Lifelog

Stagflation is when slow economic growth and joblessness intersects with rising inflation. Basically: Your future money shrinks, your current money also shrinks.

Worst of both worlds.

That’s what’s happening in the external world.

I feel I’m going through a stagflation too as a creator.

Creative stagflation.

Slow product growth, personal growth stagnation intersecting with motivation inflation.

Product growth had definitely slowed. Lifelog sign-ups had stopped. Sheet2Bio too, and so had my other products. Only my Carrd plugins continue to move onwards on its own.

They say, your product grows as fast as a founder grows as a person, as an entrepreneur. I think it’s true. I feel so. That means I’m stagnating in inner growth.

If motivation is the currency of inner growth and thus outer growth, then I’m definitely hit by inflation. Somewhat same motivation but I do less, achieve less with it.

What can I do?

How does one get out of a creative stagflation?

- Building 100% useless but 100% fun projects. To kickstart a ailing engine with new fuel by lowering the bar of builds to the lowest.
- Building my way out of my burnout is one. More projects but slightly more serious ones to keep the creative fire burning.
- Meanwhile learn to play more defense. Survive at all costs. Don’t incite more frustration by seeking to thrive when creative stagflation happens. Do the bare minimum to keep maintain your current lifestyle or creator flywheel. Look out for the opening where I can break through the stalemate.

What else can I do?

Example:

All these lack of results from my products is making me want to give up. But not the giving up you think.

It's making me give up on things I used to do that I thought helped but not really.

It's making me give up on ideals and narratives I had how about things *should be* done.

It's pushing me to re-examine what I thought success looks like, to reimagine what it really is.

'Shoulds' like:

- Being impatient and expecting 'immediate' results (within months, or 1-2 years). Recently I said to myself that I'll commit a decade. It was a huge relief and provided perspective.
- I saw having monthly recurring revenue as the only way to success, but I'm giving that up and now I'm open to one-time revenue.
- I only wanted to earn money from my products and drop my consulting, but now I see that anything that allows me to keep going as a solopreneur is fair game. Survive first, not thrive before surviving.
- I wanted to succeed by building SaaS products, but even that I'm giving up now. It's okay to earn from info products, digital downloads, freelance. My Plugins For Carrd had been the huge opportunity right under my nose for the longest time, yet I continually neglect it for my SaaS. No more. I’ll follow where the money and opportunity is.
- I disliked the whole trend of maker making products for other makers, so I avoided it on moral high grounds. But that's just an egoistic position. A product that's useful is useful is useful. Why so pretentious? I don't get extra credit for being so idealistic and elitist...
- Building a product for Twitter audience. Similar to the makers makings for makers trend. Since I'm on Twitter, I know the needs of the people using Twitter fairly well. So why not make something for it?
- Giving up on the nice-to-have habits like daily affirmations, $2 jar. It's simply not moving the needle for me even though it feels like it would. Now I just wake up, and get to work.
- (Over-)crafting tweets that I'm proud of. The past few months I've spent maximum effort on writing tweets I can take pride in, frequently spending hours crafting and tweaking the tweet over multiple rounds. But I learned that the effort:reward ratio didn't make way I play worthwhile. For ephemeral content that disappears after 1-2 days, I should be just spending minutes on it, not hours. Spending hours follows the curve of diminishing returns. Also leaning on the point about committing a decade, I'm in this Twitter game for the long run, so no need to over-compensate all that effort upfront. Sure, I should still ensure some level of quality. But adjust accordingly. Same reasons why I started batching my tweets 1 week ahead instead of scheduling it on a per day basis - it's just not worth the effort.
- Avoiding LinkedIn as a marketing channel because it's "cringe". It's not, and just like Twitter, it's mostly about following the right people, curating your feed, and engaging the way you want.

Question to myself: What other 'shoulds' should I give up?

It’s been too long since I last travelled. That got me thinking: Where would I go if I could leave right now?

Bali
Few places restore me as well as Bali. In particular, Ubud. The lush green, the peaceful locals, the daily prayers. I used to take solo year-end retreats there annually. Just calm, great food, nature-bathing, and scooting around in a scooter, for one month. It was divine. Much needed now, after two years of living through a crisis.

Japan
If I had a past life, it would be in Japan. Even though I speak no Japanese, there’s no other place where I felt more at home being myself than in Japan. Especially Kyoto. People keep to themselves but respect others. Craft and craftsmanship is still deeply valued. Tradition meets modern. A blend of polarities, a contradiction, an irony yet it exists.

Iceland
There’s no other place where I felt the Earth being more alive than in Iceland. The ground upon my feet wasn’t just some inert, passive, quiet thing – it burped, it hissed, it moved. The lava landscapes were alien to me. If you take me away blindfolded and dropped me on Iceland, I’d think we were on the moon perhaps. The air of fairy magic makes me almost expect elves and unicorns to jump out behind boulders and trees. It’s inexplicable.

India
I’ve been to India for yoga retreats. And not gonna lie… India is hard. I’ve got a love-hate relationship with my experience traveling there. There’s so much to it, yet it’s really challenging to dig deep enough through the surface to get there. The smog, the crazy traffic, the infrastructure, the crowds. All stand in between you and the wisdom that India has to offer. But perhaps that’s the whole point.

I can’t travel to these places yet…

But wishful thinking is always nice.

I've been doing analog weekly recaps for a few months now. Just physical notebook, a real pen, and coffee in a nice, quiet cafe, writing to these question prompts:

What's adding energy?
What's draining energy?
What moves the needle?
What to reduce/remove?

But over the months I've began to observe a pattern. The 4 questions are not created equal. One works 10x more effectively than the rest. Guess which one?

It's #4 "What to reduce/remove?"

That's surprising to me. I assumed it would be #1 or #3, the questions that affirm the positive, that add to life. But ended it it's the question that aims to decrease or omit things that work. I realised after every weekly recap, I'll go and remove/reduce exactly what I wrote. Week on week, I'll do that and it's gone. And I'm significantly better off. Every single thing I wanted to remove, I did, as I flip back to reread past recaps. The contrast here is the things that added energy and moved the needle, I didn't always follow through. I always assumed it would have been more intuitive and natural otherwise.

Which kind of makes sense, because as humans we're simply hardwired to loss aversion more than rewards. We fear losing what we have a lot more intensely than we look forward to what we want. It's definitely a great way to sustain motivation on something for sure. Removing pain is always easier to keep at it than to gain a benefit.

The other plus point is what Nassim Taleb talks about in *Antifragile* - the *via negativa* approach. It's much easier to get to a life you love by removing what you dislike versus trying to add more of what you like. Subtract what you hate, and you make space for the things you like to enter your life. Life abhors empty space, just as Nature abhors a vacuum.

I wonder if this is also a good approach to my creator journey, to making products.

Just remove or reduce what I hate about my products, or what I hate doing for my products. To give space to let the good things enter – revenue, profit, users, traffic, page views.

Instead of pursuing a grand vision for my SaaS, look to removing tiny to big things that me and my users hate. This gets me to keep working on it, and seems more impactful to users.

Via negativa for products!

It’s summer now. But I feel like I’m going through a creative winter. Much like the crypto winter, or the bear market, or bears going into hibernation.

It’s easy to want to fight this season. But over the years I noticed a pattern. That seasons are a necessary process for creativity.

We’re human beings, not machines. Nature has seasons, machines don’t.

(Though huge confession: Sometimes I daydream of being a machine. You can do so much more.)

Nature pulse and pause. The flurry of life in the spring, eventually gives way to the dying down of life in winter. The calm before the storm, and the calm after.

If creativity is a lot more similar to Nature than machines, then we can expect seasons, pulsing and pausing, living and dying, highs and lows too.

I get it. The lows are difficult to get through sometimes. Give me the heat of the summer over the biting chill of winter. But often the best way to get past the valley is by letting it be low.

Acceptance.

I accept my creative winter. Say that out loud. Say that one more time.

I accept my creative winter.

I’ll dwell in my winter till it’s time for spring.

For as long as it takes. For as long as it needs to take.

After all, “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”

I took a goalless June to rest and to just be. Do whatever inspires me, whenever.

I definitely did more rest than doing, and it was good for my creative burnout.

But I feel like I can rest some more, but yet, starting to feel kind of restless to start moving. Not moving as in getting after business targets, but to just move. To move on something, anything…

Anything other than nothing.

I talked about my burnout builds as a way to create and feel alive again. That’s a good way to restart my momentum again, to start moving again.

But the build list I had consisted of many practical, useful stuff. I can do that but i want to start even lower down the bar. Maybe I can start by building something 100% useless but 100% fun. Totally zero stress, no expectations, ultimate play.

Taking inspiration from funny/fun sites like:

• istheshipstillstuck.com - joke site about that ship stuck in Panama Canal
• burgers.dev - a rivalry about burgers between 2 devs
• codingweekmarketingweek.com - is it coding week or marketing week?

So fun projects it’ll be.

Onwards!

📈 MRR: $109
💵 One-off revenue: $367
👀 Tweet impressions: 304k
💬 Engagement rate: 4.4%
📣 Profile visits: 69.9k
🏃🏻‍♂️ New followers: 217

—

Goalless June was a success. I succeeded in doing nothing. Probably the only time I pass with flying colours lol. Seriously though… taking intentional downtime had always been difficult for me. So I consider this a win.

June had been hard though. Lots of minor ailments here and there. Health isn’t great. Sleep was poor. It was my birthday month – I turned 43, yet the month didn’t quite feel quite celebratory. It felt like… just another month. Just another month struggling to keep up with everything.

The month passed by in a blink. The days are long, but the months are short. I guess that’s the life of a new parent, a clueless new dad? Just making it through to bedtime often feels like an achievement in itself.

Sometimes it feels like I’ve already won juggling these many roles and challenges. But yet, I don’t feel victorious.

Much to reflect on.

I did it again.

Overstrained my Achilles tendon by standing on one foot for too long while working at my standing desk.

Made worse because I'm usually barefoot so there's no cushion to reduce repetitive stress on the ankle. Made even worser because when I work I get into disembodied, focused mode and become less aware of any sensations in the body. The worst of all: I think standing is 'healthy' or at least healthier than sitting.

Fatal combination of work-from-home practices and mindsets.

What can I do then?

- First, heal. Rest. No exercise. Ice the swollen tendon. Use painkiller patches in interim. Go to traditional Chinese medicine doctor for resetting if it gets worse.
- Add a foot cushion. There's many anti-fatigue foot mats for standing desks to explore for future use, but in the meantime I'll make do with a cheap yoga mat cut up to the width of a foot mat, overlaid with an actual foot mat.
- Wear bedroom slippers for additional cushion for now.
- Move more. Don't just sit or stand. Work 30min, get up, move about, get a glass of water. Not great for deep work, but good for health.
- Future prevention:
• Exercise more. Walk more. I already do heel raises but can do more through the day
• No more standing on one foot to work! Set alarms? Pomodoro timers?
• Get better, anti-fatigue, ergonomic foot mats - these ones from [Fully looks promising!](https://www.fully.com/accessories/standing-desk-mats.html)

What else can I do/get?

Current MRR: $109

At this rate, doubt I'd hit my goal of $200 MRR by end 2022.

New lesson about growing communities: Grow slowly.

Fast growth is like the holy grail of the startup world. But that’s not always a good thing. Sometimes fast growth can backfire. Especially when it comes to community building. Just learned this the hard way from growing the 5am club for creators.

What happened - I took more than a year to grow the Telegram chat group to 100 members. Because I posted my 5am wake times on Twitter every day, people would discover it occasionally, and 1 or 2 new members would join every few days or so. It was drip growth. A slow growth approach for sure.

But as it grew, I also realised people started chatting more. The first 6 months was just 90% me posting. Soon after, it started to have more discussions. More sharing of wake times and all. Promising!

Then all that engagement got wiped out when my article about the 5am club went viral on Indie Hackers in April. There was a rush of new members, and within 1-2 months I doubled the size of the community to near 200. It was nice and all to grow so fast, but the influx created a lot of ‘low value’ or spammy messages (like notifications of people joining, welcome messages etc), which probably turned off the regular commenters, or got them to switch off notifications.

Engagement plummeted even though membership rose like a rocket.

And after the viral growth spurt, it’s like back to a quiet room, again with me posting through April to May. Only recently in mid-June did the conversations start coming back.

So which was better:

An engaged community with slow growth, or
A disengaged community with hyper growth?
I’m leaning more to option #1 now. In fact, I’ve stopped tweeting my wake times on Twitter to intentionally stop growing for a while, so that we can refocus on the community again, and give it some breathing space to pick itself back up again.

Sometimes slow growth isn’t just a ideal that lifestyle businesses favour. It can be for very practical reasons too, like this.

This made me reflect on growing this community here too on Lifelog. I like the growth rate so far. The revenue is dismal yes, but we’re having new people in at a rate that’s not spammy or noisy. It still feels small and cosy, where everyone knows everyone. I value that experience way more than growing it fast, to be honest. People join for the writing, but stay for the community. The relationships and the interactions are what matters.

Part 4 of tiny yet cool Twitter hacks that I’m slowly accumulating over all the daily practice and observing how others do it:

• MRR. Joined for monthly recurring revenue, stayed for the monthly recurring relationships
• Not overthinking each tweet. I used to spend hours over a single tweet, first drafting it, then editing it multiple times. The nature of Twitter, its effort:reward ratio, just doesn’t work that way. That if you put in more effort means you get more likes, followers, conversions. Just put out cool ideas and move on. “If you’re spending more than a minute on a tweet you’re doing it wrong. Editing is for stuff that lasts.” – @getpaidwrite
• Committing to Twitter growth for the decade had been such a gamechanger in terms of how I feel about the work. Then the immediate highs and lows of likes and engagement will drop away. Not much likes on a tweet? That’s ok. try again tomorrow. And tomorrow.
• Batch content. 2-3h within 1 day versus 1h every morning? No-brainer.
• Systems/templates. With batching content means having systems and templates becomes more important (because you’re not tweeting offhand now). You don’t get extra credit for trying to be original every single time and tweeting offhand. You’re also not any lesser of a creator if you use templates/systems.
• Engagement tools. New breed of Twitter tools to help you know who to engage (not scheduling tools) - Engagement Builder and Lab Social. This seems to be the answer to the other part of Twitter growth narrative where they tell you to reply to other accounts as much as you tweet consistently.
• DM approach. DMs means your tweets will be more likely to show up on people’s tweets. So have a DM strategy. But don’t use DMs in a transactional way. Use DMs to build relationships. Be authentic. Make friends.
• Twitter Spaces. Spoke at my first Space last week and I love it! It’s like a podcast but more informal, unstructured and free-flowing. More conversational than most podcasts. Also feels like a great way to build relationships and also just have fun.
• Replies are best tweets. My best tweets are from replies to other people’s tweets. There’s something about being able to interact and bounce off each other’s words that bring out latent content/ideas… So the solution to not having enough content ideas? Be the reply guy.
• Asking questions is one of the best ways to create lots of engagement. But as always, be authentic.
• Have a spiky point of view (ala @MeetKevon style), not just a niche. Provides contrast, makes you stand out, but be real too (don’t just say controversial things for sake of stirring sh*t and getting attention).
• Being entertaining is just as viable a Twitter growth strategy as being educational. Because entertainment is value too. If you also resonated and connected emotionally, that’s value as well.
• Profile page makeovers. When launching a new product, do a complete makeover for banner, profile and bio.
• Birthdays are great excuses to get lots of engagement. Don’t squander the opportunity!
• Restrained distribution. You don’t have to post your link every day. Jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab jab hook. Give give give give give give give give give ask. Compress the spring before an ask.

What other tiny Twitter hacks do you know?

Why I’m self-employed and always come back to it even though I was employed in the past:

Freedom.

But unfortunately that word often feels fluffy and grandiose.

It’s not some abstract rebel ideal, though. It’s a lot more practical than it sounds. This tweet by Naval sums it up well:

"Don’t outsource your happiness or success to other people’s decisions." – @naval

That’s totally what I’m doing. It’s also built off my experience being employed, how I felt that there’s always a gap between compensation versus competency, effort and talent. Oftentimes a huge gap. So, someone else’s decision getting in the way of my success. I realised I needed to create my own game rather than play someone’s else’s rigged one. In the end it was just a pragmatic decision. To get to a more efficient competency:compensation ratio.

The best part? Even if I don’t get there, I know it’s my own doing (or failing). It’s within my control. There’s no one else to blame. No what-ifs.

My creator journey is totally showing me this. I have only myself to blame or congratulate. There’s exhilarating highs and depressing lows. It’s not a stable, no-drama life for sure.

But I love it.

I wrote this travelogue article for a local newspaper The Straits Times on 25 Sep 2007, describing my life-changing experience staying in 2 monasteries in France over 4 months practising meditation. I was 28 then. This story represents a pivotal moment in my life where nothing was the same again after. Sometimes people ask me about it, so I’m reproducing it here for onward sharing. I originally titled it “Inner Sanctums” but obviously too cryptic so the editor changed it to “Buddhism in Bordeaux”......

We often think of burnout as overwork.

Working long hours.
Working 7 days a week.
Not getting enough rest/sleep.

And the antidote to burnout is removal from work. Rest. Do nothing. Passive.

That works for physical burnout. But there’s many types of burnout. Some might need you to do more stuff instead to recover.

“You often feel tired not because you’ve done too much, but because you’ve done too little of what sparks a light in you.” – Alexander den Heijer

That quote just about sums up what this other type of burnout is.

I call it creative burnout.

Not from working too long or too hard, but from not working on things that give you joy. Too little play, too much serious.

In such cases, sure I can benefit from the usual approach of walking away and taking some downtime. But the best way to recover from creative burnout is to do more.

Active rest, not passive rest.

The close parallel is when you’ve been working all day sitting down in front of a computer, and instead of resting by sitting on a couch watching Netflix, you go for a walk outdoors. Get some blood running. You feel more revitalized afterwards.

But huge caveat: Not do more of the previous work that is causing the creative burnout. Do less of that, yes. But do more play and fun. This isn’t some weird self-deception move to trick yourself to working more. Do stuff that makes you come alive. Stuff that you do even if no one is watching. Even if you don’t get impressions, likes, and retweets. Stuff for it’s own sake, just because.

So that’s what I’ll do.

“Nearly impossible to worry about anything if you’ve already decided you’ll stick to it for a decade.” – @OneJKMolina

It’s amazing what a non-negotiable commitment to a crazy long time can do to your motivation.

I’ve been recently feeling somewhat demoralised by my poor product launch for Sheet2Bio. But a friend on Twitter asked me this:

"It’s a figure of speech, I’m not saying it will necessarily take 10 years. But those who succeed often don’t mind investing 10 years into it. Because it really means that much to them. Besides. what else are you going to do in the next 10 years? Give up and work a 9-5?"

That made me laugh, at myself. Sooo true. Loved it. Felt so much better. Went away asking… “What was the problem again?”

I’m not going anywhere else. So what else is there? Just be ok with the disappointment, sit with it for a few days. Then just get back to work. There’s nowhere else to go, nothing else to do.

This isn’t the first time I heard a creator say that. The OG of indie hackers @levelsio also said something similar about his own journey, how he’s committing to indie hacking for ten years, because he observed how many of his peers in electronic music (something he used to do in the past) found success after crossing the ten year mark.

Commit a decade to it.

And all the lows (and highs) that come during this ten years will be but a blimp in calendar. A decade commitment puts real big picture perspective to your tiny every day experiences.

You know that iconic conversation near the end of Lord Of The Rings when Sam and Frodo were near the volcano:

Sam: "Do you remember the Shire, Mr Frodo? It’ll be spring soon and the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket and they’ll be sowing the summer barley on the lower fields and eating the first strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?
Frodo: “No Sam I can’t recall the taste of food nor the sound of water or the touch of grass.”

I feel like Frodo now when it comes to feeling hopeful for the future. The past 2 years of the pandemic had felt like his arduous journey into Mordor. I can’t remember the last time I looked forward to something. I can’t recall the taste of anticipation nor the sound of optimism or the touch of hope.

I recall how, before the pandemic, I used to create these beautiful countdown landing pages for my trips and life events. Search on Unsplash for a gorgeous image of the country I’m heading to. Create a Carrd countdown landing page. Publish and share. Refer to it constantly. Being able to see the days and hours counting down, inching ever closer to the D-Day filled me with a sense of anticipation. The days were bright, not just because the present is beautiful but there’s a beautiful future to look forward to.

I wish to daydream again. To feel future-hopeful again. To drink from that wellspring of optimism again.

Perhaps it’s time to try making these pages again. And in turn, to make the plans for such pages to exist. Countdown pages as a mechanism for engineering hope.

Anything to taste that anticipation again…

Paranoia is the belief that everything and everyone is out to get you. The opposite of paranoia is pronoia, the belief that everything in the universe is conspiring to help you.

This is like my latest favourite word.

It’s like the scarcity vs abundance mindset. You can see everything as scarce and zero sum game, or you can see everything as inherently abundant and positive sum.

Of course, it’s not always 100%. It’s not always homogeneous. This isn’t a statement of fact about reality, but more a personal stance one takes when encountering reality.

The classic half empty half full situation. Optimism vs pessimism.

This word caught my attention because it’s exactly what I think I need now. I’ve not been feeling very optimistic or hopeful lately. I did a quick list in my head of all the major changes in my life in the past 2 years:

• Becoming a father
• Surviving through a generational crisis (aka pandemic)
• Switching careers for real (from consultant to indie maker)
• Switching chronotypes (from night owl to early bird)
• Switching diet to meat based
• From working only outside in cafes to working from home exclusively

Each one would have been more than enough to handle singly, but all at once? No wonder I feel like I’m barely keeping my head above water. It’s easy to start feeling paranoid, like everything’s working against me. While I have mostly no control over what happens externally, I do have control over some aspects, and especially inwardly. I need pronoia instead.

So yes, pronoia. Let’s go get pronoid now.

Ok so I said I will build my way out of burnout.

What will I build then?

It has to have these criteria:

- One-off and micro in scope
- Timebox the effort to just a few days
- No need for monetization
- Can be for jokes and laughs
- Be given to others for free
- For play, for fun
- Goalless
I have some ideas, some more serious ones, some fun ones:

1. Writing prompts Notion template - I have over 70 writing prompts saved in Lifelog. Always wanted to convert them into a free Notion template on Gumroad
2. Writing email course - another free product for Lifelog. Just a 7-day email course on writing. Leveraging stuff I’ve already written on the Lifeblog
3. Sleep biohacking guide/directory - all the pins and resources saved in the 5am creators Telegram chat group, categorised and tagged, searchable.
4. Twitter 101 guide - I’ve already wrote this out in this series of posts here, so might as well create it as another free guide
5. Life goals/bucketlist countdown - I used to use a free countdown micro-SaaS to countdown to upcoming trips and events that I’m looking forward to. I loved it - it gave me so much hope and anticipation to life. I’ve been wanting to recreate that for myself ever since.
6. AI-generated art card deck (using DALL•E or midjourney) - a text-to-image side hobby that’s been so much fun. It started with using conjure.art (which now closed down), and now I have access to DALL•E and midjourney.
7. Indie hackers ikigai calculator - It started from this popular tweet about how I decide if a product is worth making. I thought why not make a matrix calculator to help indie hackers like myself decide?
8. Canned replies site (spin off from notyourcustomer.carrd.co) - people loved it. That made me wonder: canned replies directory for all the canned replies we often have to send to people over email, text messages
9. Revive something from Google’s graveyard and build something fun
10. Build something fun with GPT-3. Use it to generate colourful, funny insults?

What else can I build?

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, if the answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe, and everything is 42, then what about 43?

The supercomputer in the book points out that the answer seems meaningless because the beings who instructed it never knew what the question was, and itself was unable to produce the question.

Jokes aside, I think perhaps turning age 43 is about finding the question. Not that I knew the answer when I was 42. Far from it. And if I knew any answers last year, they are probably as meaningless as the answer “42”, because everything changed.

So yes, I’m turning 43 today.

I have no pithy wisdom to share.
No 43 things about turning 43.
No lessons I wished someone told me about turning 43.
… thankfully.

43 is a number.
It’s meaningful but also arbitrary.
It matters, it also doesn’t matter.

And birthday wish?
All I want is more sleep.
That’s how it is for sleep deprived parents.

And intentions for the new birth year ahead?
I’m just gonna be that dumb idiot who doesn’t have a plan but is happy, than (try to be) the smart-ass genius who has the best plan but is unhappy.

Onwards!