Lifelog

I’m trying out something new recently - analog weekly recaps.

I would take time alone (rare occasion since becoming a dad) for 2-3 hours, head out with only my notebook and pen, without my laptop, and have coffee at some cafe to review the week.

I’ll then do two things:

Write down the past week’s opportunities and ideas so that I won’t forget to explore them.
Quick self check-in using these questions:
• What’s adding energy?
• What’s draining energy?
• Why truly moved the needle? Am I on, or off course?
• What needs to be reduced or removed?

This had been truly instructive and useful. For this week’s recap which I did yesterday......

One of the best things about running a portfolio of 10 different active products:

When I procrastinate on one, I switch to another.

Procrastination never felt more productive. In fact, can we even call that procrastination anymore?

Chasing money vs chasing interest: Which comes first?

Conventional wisdom would say chase money first, then you chase your interests and do interesting things with the money.

But hearing what @ShaanVP said about the topic on the My First Million podcast was insightful and refreshing. Paraphrasing here:

"There’s no separation between the things you’re most interested to do; learning about; experimenting with, versus money. Find a way for money to be the by-product, the exhaust coming out from the chimney, of that factory of interestingness."

What a great way to say it. Factory of interestingness. Money is a by-product - what blasphemy haha!

As creators, instead of asking “How do I make money out of my interests?”, we should really be flipping it around and asking “How do I be interesting, so interesting that people will pay you money for that interestingness?”

So it’s less about profit motives being the first mover, but curiosity, fun, play and learning as first movers.

Build on what you already curious about, have fun with, that feels like play while others feel like work, and helps you grow as a creator or human being. Once you built up that creative factory out of your interests, then sell the by-products coming out of that factory.

Have fun sculpting out of wood, then sell your sawdust.

Reading about @JustinSaaS’s non-fancy funnel, I realised I’ve been doing it ALL WRONG.

Again.

I’ve been super consistent with my content so far. Maybe even prolific. But I’d tweet something, and then do a direct ask to the effect of “Here’s my site, pay here”. Too upfront, not enough information/trust before they feel like they can pay.

It’s like trying to squeeze a huge block (of content) into a tiny hole in the wall (my funnel). I’m literally choking my funnel with all that content, because the pipe is too narrow to fit.

Or it’s like using a firehose to water your plants. Quantity not matching with capacity (to buy).

I’m brute-forcing my marketing through content alone, catching people’s attention, but not helping them to make more informed decisions progressively.

Lots of inefficiencies, lots of waste, lots of wasted potential.

Truth is, I had been lazy. I knew about funnels all along. But avoided it because it sounded so complicated and I was comfortable just pushing out content. It seemed to be working anyway, so why bother? So I thought.

Maybe that’s why there’s only about average of 5 trial users signing up every month for the past months, and only 1-2 actually staying on to paid users. The dismal conversion was a sign of a poor funnel, but I didn’t heed the signs.

It’s one of those blindspots again, like not needing to do marketing and just building features.

I need to optimise my funnel waaay better.

I find myself typing loads of canned replies and messages lately. In my DMs, Telegram group messages, in emails. Then I saw @csmikecardona’s canned reply on a webpage where he redirects people to, and I thought - this is it! That’s what I need! And I went and made one for myself.

Here it is:

https://notyourcustomer.carrd.co/

That was a fun 30min build! But that also got me thinking:

What else can I make that will help me with more of these canned replies?

Crazy idea:
A directory of canned replies for the common situations we all face at work. A searchable directory, with filters for different types of replies (saying no, rejecting a meeting, out of office) in different tones (sarcastic, positive, passive-aggressive). It’s like one of those resource directories for cold sales emails, but not for sale but normal day to day work.

You can view others replies, click a button to copy, and paste into your email. Or you can upload your own replies for everyone to download from, or create your own private database of replies that you use often at work. Future versions can include a Chrome extension where you can search, copy and paste directly in your browser without leaving your current tab/window. Throw in GPT-3 to get unique reply templates you can use without fear of looking the same.

Canned-replies-as-a-service.

A copywriting SaaS for the days when you need more colourful replies at work.

I’m realising more and more that the I’m thinking about habits wrong in relation to how it helps with being an entrepreneur/creator. Some habits help. Some don’t. But just habits alone isn’t enough to succeed. It’s all about which type of game I’m playing and how habits and systems figure in them:

“Recognizing good opportunities requires plenty of idle time, wandering about, tinkering, trial and error, long walks, randomized attention, and other ‘inefficiencies’ of that sort.” – @dvassallo

I’m slowly beginning to realise why working too hard, stressing myself out isn’t good not just for my health but also my luck.

Is that why despite starting indie hacking since 2018, I’m still nowhere near the success I seek? (Which is just ramen profitability on my products, excluding consulting).

That’s because I conflated success with being efficient in my work habits.

But in fact, I need to be inefficient.

I need to do everything opposite of what I’m taught in school, sports and office about what it means to succeed. Because that’s a different, linear and predictable world compared the stochastic world of entrepreneurship. An opposite universe where the laws of physics are flipped, where gravity lifts people up, where the sun rises from the west, where reward doesn’t rise with effort.

From school, all I’ve ever known is studying hard brings good results.
From sports, all I’ve ever known is discipline in training brings trophies.
From office, all I’ve ever known is working overtime brings promotions.

But from being a creator, entrepreneur, all I’ve ever known is none of the above guarantees anything at all.

Necessary, but not sufficient.

I just hope I can overcome my stubbornness and eventually adapt to this new universe before all hopes for achieving those dreams are dashed.

I hope.

Biggest realization about luck so far, for myself.

Luck and opportunities come when I’m relaxed, open, having fun, playing, not busy, not over-worked, not stressed out, slept enough and slept well, feeling healthy, energetic, having exercised enough, have happy time with my family.

Luck begins from a frame of mind, a lifestyle choice.

So the solution?

Be less busy. Self care

It’s like… to optimize for luck, you got to look at your whole lifestyle, way of being, your moods and internal state. It feels like you got to look it it the same way a professional athlete looks at every aspect of not just his training but his lifestyle, schedule and habits to find micro-improvements to compound towards.

Update: Turns out, he signed up to roast Lifelog sign up process!

https://twitter.com/nathanjpowellUX/status/1522612718393561089

https://youtu.be/FYGmVpagSgY

The best lessons in life, I learned from hanging out with a 2-year old.

I always thought children teach us adults more than we can ever teach them. Even as a parent, sometimes my role is reversed. The teacher becomes the student, and the student turns into a teacher.

So very often, I found that the very things we say to them, we should really also be telling ourselves. Like:

“Are you hungry?”
“Drink more water.”
“Eat your greens.”
“This is good for you.”
“Don’t eat the whole bag"
“Good morning.”
“Good night.”
“I love you.”

Our children are our mirrors.

We didn’t birth them to show them the world, they came to us to show us our world.

What’s the dollar value of my version of f**k you money? $1M? $10M? $1B? Everyone’s price is different. Thinking through, I thought maybe—just hypothetically—$10M is a good figure.

So too poor, you’re enslaved by your monthly salary and you’re unhappy. Too rich, and you’re enslaved by your liabilities and you’re unhappy too.

Now I’m wondering if I even want that $10M after all…is it even about the money?

Because ultimately the f**k you money is just an enabler right? Money isn’t the endgame here. It’s the freedom it buys. Money is just one facet out of many. So how does that freedom look like for me?

A blank calendar where I get to decide when and how often I work.
A bank account where my family and I can live comfortably, take a few vacations a year, not worry about not having enough.
Creative freedom - not needing to work with people I don’t want to work with, having autonomy in how I run my own projects
Location independence - being able to live in another country or city for extended periods of time
I can probably get to that vision of freedom without my hypothetical f**k you money of $10M. I might not even need $1M to achieve that!

Money is just a convenient resource that makes making it easier to make that vision happen. But it the only the only resource that can make that happen.

Running your own lifestyle business.
Creating your own products.
Being able to work remotely anywhere.

All these are resources too.

Seem like… f**k you money is overrated.

Not sure who needs to hear this but… MRR is not everything.

Because $1 earned is $1 is $1, whether MRR or 1-off revenue.

I drank too much of the SaaS startup koolaid and put MRR on a high moral pedestal.

Letting that go was a huge relief.

There I said it.

Based on my notes from the book How Luck Happens:

https://golifelog.com/posts/how-to-be-lucky-1651454937208

I wrote about how to be lucky yesterday, so now is the time to think about what I want to do. I once wrote a checklist to synthesize the book notes, so I’m going to apply the checklist to think through what I can do right now for my work.

My little brand acc
@golifelog
, chugging along since Dec 2020..

Just hit 500 followers!🙃

Took a different approach - just 3 QTs/day, zero replies.

A knowledge resource for writing for creators.

If you like accounts that's not chatty, quietly doing it's thing, this is it.

Not sure who needs to hear this but... MRR is not everything.

Because $1 earned is $1 is $1, whether MRR or 1-off revenue.

I drank too much of the SaaS startup koolaid and put MRR on a high moral pedestal.

Letting that go was a huge relief.

There I said it.

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1520402984965787648

Sharing my notes from the book How Luck Happens: Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life, by Janice Kaplan and Barnaby Marsh, as a way to refresh and rethink how I want to approach my #30daysofluck challenge.

It’s an insightful book on why some people are more lucky than others, and what we can do in order to be luckier.

In other words, luck is part SKILL, something that I can practice, hone and get better at.

I love how luck is a blend of habit formation, antifragility and complexity/systems science. Foresee that I’ll be borrowing concepts from James Clear (Atomic Habits), Nassim Taleb (Antifragile)!

But in the first place, why luck?

I found myself thinking a lot about luck because it’s such a huge unsaid factor of success in stochastic environments like entrepreneurship and social media. I wanted to learn how to better leverage opportunities, chance and curiosity, as I had been doing for the past two months and planning to do so for May.

It also aligns to one of my identity-based goals is that of an Opportunistic Trickster... To be honest, I’ve always struggled to see how I can improve on that goal. it isn’t something that’s easy to measure as well. But (re-)discovering these notes on luck and how it links to being opportunistic and trickstering, was just the solution I needed! Now I have some tips on how I can approach that identity goal. So this month is a month of levelling up on that identity!

April was a good, promising month. Let’s make May even better and brighter.

I’ve been following my curiosity and creative energy for March and April, chasing opportunities to good results.

I asked about how to switch on the opportunist eye as a default mode. The conclusion then was that I needed to break routine intentionally, get out of comfort zone in small ways more often.

I explored how to better spot opportunities. The non-obvious traits of good opportunities were: 1) non-routine, 2) potential for scale, 3) inspiration-based.

I want to keep going and explore this theme that’s at the intersection of complexity, chance, curiosity, and chasing opportunities.

In summary, luck.

Or how to be lucky.

I recalled I’d read a book on luck before, and wrote good notes on it. The book is How Luck Happens: Using the Science of Luck to Transform Work, Love, and Life, by Janice Kaplan and Barnaby Marsh.

These notes will be a useful guide for me to experiment with in May. Will share more notes in the days to come.

So… 30 days on how to be lucky.

A #30daysofluck challenge.

📈Current MRR: US$138 (all from Lifelog)
📊 One-off revenue: ~US$125
🐦 New Twitter followers: 406

Got 1 churn on Lifelog, MRR down by $5.

Now: $138 MRR

But what's surprising - my nonchalance to this.

Just 1-2 months ago, every churn was like a stab in the heart.

Deciding to drop my MRR obsession to focus on revenue instead, & restarting small bets, really helped! 💪

By learning from my failures in entrepreneurship, I’ve been doing it ALL WRONG.

I’ve always prided myself in learning from my failures in life. Personal or in entrepreneurship. But I see now that I might have gave it too much weight. I had over-reached into seeing lessons where there might be none.

Because in a stochastic situation, failures aren’t easy to attribute to any single cause. It’s chance, it’s skill, it’s talent, it’s connections, or none of the above. It all blended together, and had that outcome called failure. By attributing it 100% to my own fault, I’m giving myself way less credit than I deserved. Because someone with my skills and work ethic but at a different timing might have succeeded.

Perhaps I was learning the wrong lessons from my failures.

I can stop beating myself up over it now. Time to acknowledge and move on…and try something else, something small, something again.

May we all sleep better tonight with our past, and for all the nights ahead.

Since writing the course outline for our cohort-based writing course for introverts, I got a bit stuck.

A few hard questions and polarities I’m dealing with:

1. Write daily versus write as-and-when - consistency vs intensity?
2. Peer learning versus trainer-led coaching - what's the best mix?
3. One man’s thrash versus another man’s treasure - how to accommodate everyone's goals?

Wrote to think in this post here.. would love to hear what you think of the hard questions, and my proposed solutions!