Lifelog

I've been posting every day on LinkedIn since 25th March. The aim is to build an audience—fellow designers and non-design folks interested in design (either to outsource or hire)—for my design consultancy Outsprint.

I posted daily about Lifelog and my writing there during my #100daysofmarketing challenge last year (Sept-Dec). But LinkedIn didn't work out as a good channel for Lifelog, so I stopped posting after that. Looking back, it didn't make sense because most in my connected network are from the design industry in Singapore, not about writing.

So when I decided to fully embrace my portfolio of products as the way forward—including my design consultancy work—I decided I could use LinkedIn as my distribution channel for Outsprint, and leverage everything I learned from doing content on Twitter to LinkedIn.

Some thoughts so far after two months on LinkedIn:

- Then: 699 (as at 22 Apr). Now: 752 followers. I can at least conclude the past 50 followers were a result of my audience-building efforts!
- Also got a few warm leads for consultancy work, so it's definitely helpful in terms of potential revenue!
- Content is less ephemeral. The algo definitely works way differently from Twitter. I have posts from days or weeks ago that can still get likes or views. Whereas on Twitter the content cycle is like 24h.
- User engagement is lower, less frequent. Most people in my network don't check LinkedIn all that often.
- Views and engagement goes significantly down on weekends. Maybe LinkedIn is synced to the Mon-Fri, 9-to-5 schedule?
- Memes work too! I used to think LinkedIn is a serious place, and people are less willing to joke around because it's a place for their career and their current/future employers might be looking. But I've got a meme that's been going strong even after 2 weeks, and still getting Likes and Views! Looks like I was wrong.
- Comments are more combative, people aren’t as nice (as Maker Twitter). I got folks who don't follow me or are connected replying to my posts who don't filter their words for friendliness, or are out to prove me wrong. OK you get that on other parts of Twitter too, but less so based on my experience in Maker Twitter.
- The presence of randos in my replies also mean that hashtags still work in LinkedIn. It helps people outside of your connected network discover your content.
- I'm running out of content ideas after this initial burst of two months, so time for a structure:
• Mon - showing results, proof of work, testimonial, review
• Tue-Fri - content to help my audience
• Sat - a question/poll to prompt reflection
• Sun - a meme for relaxed Sunday
- After 2 months of data, I can now start to firm up the topics for my content matrix:
• anything about UX design, design, design thinking, design-driven innovation
• design in government/non-profit space
• careers, career progression in design
• challenges we face as designers
• interesting hacks, techniques and methods in design
• helping non-designers commission design services

What do you think of LinkedIn?

I mentioned I needed a reality check in my May wrap-up. But here’s the thing: the best reality checks isn’t sitting down to think, trying to squeeze out some insight or plan. It’s about letting it rise out and emerge from within, without getting in its way.

It’s not artificially forced, but naturally arising.

So that’s what I’m going to do. By doing nothing, by having no goals, no targets, no intentions (other than the intention to have no intention, if that counts as one haha).

And just do whatever comes, whatever inspires. And see where that brings me, what it shows me.

Just being still in movement, being active in stillness. And observe.

It’s not about passive. It’s not about being lazy, sedentary or having no appointments, even though it can look that way. The outward form is misleading, if we just focus on what it looks like on the outside.

Kind of like meditation, but not the neatly sitting down kind, but messily living it out type. This practice of aimlessness is tricky, but effective.

And guess what? There’s no better way to spend my birthday month—my 43rd round trip around the sun—than to just be!

📈 Current MRR: US$129 (all from Lifelog)
📊 One-off revenue: ~US$418.55


Twitter stats - May vs Apr
– Tweets: 1537 vs 1466
– Tweet impressions: 346K vs 390K
– Likes: 3.8K vs 4.1K
– Engagement rate: 4.2% vs 3.9%
– Profile visits: 67K vs 79.3K
– Mentions: 1652 vs 1643
– New followers: 237 vs 406
– Link clicks: 955 vs 818
– Retweets: 341 vs 332
– Replies: 1.5K vs 1.4K

—————

40% of 2022 had passed. Time for a reality check.

I tend to prefer being optimistic most of the time, but I feel the days are passing me by way faster than I can feel them, and that makes me feel anxious.

What have I achieved so far?

Still low MRR.
Still no $5K/m revenue.
Still no breakthrough products.

I had set an intention to try #30daysofluck challenge for May, but got side-tracked by Sheet2Bio. In a way that’s good. I launched my 2nd SaaS. That’s another opportunity that can buy me more luck.

The past few months were hopeful, forward-looking ones. But with the halfway point coming up on the year, I think being realistic is in order. Hopefully, the switch of focus for early morning deep work will help me make more progress too.

I definitely need to double down on getting to ramen profitability.

When you get that uncomfortable, icky, nagging, “unfinished business” feeling if you didn’t perform the habit that day/week/month.

You know, like forgetting to brush your teeth?

That’s what I’m realising now for my weekly recaps.

I had a busy day on Friday—my usual analog recap day—and missed my weekly review. I told myself I’ll try to do it on the weekend, but weekends are busy family days. And now it’s the new week and a Monday, and still I’ve not done my weekly recap.

And that nagging, icky feeling is back.

I feel lost at sea without having done it. There’s a cathartic clarity around being able to download your mind on to a piece of paper, more so every week when so much happens. After I do it, I always feel somewhat relieved, lighter, and more grounded.

It’s like I’m a tree, and I spend the week growing my branches and leaves outwards and upwards. If I don’t have half a day deepening my roots downwards, I’d feel adrift, unanchored, easy to topple.

It’s weird how I’ve only just started on this habit for 1 month, only did 4 reps on it, but it’s stuck so well.

All the more a sign that I’ve built a habit that lasts.

I wrote about how in recession there was opportunity. But it’ll also help to get prepared and ready for it. In any downturn, consumption goes down. People spend less. Indie hackers and solo creators might still end up feeling the downstream impact of less consumer dollars going around.

So what’s a solopreneur to do in times of an economic downturn? Brainstorming some ideas:

Lower costs
• Ask for discounts to SaaS subscriptions
• Reduce burn rate and fixed expenses e.g. rent, hires, overheads
• Eliminate luxury expenses e.g. lavish WeWork office subscriptions
• Drop the co-working hot desk/expenses on lattes in cafes - work remotely at home
• Reevaluate your monthly/annual budgets for everything
• Pay off high-interest debts, don’t take on new debts

Increase revenue
• Ask for or add an annual subscription for upfront cash
• Build products quickly in market gaps where VC-funded startups failed and left
• Start a side hustle or venture into a new category - the more recession-proof type of work/product, the better
• Learn new skills that could come in useful later
• Rethink your financial investments

Maintain buffers
• Shore up more cash reserves, emergency funds
• Have backup plans - Plan Bs, Plan Cs
• Borrow instead of cash upfront (where it makes sense, if loan is cheaper or low interest vs less liquidity)
• Find legal ways to reduce tax burden, find what’s tax-deductible

Generate goodwill
• Help others out - those who are laid off or in financial distress
• Give away free resources or content
• Network more, build connections and relationships
• Make introductions
• Give references for job interviews
• Collaborate for collective benefit

What else did I miss?

So it’s post-launch Day 2 for Sheet2Bio:

No paid customers…yet 🤭

Otherwise, the launch on Twitter seems like it went well…?

👀 12k impressions
💙 80+ likes
💬 30+ replies
📣 30+ RTs

Serious, I have no idea what a successful Twitter launch looks like.

What do I even look out for?

One thing that did come up though:

Got a few concerned DMs telling me that my landing page wasn’t loading properly, and I had to tell them it was entirely intentional.

I had a giggle when it happened. It’s either funny or worrying… Because people might think it’s not loading properly and bounce before seeing the rest. But it’s good feedback nonetheless. Looks like the intentional no-design look is being completely missed. So I quickly added a header explaining the no-CSS look:

“Your page loaded correctly, yes. And yes, it’s intentional. We save time/costs not having to prettify this page so that we can spend more time making your link-in-bio page awesome.”

One thing’s certain:

This no-design look will either stand out and 1000×, or tank and go to 0. It’s looking to be a big gamble for sure!

I did things very differently this time compared to all my past launches. Jotting it down here for learning:

• Researched and planned my launch by researching best practices of how creators do it on Twitter. I was lucky - Mattia, Kevon and Minh-Phuc launched recently and I was able to take more than a leaf from their playbooks! That was gold and immensely helpful.

• I also did ‘seeding’ this time. Two days before launch, I tweeted out a ‘Save The Date’ tweets, and asked if people are willing to support by RTing on the launch day. I got about 10 volunteers, which really help push the tweet up in the first few hours of launch.

• I also stopped my usual programming and stopped tweeting about writing for creators and other indie hacking/building in public tweets, and focused on tweets around Sheet2Bio. I tweets about the background, some things I learned, some building in public tweets, and plugging the site and coming launch. This helped to build up more awareness leading to the launch.

• I usually schedule 3 content tweets per day, but this time I just schedule a single one for the launch tweet. It was an experiment to see if I can conserve my ‘algo juice’ for just 1 tweet. Seemed to have worked! (Though can’t be 100% sure it’s due to what I hypothesized)

• I hardly do RTs but there were 2 other creators launching just the day before so I tweeted them out in the afternoon too. Didn’t seem to impact my launch tweet.

• I scheduled it to go out at 6pm SG time, which is around noon Central European Time. That means people are leaving work in Asia, and taking a break in Europe. More eyes on it perhaps.

• I scheduled the auto-RTs for 4h for 5 times instead of my usual 6h for 3 times, to get it in front of my audience more. This also syncs well with the time of tweet, because 6pm tweet gets RTed at 10pm which is 10am in New York, 7am in SF, when the US is just waking up. An attempt to catch the attention during the morning commute.

• I also synced updates to my Twitter profile bio and banner with the launch. I changed my bio to highlight Sheet2Bio first, and designed a banner that shows Sheet2Bio with “I just launched this” copy.

• Updated the open graph image for Sheet2Bio to look more dynamic, since this was what they will see in the link image card preview

• I tweeted out a link. They say don’t tweet links as that gets downranked by the algo. But I had to make it easy for people to check out my site, so no choice. Made sure the preview image looked good, and the pre-launch seeding helped bumped it up.

• I only launched on Twitter, on my Facebook and on the Makerlog Telegram chat group this time. No Product Hunt. Oh yes, and Imgur too (random, wild card opportunity since I needed a new direct URL for the open graph image)

• Tweet goes out at 6pm, and I tried to stop replying to other people’s tweets 3h before at 3pm, so that in case one reply goes viral it wouldn’t vie for attention against the launch tweet. I only managed to stop by 4pm instead.

• I hammered out lots of replies to big and peer accounts before 4pm when US and Europe are asleep/busy, to try to get more attention on my account when they check Twitter at 6pm.

More post-launch retros to come!

Sheet2Bio is a SaaS project that’s special to my heart.

Because after so much trial and error learning about creating and launching products, I feel like 80% of most scripted playbook don’t work for me. Oftentimes flipping it and doing the opposite works out better for me!

Here’s the flipped scripts I learned for building and marketing a SaaS products, and how I’m applying everything here to Sheet2Bio:

Lofty ambitions vs No grand product vision
• No more “change the world” narrative, no grand ambition for building a great product that service millions
• I approached it by being opportunistic… like an idiot without a plan vs a genius with a plan

High expectations, big targets vs No expectations
• I used to set big idealistic targets (I set $1M annually before, then $5k monthly) and hyping up expectations in order to distort reality.
• Now I’m realistic, and use data, listen to users more

Focus on one thing vs Diversify across a portfolio
• Go all in on one thing, they say. Putting everything into an all-or-nothing bet is sexy and heroic.
• Now, I’m diversified across 10 projects, with a handful one giving the main revenue.

Dedicated effort and craft vs As little effort as possible
• The craftsman, builder mentality was a sacred pact for technically-inclined founders. Build it well, even to the extent of over-engineering or over-designing.
• No longer. I minimise as much engineering and design effort as I can. I write as little code as I can, even thought I enjoy it.
• No-design, HTML-only landing page now instead of sleek, smooth landing pages
SaaS usually meant automated processes and workflows, but I’m breaking this rule too. Everything is manual for Sheet2Bio now. No scalability, no
• One big, multi-month push in mostly stealth vs Incremental, just-in-time efforts building in public in mere weeks

Product Hunt launch to everyone vs Twitter to friends
• PH is the de facto place to launch anything tech these days. It’s huge, you get eyes on your product from people who you don’t know. But these days, I’m thinking smaller. Like launching to my friends on Twitter, and to their friends.
• It’s like a house party over a gala dinner - more fun, more cosy, more friendly.

I’m sure I’m flipping more SaaS scripts than what I just covered, but that’s enough for today. Got a launch to go for!

So everything’s done for Sheet2Bio. It’s launch time!

Not sure why but only just recently I realised Sheet2Bio is my 2nd SaaS product. I was already a month in by then, yet it only dawned on me so much later. Why?

Back story
I think it’s because I never quite took it so ‘seriously’ to call it a SaaS. From the start it was just something I wanted for myself – a link-in-bio site to contain my most important links to products and content. I didn’t want to have to log in to edit it. I liked using Google Sheets to update stuff like that. I didn’t feel like the existing ones serve my needs as a creator, and since I already had some old code for a similar product I shut down previously, I thought I could repurpose it.

After that I saw that other creators also had lots of links, and thought I could build it for them, so I offered it to other creators I know who already use one. One by one, I DMed them, offered them a free beta account, and manually created each page for them. Along the way, learned loads! So many bugs and user errors that I never anticipated if I had just stuck to me, myself and I as the only user. The product improved by leaps. It started to have it’s own look. It took on it’s defining features catered for Twitter creators and indie hackers – revenue charts, progress bar.

Now I thought… maybe I can charge for it and see if people will even pay. That’s still an unknown, even though there were some enthusiastic responses from the beta users. After all, they got it for free. But the dynamics change the moment you’re asked to key in your credit card number. So it’s good to push it out now to test the hypothesis: “Is Sheet2Bio viable as a business? Would customers be willing to pay?”

Approach so far
Because of that iterative, incremental approach to building in public, I never had a grand vision in mind. It was always just responding to whatever the opportunity was in front of me. I didn’t have much expectations, unlike all of my past products, especially Lifelog.

And I’m kind of liking this “loosely held” approach.

Because it feels like I can be more realistic this time, and not be blinded my idealism and grand visions not tethered to reality. I can take it for what it is, rather what it should be.

Because it’s loosely held, I’m also keeping my tendencies for over-engineering or over-designing in check. Just look at my landing page. It’s still raw HTML only. No fonts, no colors. The only colors are the emojis. Everything is optimised for minimum effort. Nothing is automated at this point – I still created each link-in-bio page, each account manually.

Not out of laziness though, but more out of committing just the right amount of effort for the stage that the product is at. Just-in-time effort. And frankly, for anything that’s still zero revenue, the effort and cost invested should be low. Low enough that if it fails, I won’t lose sleep over it.

This truly feels true to the spirit of being an idiot without a plan than being a genius with a plan.

Next: launch!
I made my first code commit for Sheet2Bio on Apr 2nd, and it’s already almost 2 months since! How time flies. While my effort wasn’t 100% on it, I think 2 months is still too long. So I’m committing to a MVP launch.

On Thursday, May 26th!

Again, no expectation. Launching on Twitter first. No Product Hunt yet.

Glad to be pushing it out into the wild… finally!

It never felt like my side projects earned all that much.

Slightly over $100 per month for Lifelog, and a $15 purchase for a Carrd plugin every week or so.

Just tiny drips here and there. 😔

$15 feels so tiny in comparison to my $5k monthly revenue goal, I often don't even celebrate it or consider it a win.

But after doing my 2021 tax accounting, I realised my side project revenue totalled ~$11,000!

@knight asked for a breakdown of the $11K, so here goes (these are rough estimates):

- Lifelog = $1200
- Plugins For Carrd = $900
- Sweet Jam Sites = $500
- Keto List Singapore = $1100
- Social impact patronage = $1300
- Others* = $6000

* e.g. random one-off freelancing jobs like coaching, writing a tech article, integrating a Carrd site
** Caveat: These are revenue from side projects. My main income still comes from consulting.

I felt better after seeing it was $11k.

My tiny epiphany: Because of how my revenue is diversified due to my portfolio of products, I realised I needed a different lens in which to look at my revenue.

What looked like insignificant drips here and there... can actually add up to something substantial!

It's just like how small daily consistent actions doesn't look like much (100 words a day?), but it can compound (36,500 words a year - enough for a short novel!) – but of course! I know this. Strange how I never applied that same idea to my portfolio revenue. 🤦‍♂️

Always ZOOM OUT.

I just saw someone launch a custom YouTube automation app that’s completely run on Make’s automation recipes in the backend.

Welcome to the era of AaaS – Automation-as-a-Service.

(Unfortunate acronym, I know)

It’s crazy how far nocode automation platforms like Zapier and Make had come. Apparently, Zapier now supports 2000+ apps for integrations for 2.5+ million active users! That’s a LOT. Gone are the days where they were just fancy, nice-to-have conveniences for workflows. They’re integral parts of business ops. And now people even build SaaS off them, like some sort of white label software.

Writing’s on the wall
---------------------
It’s not surprising actually, if you track the parallels with other software platforms like say Wordpress. WP provided an easy way to set up a website for non-technical folks, just as Zapier did. But despite the low barrier, there’s still services that white label off Wordpress to make it even easier for businesses owners who want a site but are too busy to bother with learning how to use Wordpress. Similarly, learning Zapier recipes does take a while. It’s nocode as in it doesn’t involve having to programme it yourself, but it can still get pretty technical if you dig into more complex integration and automation workflows. The other advantage is that with a custom app, the user doesn’t have to go buy subscriptions for every automation platform – the white label AaaS takes care of that.

What’s the opportunity?
-------------------------
So coming back, that YouTube automation app got me entrepreneurial juices flowing. If this guy can make a niche app on top of another app (that’s Make), then there’s a lot more other possibilities here. Imagine an automation app with ready-made recipes for every major social platform – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, TikTok, Whatsapp, Telegram. Narrow down the niche even more, and have automation apps for say, ecommerce on Telegram (even this niche is huuuuge).

A quick Google search shows some of the popular tasks that can be automated for these niches:

- Message your team about potential leads/customers, e.g. Facebook ads → Gmail
- Consolidate info into a spreadsheet, e.g. add new Stripe sales as rows to Google Sheet
- Automate social media workflow, e.g. post new YouTube videos to Facebook, Twitter
- Create backups, e.g. Evernote → Google Drive

This idea is really making me think:

- What are some workflows I’ve experienced in the past that can be—should be—automated?
- Which one of these workflows helps people make more money, or saves they from a huge pain?
- What’s a high impact but tricky to DIY automation workflow that can be packaged into a convenient AaaS app that people would gladly pay for?

What else did I miss?

I just came across an interesting new API service called Bionic Reading.

How it works is you feed it your text, it edits the text and spits it back in a format to help you read with better focus, like this:

BEFORE vs AFTER

It was a mindblowing experience reading both in succession. With the “before” text, I found myself trying to scan through words quickly, and my eyes glazing over after a while through a wall of text that all looks the same. Basically, shallow reading.

But with Bionic Reading, I actually read the whole thing with proper focus and attention. I felt I read it faster and easier, compared to trying to scan the text in the “before” case. It’s amazing what a few bold letters within a word can do to your attention!

This new tech makes me wonder if it’s useful for Lifelog, since we do long form writing and reading here. If people focus better here, they can write better. If people read better here, they can interact more with one another’s posts. Encouraging a more mindful, in-depth experience and interaction is something aligned to how I like to develop digital products.

Might be fun to try!

There's a YC letter to founders about the coming economic recession that's making it rounds. It's pretty sombre, and a warning to startup founders especially the VC-funded ones. Of course there will negative impact across the board, whatever kind of business you are.

Downturns means less revenue and profit. Companies shrink spending. People earn less. People spend less too. So trying to improve your margins and reduce costs will be a great move for any situation, any business.

But there's one particular paragraph (the last one) in the YC letter that's worth a second glance, because it sounds like a great opportunity:

> "Many of your competitors will not plan well, maintain high burn, and only figure out they're screwed when they try to raise their next round. You can often pick up significant market share in an economic downturn by just staying alive."

I absolutely love how my default mode of existence—aka surviving, staying alive— as an indie creator, bootstrapped founder is now a strategic advantage in the coming economic downturn.

In chaotic times, cockroaches > unicorns.

In fact, like how they say cockroaches will become the dominant species in a nuclear apocalypse, there's a huge opportunity now for the little guys to hustle for market share and customers when your VC-funded startup competitors fail.

In crisis, there's opportunity.

It's going to be interesting to watch for headlines of SaaS startups shutting down. How fast can you move in to make a product that can capture some of that market as an indie founder? What market gaps will emerge?

Now is the time to chase that.

I just started a blog called Carrd Tricks (https://plugins.carrd.co/#blog) for my Plugins For Carrd project.

Nothing fancy. No Wordpress, Medium or Ghost. Just manually created pages in Carrd itself. Carrd isn’t the best platform for a blog to be honest, but I’m keen to keep the SEO juice on my site, so I have to work around it.

What inspired this was how I found myself constantly helping others with their questions about Carrd, on Facebook, Reddit, Telegram and Indie Hackers. Since I’m already writing answers for them, and since there’s probably more than one person who has that same issue searching on Google for it, I might as well repurpose them into tiny how-to tutorials and tricks to help more Carrd folks. Of course, the reward is the SEO juice.

This is another one of my experiments in spotting opportunities and leveraging luck. My rule is to follow inspiration, and act on it immediately before it fades. So I dropped all my other tasks yesterday morning, and hacked it out within 2h. It has just 1 tiny tutorial right now, but probably one of the most common and recurring questions. It’s scrappy. It’s minimal. But it serves the purpose. An MVP of a blog, so to speak.

SEO takes times to accrue. And I’ve also got to start sharing the links around. But it’s a start to a long game.

Will see if this will help bring more customers to my Plugins For Carrd project!

I guess I’m a bit of a productivity nerd. All along, I’ve been optimising my productivity for efficiency. That means trying to do as more per day, squeezing as many tasks as I can, checking off the to-do list.

A good day is when all the items on the list gets struck through.

But I think I’ve been doing it wrong.

Here’s what @ShaanVP has to say in his 5 tweet Tuesday newsletter:

"My system is called One Big Thing (OBT). Here lemme explain it to ya in 2 seconds:

• What’s the one outcome you need to make happen today?
• It’s not a task, it’s an OUTCOME (might require a few tasks)
• You put all your energy towards that

If you do that every day, you’ll outpace everyone. This is what productivity nerds get wrong. They go for efficiency (tasks per day). You want to go for effect (impact per day)"

Learning this was a face palm moment for me. But this isn’t some world-changing insight, isn’t it? Keeping the big picture, being strategic instead of tactical, the ends not the means – all common knowledge. But why did it still happen?

This is where the employee mindset is still so hard to unlearn. As employees, our roles are specialised or silo-ed, so performance is usually assessed on how many tasks we accomplished. Not the impact, not the outcome, because that’s belongs to everyone in the department/division/company.

So this is the real kicker: I’m still working like an employee for my own company. Not like an entrepreneur, the boss of my company. I created a job for myself, not a business. 😱

It kind of aligns to my learnings from my experiments in luck. I’m learning that I can’t just hunker down and work. I need idle time, free cognitive bandwidth to be able to flaneur and spot opportunities to be lucky. Spotting opportunities to leverage them is how one goes for impact, not efficiency. Just one good opportunity might be able to get me to my goal, whatever it may be – revenue, profit, impressions, likes. Tasks, how fast or efficient I complete them, how many I finish, has nothing on it.

Chase outcome, not output.
Seek impact, not efficiency.

Just One Big Thing a day. That’s it.

❌ “An idiot with a plan can beat a genius without a plan.”
✅ Be an idiot without a plan than a genius with a plan.

Especially for chance-driven environments like entrepreneurship and investing.

In Nassim Taleb’s book Antifragile, a turkey thought since he had a good, secure and safe life for 364 days of the year, he will likely have the same life for many more years to come. Until Thanksgiving came along.

Anytime you try to predict anything in a chance-dominant environment, you’re likely worse off doing so than just being an idiot without a plan, responding to what pops up opportunistically.

Yet that’s not what school teaches you. You’re conditioned to prepare all your life for the final exam. That’s not what business school teaches aspiring entrepreneurs. You write a business plan, come up with strategy, resource your company to execute to the dot.

All trying to be a genius with a plan.

No more that for me. I’m going the other now, thank you very much.

Be an idiot without a plan.

I would call myself a serious person. As a kid, I was the serious one. Never the first to laugh or joke. Always the first to observe, learn and do.

I think it carried over to my career and work, and it had served me well… mostly. Being serious about work is favoured by employers of course. But it doesn’t get you much favours from your colleagues being so serious. The social department doesn’t get much capital. And I brought 100% of that into entrepreneurship.

Lately I’ve been thinking I need to change that. It’s one of those funny things that entrepreneurship does to you. From wanting to learn how to better spot opportunities and be lucky, to embracing my identity-based goals of an Opportunistic Trickster, to now wanting to be less serious. I feel like I need to flip my serious to fun ratio around. Maybe it 90% serious, 10% fun. I want to get to 40% serious, 60% fun. Or more.

Why be less serious? I’d invert it and ask back, “Why so serious?”

This line from Osho comes to mind:

“I don’t think existence wants you to be serious. I have not seen a serious tree. I have not seen a serious bird. I have not seen a serious starry night. It seems they are all laughing in their own ways, dancing in their own ways. We may not understand it, but there is a subtle feeling that the whole of existence is a celebration.”

Maybe it’s age. Maybe it’s due to reaching mid-life. Maybe it’s a recognition that time is running out. Maybe it’s what having a kid does to you. Maybe it’s realising that my past serious ways aren’t helping in my work - maybe even holding it back. Maybe it’s witnessing how I’m not enjoying my journey. Maybe it’s a sense that ultimately, what’s the point of being serious if it helps me get to my goals but not my happiness?

Fact is, many of the most successful folks in my field whom I look up to, always look like they are having the more fun than anyone else. If I can’t take a cue from my own life, perhaps I can listen to their’s for a change.

Fun > serious

Joined the 500 day club in Lifelog yesterday. Such milestones are always a good time to reflect about the state of my writing:

- It’s an infinite game: Even after 500 days, I still struggle to know what to write every day. I don’t prepare topics beforehand, but I do collect notes and ideas. Sometimes I get an idea that would be great to write a post about, and I jot it down in my trusty note-taking app – Telegram saved messages

- No system is best system: But despite those struggles, I decided having an elaborate content system for my daily writing habit doesn’t quite work for me. This habit isn’t for content creation. It’s for mental fitness. A minimal set up suffices. It doesn’t have to be perfect or great to be helpful.

- A promise is a promise: Some days my projects and products pull me into their vortex so much that I feel like writing is a hassle. Yes! Even after 500 days. But thanks to my commitment to it and all the benefits I experienced, I still come back and write anyway. When it’s a beneficial non-negotiable, it’s easy to not see it as a choice.

- It’s an iceberg of untapped potential: I have so much content here that’s relevant for distribution elsewhere but I’m not even leveraging 50% of it. Occasionally some posts become short threads, or long ones. But nothing consistent. I should leverage this more.

- Growing old together as siblings: Shout out to the Lifelog folks here who show up every day and write. It’s a strange feeling, but over time I feel like I know some of you more than I know my in real life friends. And the same the other way – I think you know more about me than my real friends. It’s almost like being siblings, but instead of being bonded by blood we are joined by a creative pursuit, a writing habit. For that I’m super grateful.

- No endgame: I’m certain I will keep writing for eternity if there’s no limit. I want to keep going and showing up every day to write. Even after 500 days. It’s a part of me now. A limb.

Onwards to 1000!

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Since I switched from marketing mode to high impact work (that truly moves the needle) for my morning deep work session, I feel so much more motivated and productive.

I’ve always said it feels great to have done your most important work from 5-8am, but truth is I might have slipped from that for the past 3 months. That feeling had gone and I didn’t even realise it until I switched. And the only reason that feeling went away is because my priorities had changed, but my routines had not.

I’ve come to realised marketing is an infinite game, like daily writing here. I’m never going to be done done. I just have to show up and market consistently, daily… just as I write here every day. So there’s no need to hunker down on it. And a lot of the marketing tasks, like replying to tweets, don’t require deep work. It’ll be like using a flamethrower to light a cigarette!

Big overkill. A waste of quality deep work hours.

Of course, there’s some marketing tasks like thinking up a marketing strategy that could use deep work hours. So it’s about whether the value or impact of the work matches the brain power available.

A few things I see are worthy for deep work sessions:

• Coding, building, debugging
• Reflection and reviewing top-level strategy
• Writing a good pitch, marketing copy for a high impact piece
• Creating a new product - SaaS, digital downloads, Carrd plugins, free templates/offers as lead magnets
• Anything that has revenue-generating immediacy
• Creating side projects for fun or creativity - e.g. notyourcustomer.carrd.co

Anything else I can add to the list?

Aside... I hit 500 days of daily writing on Lifelog! 🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

- DO NOT type out a URL without the https://. Twitter would use http, see it as not secure and shadowban the tweet
- No Twitter from 5-8am now. Use morning for revenue-generating deep work. Twitter can come later.