But always question if—on your death bed—it's truly worth the trade-off. If I have to be a martyr and sacrifice my family life for decades, count me out.
- **Freedom.** This is personal to holder. To me. If my work isn't allowing me the autonomy and ownership to make my own decisions on time, effort, creativity, joy, people, impact and equity, then it's work that I should seriously start reconsidering.


*Did I miss anything?*

I started on the ketogenic diet on 2 Sep 2019. It’s been three years.

To the uninitiated, the keto diet is form of low carb, high fat diet. We’re eating too much sugars and carbs in our modern diets, and that’s leading to a whole host of metabolic conditions like diabetes, inflammation, and obesity. Keto aims to counter that, by drastically reducing our carb intake, and training our metabolically flexible body to burning more fats.

And three years on, I never felt better.

Some stuff I learned along the way:

### Year zero
I started on keto as a last ditch effort to heal from a series of chronic gut issues, which included surgery. It was nice to look back at my [first week on keto](https://jasonleow.github.io/200wordsaday/articles/one-week-on-keto-intermittent-fasting-267905d763e868b56a/index). All the pains of easing into a difficult habit. Keto flu. Fatigue. Queasiness. Bad sleep. Headaches. Brain fog. Sugar cravings. It felt so impossible then. But I did it!

### 1st year
I did strict keto mostly for the first year. Lost 10kg, couldn't fit into my clothes, became quite gaunt. I learned so much about nutrition in my first year, I felt like I took a diploma course. All the little insights about eating habits and nutrition got compiled into a running log of a blog post called [counter-intuitive things I learned about nutrition and wellness while on intermittent fasting and keto diet](https://jasonleow.github.io/200wordsaday/articles/counter-intuitive-things-i-learned-about-nutrition-while-on-intermittent-fasting-and-keto-423975f00843835a30/index). One of the last few things I wrote – "Your keto today won't be your keto tomorrow". 100% true.

### 2nd year
Even within my 1st year I started to explore more meat less fat, and slowly moved out of eating fat bombs. By the 2nd year I was definitely into [meat-heavy keto, or ketovore](https://golifelog.com/posts/keto-two-years-on-1631240576181). The 10kg in weight I lost, I gained it back weight, but I didn't get back the old dad bod cubby fat - my frame remained slim. Talking to other keto veterans, they say if your clothes sizes didn't change, it's likely you gained muscle. Every month I would do some days of intermittent fasting and strict ketovore, to self-correct the occasional treat. Sometimes if I see my dad bod belly coming back, I'll go strict for a few weeks. This was also during the lockdowns and the birth of my baby boy, when it got easier to stay in routine.

### 3rd year
But by Year 3, I started to feel I needed more adjustments, in particular adding more carbs back. It's strange - I started to feel like the diet wasn't giving me as much energy as it used to. Most days ketovore, some days carnivore, some days with carb reloading. But sticking to mostly single ingredient carbs like rice, pasta. And tiny portions, like a few spoonfuls. On average, I veering towards a low carb freestyle intuitive eating sort of approach now. It's so much easier to stick to a diet philosophy and let that framework make the eating decisions for you. It's 10x harder to listen to the body and eat intuitively. Worse coming from someone who didn't have the best relationship with food and being embodied. But three years on, I feel a growing confidence in eating intuitively. I check in with my body if a food is something I truly need. I'm starting to enjoy whole, natural, single ingredient, non-/minimally processed foods. Even on carb reloading, I don't gorge on carbs like a starving prisoner released. I nibble it, eating mindfully, cautiously. And stop if it I hear whispers from the body that it's enough. This approach certainly helped a lot in feeling like I can carb reload without releasing the flood gates and going back to before keto.

It feels really hopeful now, my diet journey. I think fundamentally, coming back to listening to my body, heeding what it truly needs, not what it craves from poor past eating habits, had all along been what I was after. It's eating like that that truly brings health and a sense of wellbeing.

The diet you healed yourself with might not be the diet you eat in the long term.

Onwards!

I read this from James Clear's recent newsletter:

"3 things that help luck:
1. Deconstructing your craft, so you know what good opportunities look like.
2. Remaining vigilant, so you notice when lucky breaks come your way.
3. Acting quickly, so you are more likely to seize luck when it arrives."

– [James Clear](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/september-8-2022)

#2 and #3 are familiar, but #1 got me thinking because I realised I don't know the answer to that...

So what does a good opportunity look like in indie hacking? In particular, for my products?

Some thoughts:

- Viral. But not all viral are created equal. Viral is an opportunity if it converts, if it helps you achieve your goals. If it's just a funny viral meme with no engagement, no conversions, then not an opportunity.
- People pay for pre-sales, in droves. If there's not even a product yet but people are willing to open their wallets, you might be on to something.
- When you hit more than $10k monthly. I used to think hitting $1k was enough as a signal that the product is a great opportunity. But that's too low a bar. Hardly even ramen profitable. Just breaking even isn't enough to count as a great opportunity. $10k is a better benchmark.
- When you're pulled forward by external forces—market demand, feature requests, high usage—it also means opportunity. When you can't build fast enough, or don't have enough time to serve everyone lining up for it. In contrast, if you have to push hard on everything, the process feels uphill, and with little to no results, that's a sign there's no opportunity.
- When you're having fun and not caring about the results or rewards of your work other than the joy of doing it, yet people love it, sign up and pay. That's a perfect overlap of customer desirability and maker enjoyability.
- When you get multiple offers for micro-acquisition. Bonus points if the project is not even revenue-generating yet.
- When it's a saturated market and there's already multiple existing competitors, yet customers come to you.
- When you don't do paid marketing or ads, yet customers come to you via word of mouth.

*What are the other ways a good opportunity looks like in indie hacking?*

A question regarding indie hacking that I've been pondering for the past few days:

> "What's my biggest bottleneck now? Am I working on it? If no, why not?"

Why past few days? Because I realised I didn't know the answer, and I've been wrecking my brain for one.

It's empty.

Perhaps this explains the real reason why I feel stuck with regards to the progress with my products. I don't even know what my biggest bottleneck is.

I asked:

- Is it product-market fit? Maybe my products just don't solve a good enough problem that enough people will want to pay for. This could be partly true. My products so far are vitamins, not painkillers. The solution could be placing more small bets.
- Is it marketing? Yes I can always do better, do more in marketing. But it doesn’t feel like it’s the biggest bottleneck, when product-market fit is dubious at best.
- Is it lack of energy/motivation? This could be true too. I've been trying so long, I'm starting to feel tired. I was burned out for the past 2-3 months, and only starting to slowly get back to work on products.
- Is it lack of time? Being a new dad I've always lacked time. But that simply brought more focus and prioritization. I wake at 5am to work on my projects. I work on weekends. And I have the same 24h as everyone as. So that doesn't feel like a bottleneck.
- Is it lack of money? To make money in products you often got to invest money. Domains, hosting, web infrastructure, all costs money. The biggest expense of them all - my quality of life, my cash runway to support me and my family. Not gonna lie...that's been a challenge lately yes. It does take away some mental bandwidth, brings stress, thinking and worrying about it. But that's not the bottleneck to my progress. It's a background noise that's always there – sometimes louder, sometimes a whisper.

So you can now see. I have ZERO clue.

Perhaps not knowing is the biggest bottleneck of them all.

And the solution is collecting and finding the data to ascertain it.

You can't fight an enemy you can't see.

I said in mid August that I was going to try sleeping early to get [8h of sleep](https://golifelog.com/posts/8h-sleep-goal-1660433590964), so that I can get myself back in reasonable shape for my consulting gig.

> So I’m going to try to get 8h of sleep every day from now till start of September. I’m going to exercise daily in the morning. I’m going to eat well. I’m going to wind down for the evening properly. I’m going to prioritize self care. I’m going to get my family on board for this. I’m going to do what’s required to:
>
> - Feel rested from sleep
> - Feel stronger in body
> - Feel sharper in mind

And almost one month since that intention, happy to report back that it really did help. In fact, I was surprised how much it helped.

Because the effects felt immediate and obvious. One month in I feel:

- Clearer in mind
- More rested
- More motivated for everything in life
- Exercised daily
- My spirits felt lifted and lighter
- Needed less coffee
- Didn't feel like I was struggling to get by each day
- Sleep pressure decreased - I had harder time falling asleep. It used to be immediate the moment my head hits the pillow (which on hindsight, might be too high sleep pressure)

Before, I was in kind of a low energy slump which I couldn't seem to extract myself out of. But with 8h sleep I started to climb out of it.

It's that simple.

So simple, I was surprised. Actually, cut that – I was shocked. I was shocked by how sleep deprived I actually really was. Goes to show just how important sleep is, and how my struggles can be traced back to the vicious loops of my poor sleep hygiene (sleeping late, getting less than 7h sleep, not winding down enough). I was carrying to accumulated burden of sleep debt and it was seeping into everything I did in life.

Therefore, slump.

So I'm continuing this 8h thing.

I'm not done yet with my sleep debt yet.

This is how I’d start over and grow on Twitter as a creator if the slate was wiped clean:

1. Reply thoughtful replies - Replying remains one of the best ways to grow your following. Notice it comes before #2 about tweeting. Because in the beginning no one will see your tweet. But by replying, you’re leveraging the audience of the account you’re replying to. If you reply something that adds to the conversation and people find valuable, they might check out your profile, and some might click follow. Don’t reply stuff like “Yes” or “Agree” or “No disagree” and call it a day. “Thoughtful” can mean many things: educational, entertaining, empathetic. The good thing about using “thoughtful” as a quality barometer - it’s an in-built mechanism to prevent burning out from replying too much. I once tried 80 replies a day but couldn’t even hit that many to reply to. Now I do like 10-20/day.

2. Tweet once a day - I’ll go for once a day because I’m coming from a habit-building, long game point of view. I think many creators start off strong, have grand ambitions of building an audience, want to do a lot, but fizzle out after a few months. Bonus: write 7 tweets within 1-2h once a week, and schedule them. Why batch write? Because it takes time to get into the groove when writing tweets. After you write one, you might as well ride the momentum and write 6 more. Writing just 1 tweet a day ends up taking more time over 7 days compared to batch writing all 7 at once. Caveat: I’m referring to solo creators, not startups with media teams.

3. Make like-minded friends - My latest definition of building an audience: Surrounding myself with people who help me build my best self in public. It’s like forming a mastermind group on Twitter, where we collectively benefit from the right kind of inspiration, accountability, influence to help us progress on our goals. By the way, if I want this, I need to do #1.

4. Reply, reply, reply - This repeat is intentional, for emphasis. Being the reply guy remains the best way for growth for newbies. Yes it does take energy to engage on Twitter, and can be a huge time suck… That’s why I try to do it at the end of the day after I’m done with my core tasks.

That’s it, thanks for attending my Twitter growth course.

A question from a previous [James Clear newsletter](https://jamesclear.com/3-2-1/september-1-2022) stuck with me:

> Sometimes it benefits us to be passive: to allow life to come to us and unfold without force. Other times it benefits us to be aggressive: to bend the world to our will and actively shape the life we want.
> Are you being too passive or too aggressive right now?

How do we tell when to do which?

How do we know when to be passive and flow alongside the tide of life?
How do we know we should be proactive in bending reality?

Some thoughts:

**Passive**
- When you're in a situation where you don't have much control over
- When acts big or small makes little difference
- When it calls for presence—observing, listening—than solutioning
- When things aren't broken, don't need fixing...or even going well

**Aggressive**
- When I have a lot more control and autonomy than I realised
- When a small act can have huge differences
- When you're called on by others to contribute
- When things are sub-optimal

I'm not sure where I'm going with this thought experiment.

Truth is, I feel more led along by life right now than bending reality proactively.

Maybe it's a phase, my current life stage, a natural season of life.
Maybe I've done a lot of bending in the past and now it's just time to let things come to fruition.
Maybe there's a lot of things out of my control now and it's time to watch.

Maybe that's why I needed to figure it out by writing this down.

*How do you tell when to be passive, when to be aggressive?*