Lifelog

Coming from a sports training background, I’ve always focused on weaknesses. Not because of some puritan joy of self-flagellation, but that I followed the weakest link principle:

We are only as strong as our weakest link.

It’s the idea that all our different qualities come together like a metal chain – endurance, strength, technique, mental fortitude. During a performance, or a competition, your results are a collective synthesis of these different qualities. They are all interlinked. And a weak link will bring down the performance more than a strength props it up. It’s like forgetting to do leg day, and all you got are huge biceps but soft calves. Or you got a great engine in your car, but your driving skills suck. People tend to focus on playing to their strengths because it makes them feel good, and ignore their weaknesses because it makes them feel inadequate.

There’s also the law of diminishing returns – your strengths will only improve so much by training it, while training your weaknesses actually lead to more % gains in performance.

Yet here’s the caveat: in private, during training, you work on your weaknesses. But in public, when performing or competing, leverage on your strengths. The context where you amplify what matters.

I used to train really hard for sport climbing. I was serious. I got into finals of national opens. Never got to represent my country, but the training obviously worked. So that weakest link principle was something that I believed in. And as I moved on from the sport, I brought along that same sense of drive, competitiveness and craze. Even now, in entrepreneurship.

Being a creator, my strengths are being resourceful, learning fast, creativity, design. For weakest links, I targeted the areas that I was weak in as an indie solopreneur – first coding, then marketing, storytelling.

"Improve your weaknesses only until they stop getting your way.
Then triple down on your strengths.
You’ll only find your 100x leverage point in what you’re best at."
– @thatroblennon

I’m no where near the proficiency of enterprise developers or professional marketers, but just enough to be dangerous. They stopped getting in my way. I can stop coding for months, then jump right back in without any fear or hesitation. After doing building in public, posting content daily for the past 1-2 years, I feel the same too about marketing.

They are no longer holding me back as much as it used to.
I feel calmer, way less anxious about my competency in those areas.
I feel more confident in being able to form a more balanced chain, now that my weak links are evened out.

Of course, there’s always room for improvement, and of course I will continue to learn and grow in them as I stay in the game.

But I feel it had crossed a threshold, and it’s now time to “triple down” on my strengths to find that “100x leverage point”.

Back to my why.

Back to creating audaciously. Calmly.

I feel calmer about the road ahead now.

Hope feels brighter now.
Optimism feels closer now.

I’m back.

In my single-minded obsession to hitting my goal, reaching that desired future, I’m no longer alive in the present.

"Everyone on this side of twitter is hustling, building a better future.
With each success, you goals get bigger.
But be careful if in doing so, you’ve become tired of the present.
Better to enjoy each day than always be chasing a goal that moves as fast as you do."
– @thatroblennon

I love how the tweet talks about becoming “tired of the present”.

So true for me.

I want so much to get to that future, that I tire of the present as someone tires of eating the same food every day. I’m bored of the present. There’s nothing here that I want. I want that future where there’s all the things.

And that, is the root of my unhappiness now.

They say, practice patience. I don’t know about patience for the desired future.

I know that the present is the only thing I have. If I’m not alive to the now, I won’t be alive to that future when it arrives. If I’m tired of the present, I’ll waste all the years leading up to it for just one second of satisfaction.

It’s always NOW. One moment to the next.

This is an important reminder.

Present > past/future
Journey > destination
Process > outcome
Means > ends

/description I’ve forgotten my why.

The past 1-2 years had been focused on growth, customer acquisition, marketing, building an audience. Most importantly, revenue and profits.

But I sense that I’m hitting diminishing returns running in pure marketing mode. Flogging a dead horse. Thus I’m not getting the results I seek. That brought a lot of disappointment and frustration.

I got to break through this vicious loop somehow.

And I think the way is to get back to my why.

Why did I start indie hacking in the first place? Why do I love about making products?

Because I enjoy giving my novel take on things.
Because I enjoy the creative process.
Because I enjoy making things.
Because I enjoy helping others.
Because I enjoy giving delight.
Because I enjoy serving.

I create, therefore I am.

Marketing should complement this why, not take over it. Revenue is a side effect of doing these well, not the mission. Building in public is the process, but actually building the thing is the destination. Maker mode, not marketing mode.

I’ve forgotten my why. And it’s time to get back to it.

I know what to do now. I do.

And I will.

I have 3 astrologers whom I consult with. Yeah I don’t talk about this much, because astrology is so misrepresented. But since I’m going to meet one of them later, I thought I could talk about it.

White Star is one of the first I met, while in Bali. She’s a healer, seer and clairvoyant from the native American Indian tradition, and through her I understood my past lives and how they shaped my present one. She told me stories of how I was a priest in ancient Egypt, and in another life, a Celtic one, and one in the Himalayas. My most recent one was a Japanese soldier who died in WW2. It’s fascinating to hear, and gave me a lot of food for thought on how some of the stories parallel my present life, and how certain themes repeat. I go to her for big magic readings like these.

Kelvin comes from an ancestry of spirit mediums. He father and grandfather were all mediums who helped people communicate with loved ones who passed away. He uses tarot cards and crystals in his readings, but he also has a strong intuitive sense. Through him I understood how family ties and relationships affect my marriage, career. He explained how my relationship with my mother affects my view of marriage, and how my relationship with my father affects my career. He also helped us with geomancy of my house - setting up the space in our house for the right energy and luck. He also does numerology and birth readings, and through him my wife and I came up with a auspicious name for my son. His readings are practical, and immediately applicable to daily life.

Nancy is our latest astrologer. She’s the true blue mathematician of the stars, showing us how she calculated our sun and moon Zodiac signs, our ascendents and how it all affects our life. I was surprised on how she got some of my traits and life events right even though I never shared it. I go to her for overview of the year, the opportunities and pitfalls I got to look out for as the stars move into different alignments.

It all sounds woo woo if you’re not into this. Truth is, I’m not crazy about astrology either. I do recognise that the logical pragmatism of modern science has limits. I know that we don’t know for sure how astrology works. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. But that doesn’t imply truth either. I don’t take everything I hear wholesale as unquestionable truth. But I’m open to listening to different perspectives, angles I’ve never thought about before.

And that’s what these readings do for me - it sheds light on potential blindspots which I might have missed. It prompts me to look out for opportunities which I might not be looking out for. It might all be a self fulfilling prophecy you say, but I’m not interested in the truth of how events came about, but that it did and I benefited from it. Ultimately, the readings help me reflect:

If this was true, how would I know to be sure? What other real life and real world indicators are there that corroborates with it? (And vice versa if it was false)

Is this something I’m dealing with already? Does it feel familiar? How does it prompt me to think about it in a different way?

What can I learn from this?

A common way of running a portfolio of small bets, is to have parallel products, spin-offs from a single origin product, offshoots of one big bet:

- 1 main product
- Sell by-products e.g. templates used
- Sell a cohort-based course on how you built it
- Build a paid community for the course
- One-off coaching

This makes sense, because they build off the audience of the previous product, and serves to amplify one another. It's a bit like how Pieter Levels @levelsio did it - his most successful, revenue-generating products are centered around digital nomad and remote work:

- Nomadlist - a digital nomad directory of cities to live in
- RemoteOK - remote work job board
- Rebase - immigration-as-a-service agency

He started with Nomadlist, and branched out from there to the others. He built a lot of other non-related ones too, but seems like the ones that worked are related.

The scary realisation from all this is: I run a portfolio of disparate products, across different industries.

- Lifelog - writing for creator
- Sheet2Bio - link-in-bio using Google Sheets
- Plugins For Carrd - software downloads for Carrd
- Keto List Singapore - keto directory for Singapore
- Sweet Jam Sites - web dev for JAMstack sites
- Outsprint - design consulting for govs

There's not a single spin-off so far! ALL are different niches!

Am I crazy?

How I think about it (or rationalize post-hoc):

It's like investing. You diversify to mitigate risk. Diversify across different types of assets with different risk profiles - from bonds to real estate to stocks to crypto. All have different levels of risk, in different industries.

This can bring more resilience, or even antifragility.

That's what I'm trying to do with my products. To treat my products as financial assets in an investment portfolio. I'm investing my time, energy and creativity into my investment, not capital outlay.

For example, during the pandemic, business was bad for Outsprint as the government were busy fire-fighting the crisis, and had no time, budget or bandwidth for service improvements and innovation. Yet there were lots of good opportunities for products, especially stuff related to remote work, or helped people made a side hustle during lockdowns. My own COVID-related side projects for social good did really well during the pandemic, even though most were not revenue-generating. Plugins For Carrd did pretty okay the past 2 years too. I had little consulting but could focus more on working on my products. Thankfully I got products during this time when my gigs ran dry. At least there's still *something*!

And now it's the pandemic is almost over, but recession and inflation is here. Business is better now for Outsprint as the government are back to normal functioning. But with consumer spending potentially affected, it might be bad for products in general. I see more churn, less sign-ups (despite my low conversions I see it too!).

So depending on the external forces at play, different products perform differently, and it kind of evens out.

Looking ahead, I think I'm good on the diversity so I can start more spin-offs to build off from momentum of existing products that's pulling me in. Plugins For Carrd is one. Outsprint is another. Lifelog has lots of potential for spin-offs too - cohort-based course, templates, writing tools, etc.

Having a blend of diversity and similarity is also mitigating risk!

Perhaps all these inner struggles I’ve been having about my lack of results comes down to one thing:

Expectations.

I expected to have succeeded by now.
I expected to have hit my goals yesterday.
I expected to have my hard work rewarded last year.

Expect, expect expect.

And when it doesn’t happen according to expectations, I deem myself to have failed.

"You don’t fail. Your expectations deceive you."
– @jdnoc

Yes. I’ve really just been deceived. By myself. Shot myself in the foot.

I guess it’s because I’ve never done anything this long before without reaching my target. Looking back, the hardest things I’ve set out to achieve in my short life so far, I’ve done it within a year or two. Stuff like winning a school marathon, acing my finals where I previously failed, breaking into a new job without any formal training by just learning on the job. In contrast, I’ve been indie hacking since 2018-ish? Almost 5 years since.

This can’t go on. I’m just making myself miserable. Let’s get back to a beginner’s mindset. Where ignorance is bliss. The openness and fearlessness that children have.

"Naive enough to start.
Naive enough to keep going.
Naive enough to ship.
Naive enough to make a difference."
– @jdnoc

Strategic naivety, it is.

As a freelance consultant, I’m basically selling my time for money. There’s no passive income here at all. Every dollar earned from freelancing is time spent working.

And it’s easy to burn out from it, because it’s always hard to say no to projects and money. That’s what happened in my first 1-2 years. I took on everything that came my way. There were even occasions where I ran 2 projects concurrently! Eventually that led to burn out.

A few things I did that helped me earn without burnout:

• First step: Start saying no. Don’t overlap projects. Do one at a time. Plan some downtime in between each one. Overwork is the most common reason for burnout. As a freelancer it’s hard, I know. But learn how to say no is an important skill as a self-employed person.

• Charge more/raise prices. In the first year, I was only charging a third of what I’m currently charging. Definitely under-priced. That led to needing more projects, more work, and thus more likelihood of burnout. It was only after the first year where I got more confident as a consultant that I felt I could raise prices. And as I upgraded myself, learned new skills (e.g. coding), I continued raising prices - 3 times over the decade.

• Set an annual financial target to earn enough, and stop work once I hit it. You can never earn enough. Envision a lifestyle you want, calculate the money needed to support that lifestyle, and stop once you hit it that year.

• Timebox your work year. Earn enough within 9 months, take 3 months off to recover. That’s what I did for a few years when the income was good. The 3 months were liberating - I could do whatever I wanted. And I chose that time to learn coding, work on my indie products, take long vacations.

• Best hack: be selective of clients/projects. Bad clients lead to burnout 10x faster. Over time I started to spot red flags before signing up a client. You might feel you’re turning away money, but it’s really not worth the psychological harm.

What else have you tried that helped you prevent burnout as a freelancer?

This feels like a good question to ponder, as therein lies the opportunity for growth:

"Heuristic for activities to do more of:

• Things you don’t always feel like doing
• Things you never regret doing after

For me, that’s:

• Exercising
• Meditating
• Foam rolling
• 30-minute calls with new people
• Taking walks without my phone

What would you add?"

– @dickiebush

No point doing things that I don’t feel like doing but sometimes regret doing after – it’s a lose-lose.

No point doing things that I feel like doing but regret doing after – it’s probably vices.

No point reflecting about doing things that I feel like doing and don’t regret after – these get done one their own volition, without any additional push. I can think of passion hobbies, traveling.

So… what are things I don’t always feel like doing but never regret doing after?

- Sleeping early
- Eating right
- Exercise
- Running
- Meditate
- Being in Nature
- Swimming in the sea
- Having downtime
- Doing hand craft
- Sketching
- Listening to music
- Walking without destination
- Meeting up with close friends
- Watching less TV
- Less smartphone screentime
- Less work
- Less junk food
- Less junk media

What else should I add to the list?

"Many people stop doing the right thing because they’re measuring it on the wrong timeline." – @AlexHormozi(https://twitter.com/AlexHormozi/status/1548088808754724865)

I know that making a living from internet products is the right path for me.

But perhaps I got the timeline wrong.

The frustration I feel with my lack of results is totally the consequence of misunderstanding the timeline.

I've seldom done something this long without reaching the objective I set. Seldom in all 4 decades of my life. In the past when I set my mind to it, I mostly can achieve it within 1-2 years, tops.

In school.
In sports.
In career.

"Patience with results, impatience with actions" - @Naval

Adding further fuel to the fire of frustration, I've always had problems with the patience. It's an uphill struggle practising this virtue. I know it's important, but it's just so hard.

The most challenging part is the right things in life and business often have no certain timelines. 10 months, or 10 years? It's anyone's guess. So it's hard to know what's the "right" timeline. In my case, I'm sure it's wrong, since it's giving me so much grief.

Perhaps then, being intentional about setting expectations is key. The horror is that I've never once sat down to set expectations. I've always assumed results will speedily arrive once I put myself to it. I've never quite asked myself:

- How long do I expect it to take?
- What if it takes way longer than expected?
- How long am I willing to commit?
- Do I have what it takes?
- Am I willing to trade off time for the reward?

Good time then, to think about this.

Interesting observation and opinion about inflation in the U.S. from inflationchart.com (made by @levelsio) –

Inflation is actually 19%, not 9%.

Actual numbers are being downplayed.

"You’re now losing 19% of your money to inflation per year or 1.43% per month. At this rate, in 4 years over 50% of your money has evaporated."

That’s slightly over double of the forecast.

It looks scary.

I’m no expert economist, but I can go with the idea that the numbers don’t always reflect reality, and that downstream, real prices of goods might increase even more than 19%, but some might decrease too.

Perhaps the real impact on the ground depends on what you spend most of your money on:

Inflated prices:
- Housing
- Food & beverage
- Textbooks
- Childcare
- Healthcare

Deflated prices:
- Clothing
- Software
- Toys
- Cellphone service
- TV

Sadly, we can’t avoid food and drinks, housing, healthcare. The costs of our core consumption goes up, while the nice-to-have goes down.

That’s the counterintuitive thing - when times are tough, we intuitively cut down on the luxury spending, nice-to-have spending, when it’s actually the basics that need to be reviewed.

Of course, those are U.S. inflation numbers. Singapore’s forecast of inflation for 2022 is ~5%. Lower, but perhaps will rise as the year progresses. Which makes me wonder how much exactly that 5% is downplayed… If by the same multiple as the US (i.e.e double - 9% to 19%), then it’s like 10% or more? Caveat: Pure conjecture there, but concerning nonetheless…

I don’t understand the economics too deeply, but my main noob takeaway are:

- find ways to earn more (at least 20% more) instead of just saving as whatever money you hold will decrease in value
- review spending on consumption basics that’s most affected by inflation
- even investing in crypto isn’t a hedge against inflation that high anymore

What else can we do to hedge ourselves against inflation this high?

- Ask (good) questions as a tweet. Awesome for engagement
- If someone RTs/QTs my tweet, go to his/her profile and like/reply. Make friends.
- Auto-DM feature paired with a free gift - great way to grow following!
-

Sam Harris on the meaning of life, to sad guitar music (https://youtu.be/srxDtefn740):

"One thing people tend to realize is that they wasted a lot of time when life was normal. It’s not just what they it’s not just what they did with their time; it’s not just that they spent too much time working or compulsively checking email. It’s that they cared about, the wrong things. They regret what they cared about. Their attention was bound up in petty concerns a year after year when life was normal… We all know this epiphany is coming… The horror is that we succeed - we managed to never really connect with the present moment and find fulfilment there."

Damn. Daaaaaamn. This was so good. I needed this. The emotive soundtrack behind the speech hit the spot for sure.

It really got me thinking:

Am I caring about the wrong things?

In work and career.
In family and relationships.
In health and wellness.
In life in general.

How would I know?

In most cases, you would know when say, a loved one dies, or some huge crisis happens. I don’t want to need those events to be able to reflect on it. It might be too late by then. I want to avoid the horror of succeeding in never having that epiphany until it’s too late.

How can I know if I’m caring about the wrong things, right now?

Some ideas:

• Intuition. Something feels off in life or whatever area you’re thinking. You’re not feeling the most aligned, congruent and on board with it. With how things are unfolding. A nagging suspicion things can be better.
• I’m not getting results I want. Data and feedback is showing that no matter how hard I work, it isn’t working. I could be doing it wrong, or I should be doing something else - in which case I should either change my approach, or switch games entirely.
• When was last time I felt joyful and happy? Truly happy. Not the kind of happy where you feel a peak but momentary elation of achieving a goal, but that sweet, deep, lingering aftertaste from doing, from the process. What are the things that give me that kind of goalless joy now?

Ultimately, it all seems to point back to mindfulness, awareness, presence.

When I’m mindful, when I’m embodied in my body, when I’m present to everything inwards and outwards. That’s when I can know with a higher probability if I’m caring about the wrong things.

The present moment contains the truth of whether what we care about is right or wrong.

Liquid Death is one brand that's fascinated me recently.

It's just water sold in a can. But it's not just water, it's MAN water. It's badass water. The can is designed to look like beer cans, with heavy metal-inspired font and designs, combined with marketing taglines like "Murder your thirst". You look cooler and hotter holding that can, than a clear plastic bottle of mineral water.

[Liquid Death ad](https://static-prod.adweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/Liquid-Death-five-cans-lineup-2022-1024x538.png)

It's a product that's 100% branding. No one buys it for the water inside.

I'm fascinated because before bottled water felt like one of those 'dead' product categories. Differentiation is dead there. Where every brand looks the same. Where the main product is a commodity. Where the core experience of consuming it is 99.9% similar (because come on, distilled water and mountain spring water tastes the same to the average bear). It looked like that's all to it forever more, with nothing left to innovate in this product space. Yet along came this irreverent brand and is killing it.

It made me wonder: What other 'dead' product categories—physical or digital—are out there, waiting to be disrupted this way? Which boring products out there do we take for granted?

A few I can think of:

Milk
Ice cream
Bread
Meat
Vegetables
Airlines
Office supplies
Printers
Credit cards
Ecommerce stores
Web browsers (Chrome, Edge)
Email clients
Smartphones (surprise, surprise)

*Do you agree with the categories above? What did I miss?*

*More importantly, what's some 'dead' product spaces that indie hackers can work on?*

Reason for cancellation: To manage finances more closely and thus couldn't fit in the subscription.

But tbh I feel bad taking his money when he no longer use the site much. So it's a good thing in the end I guess.

That brings current MRR to $99, the first time it went below $100 since achieving it during Christmas last year. Sigh. 😔

NASA just released the [first images](https://webbtelescope.org/news/first-images/gallery) from the James Webb Space Telescope, our latest, newest, upgraded space camera after Hubble. And man did it not disappoint.

Here's an image of the "Cosmic Cliffs" in the Carina Nebula, located 7600 light-years away:


What a show-stopper of an image! 🤩🤩🤩

And the more I stare at this and ponder the implications, the more all my teeny weeny day-to-day worries melt away.

We're so infinitesimally small in something so infinitely vast.

People talk about leaving behind a legacy, but seriously...

Who will remember us when our Sun blows up?
Who even knows about us in this vast Universe?
Does anything *really* matter?

All is but an almost non-existent blimp in the infinite space-time of the Universe.

And instead of finding this nihilistic and depressing, I find this perspective, this overview effect, a relief. A cathartic release, almost.

It's like a creator realising that nobody cares about what you did or wrote today. You can see it as:

"Yaaay nobody cares! 🤸‍♂️ I'm free to experiment and do whatever I want!"

or

"Urgh nobody cares. 😭 This sucks, I suck."

I'm going for the former.

We're tiny. Nobody cares.

So now I can attribute and truly take ownership of my own meaning, take my own care, just for my own time, my own life, in my tiny speck of space within this vast cosmos.

It doesn't matter, so that it can now matter.

I’ve been frustrated with my lack of results lately. The success I seek seems to elude me. It’s been years. I try patience. I try to reframe my perspective. It provides temporary relief. But this frustration—turning into annoyance, at myself—always returns.

And I’ve got a working hypothesis that I’ve been toying with in my head, why it’s that way:

I’m not successful because I’m not lazy enough.

The reason why I’m not hitting my goals for my products is because I’m too working hard.

I’m too willing to work hard on everything—things that matter and don’t matter—that I spread myself too thin.

I’m greedy and hard-working, want to do it all, and feel confident to be able to do it all through just working harder, so I lose focus.

I’m the sort who enjoys feeling competent, so even if I’m not good at the skill, I’ll force myself to learn it.

I’m not using enough leverage to help me succeed—like tools, automation, capital, partners, freelancers, VAs, systems, templates—so I end up doing and achieving less.

I’m great at forming habits and applying consistency, discipline and a never-say-die attitude to my work, so that blessing brought to the extreme ends up being a curse (when I just hunker down in hard work without results).

I’m too much of a workaholic that I forget that rest is required for optimal productivity.

Essentially, the very virtue called industriousness had turned into a vice, because it had blinded me to what I need to do to be effective.

I was just being ultra efficient, but not effective.

To be effective, I need to be lazy.

In some aspects, at least.

I should really start practicing selective indolence and strategic incompetence.

I need to be willing to not treat my industriousness as the hammer and every problem as a nail.

I need to be open to doing more work upfront to automate, create systems, templates and using other tools to scale and amplify beyond the bottleneck that is myself.

I need to start considering how I can bring others in to help me, complement me, free me up to focus on things I’m more effective in.

To be successful, I need to learn how to be lazy.

Laziness is not a vice per se. It can be a virtue, if used appropriately.

Lazy on the things that don’t matter.
Industrious on the things that do.

I realised I’ve never written down all the problems that Lifelog solves, because I assumed those were clear for those coming from the old writing platform.

But @Chance_Smith used Lifelog as an example to apply this framework that @dickiebush had. This is Dickie’s framework:

Bad copywriting:

• Here’s my product
• Here’s what it does
• Here’s what’s so good about it

Good copywriting:

• Here’s your problem
• Here’s the benefit of solving it
• Here’s why what you’ve tried has failed
• And by the way here’s a product that will help you solve it

And this was Chance’s list of problems that Lifelog solves:

Problems LifeLog solves
- never starting to write
- solo writing
- inconsistent writing
- over ambitious writing goals (1k words/day)
- not self-aware (cloudy pov)
- not goal focused

Somehow reading the list of problems felt refreshing because I’ve never listed them down before. And when crafting my Learn More page I went straight to the benefits without ever demonstrating I got a good empathetic understanding of the problems my potential users faced.

Huge face palm moment. 🤦‍♂️

OK so let’s build on Chance’s list and try to add on all the problems my customers have:

Problems LifeLog solves
- never starting to write
- (loneliness of) solo writing
- inconsistent writing
- over ambitious writing goals (1k words/day)
- not self-aware (cloudy pov)
- not goal focused
- poor progress on goals
- lack of deliberate practice (on writing, clear thinking)
- insufficient emotional expression
- lack of confidence
- lack of sense of belonging to a like-minded community
- overwhelming fear of failure, perfectionism
- flow: find it hard to express thoughts to words
- ability to communicate well in writing, i.e. communication skills
- lack of clarity on your ideas/thoughts
- lack of career progression, opportunities
- lack of discipline and consistency in other aspects of life
- better writing skills in general

Anything else I missed?

I’ve seen this pop up several times over the last week, so I take it as a sign, a synchronicity, that I should write to think about it.

It’s always some version of this:

Don’t speak badly about yourself. Don’t say things like “I suck. I’m terrible at X. I hate this part of me.” A part of you—your subconscious, your inner warrior, your spirit, whatever—is always listening. It can’t tell the difference between it being said in jest or seriously, because it’s the same energy.

Perhaps I’m just seeing what I need right now.

Going through a period of creative burnout and low esteem, perhaps my inner voice, my self-talk in my head haven’t been the most kind to myself. Maybe it’s the cause, maybe it’s a symptom. I don’t know. I do know it’s there.

Some ways I speak badly to myself:

“It’s been years. Why are you still not earning enough money from your indie hacking?”

“Everyone’s doing well. Even folks who started later than you are enjoying more success. You’re not any less smart than them. Why are you not achieving what you want?”

“Why do you make it so hard for yourself? Just go do the thing and win.”

“You’re not being a good enough dad. You should be more involved. You should do more. Spend more time with your son. Time will pass you by much faster than you realize. Why work so much?”

“You’re not being a good enough husband. You should plan more dates, do more sweet things. Serve your wife more. Marriage takes effort too, you know.”

“You’ve not been spending time with your parents. They’re old, and time with them is limited. How many more years will you have with them? Seize it.”

Writing them down was nice. I realized I have a strong paternal inner voice, always coaching me in my head.

The first step to recovery is recognition. The second step is to speak differently, using loving speech.

“Easier said than done,” my inner voice went.

We’re gonna need a bigger boat.

An interesting all-round technique to get ahead of the pack, in life:

Just do the opposite of what 99% are doing.

OK caveat: Obviously this rule doesn’t apply to fundamental laws of physics things like jumping off a building or putting your hand in fire. Do as the 100% does in those things yes. But for the rest:

"How to get ahead in your 20s:
Look at what 99% of people in their 20s are doing
Do the opposite"
– @WrongsToWrite

For most important things in life that are valuable—career, business, entrepreneurship, money, relationships, happiness—these aren’t things that are clear cut. It ain’t black and white, it’s all grey. There’s definitely more than one way. Context matters in these cases. And being opposite gives sharp contrast, helps one stand out, distribute your message, sell your product. That’s when being contrarian is game-changing.

I see this all the time everywhere. The contrarian hot take on Twitter goes viral. The unconventional growth hack gets millions of users. The weirdos win.

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules. And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them, disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them. Because they change things. They invent. They imagine. They heal. They explore. They create. They inspire. They push the human race forward.
While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do."

That made me think – what have I done or can I do differently from the 99% of creators and indie hackers to get ahead? What are some of the norms and rules that everyone says to be true, but you learned you can do otherwise? What do I believe in that 99% don’t, that it’s a hill that I’m prepared to die fighting on?

A few popular rules/behaviours and how I do the opposite of the 99%:

❌ Hard work alone is sufficient for success
✅ Learning to lean more on being able to spot opportunity and leverage chance

❌ Going all in on one big bet thing, be known for just one niche, is the only way
✅ Go for a portfolio of bets intentionally, be known for many different things

❌ Sharing mostly wins to shape how successful you look. Even when sharing losses and failures, framing it to show how brilliant/good one is to overcome it
✅ Being vulnerable in public, openly sharing failures, struggles, worries with no heroic ending

❌ Hustle hard, succeed fast
✅ Commit a decade to it

❌ Anytime someone says this is the ONLY way to do it
✅ Always think, “It depends.”

Question to myself: What else can I do differently from the 99%, in business and in life?

I just hit 1300 day streak on Makerlog!

It’s been 3.5 years, one of the longest streaks I’ve ever maintained.

Some thoughts and recollections:

HOW I STARTED
The year was 2018. It’s a rainy December in Ubud, Bali. I was digital nomading and working on my products, and decided to finally try Makerlog, right about the same time I started a daily writing habit. 7 Dec was my first writing post, so I presume it’s also my first log on Makerlog. I thought, ok since I’m going serious into indie hacking, this community might be fun to join. I’ve been logging every task I do and every small win for all my products since.

BENEFITS
• I use these logs to do my monthly reviews, track progress for each product. It’s great! I often do more than I think I did every month, and the logs are a great reminder for that.
• The product pages are also a great way to look back at the progress for each product.
• Surprising developer benefit - the logs also serve as developer/versioning notes. I get really granular and share my thought process behind each feature I created (especially the important features that were hard to develop, like say the streak algorithm for Lifelog). That way if I forgot how the function works, I can still look back and refresh my mind.
• Overall, the Makerlog community had also been great for learning, connecting and support as an indie hacker. The hype and high energy in the chat group and community had somewhat died down after 3 years, but everyone’s still plugging at it, making products and commenting on one another’s launches.
• It’s a funny thing to say, but around and after the 2 year mark it became more about the benefits from logging than the streak. Yeah I’ll probably get sad for a few minutes if I lose the streak, but the benefits I get from capturing my progress is still there. And I’ll still keep doing it.

LEARNINGS
Will I hit 2000? 10000? I don’t know.

What I do know: My approach is “one more day”. I know I’ll try one more day tomorrow…

Just one more day.

A gem from James Clear’s newsletter today:

"If you’re always right, you’re not learning.
If you’re never failing, you’re not reaching.
The objective is to be right. The objective is to succeed.
But if you’re always winning, you’re undershooting your potential."

– James Clear

That puts a counterintuitive but so-damned-true point of view on winning and being right, isn’t it?

The key word here is “always”.

Nothing wrong with winning or being right, per se.

But if you winning 100 out of 100 times (or even 99 times out of 100), then it very likely means one thing:

The game is too easy for you. You’re not really taking risks, not really pushing yourself, not getting out of your comfort zone.

The winning thus gives a false sense of success. There’s actually little progress to be said, zero growth to be had. The worst kind of success you’d want, actually. Because it lulls you into a false sense of superiority where there’s none. It creates a mirage that you don’t actually live in.

Of course it’s not to put failure and losses on a pedestal and start giving trophies out to every loser. That’s affirmative action for the wrong reasons. Also if you’re failing 100 out of 100 times, the game is too hard for you too. You need to change the game, change who you play with, or change the rules.

The key seems to be finding the right zone of challenge versus competency.

Maybe 60:40 fails to wins? I can live with that.

Tl;dr - Always winning means you actually losing.

Instead of setting grand visions and ambitious goals, do just one more day.

Examples:

“So are you planning on staying sober for the rest of your life?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to stay sober for one more day…”

“How much are you willing to commit to this business? A decade?”
“I don’t know… but I’m going to stick to it for one more day…”

It’s an interesting motivation hack, for sure. Especially useful for infinite games. Because with infinite games there’s no end point, no destination (except death perhaps). Your goal—even if you have one—is never done done. Like sleep, health, mental fitness. Like being an entrepreneur, a creator, a maker.

It’s a lifestyle, not an exit.

When there’s no end, it’s hard to feel motivated to keep pushing, isn’t it? Or when you have a vision for how success should look like, it can feel overwhelming or frustrating that you’re currently so far off from it.

All these are about becoming disembodied from the present and getting lost in a future that had yet to arrive… if ever.

The solution? By just focusing on the next step to take. By being present. Being embodied, in the present.

By saying, “Just one more day.”

Honestly… I don’t know if I can stick to this creator-entrepreneur journey long enough to hit my goal of $5k per month, or if I can ever achieve my dream of making a good living from indie hacking for me and my family. It sucks that there’s no results after so many years.

I don’t know, but I’ll do it for just one more day, tomorrow…