Lifelog

Freedom is the new flex:
✈️ International travel > 🚗 Car
💼 One suitcase > 🧥 Wardrobe
🎒 Location independence > 🏡 Mortgage
💨 Freedom to move > 💎 Material items
🧘‍♀️ Self fulfilment > 👨‍💼 Social approval
– @AlexNapierNomad

I’ll also add:

• Work anywhere > Senior position in a company
• Company benefits for WFH > Donuts and beer in the office
• Living in a new country > Moving to a new city for a job
......

As part of my practice to spot opportunity, I’ve been verbalizing this daily morning question:

“What opportunity can I leverage on today that will have the most impact for the least work?”

During the day, I would put on that hat of an opportunistic trickster, and try to find things that might give that degree of leverage.

What exactly do I look for? How do I know an opportunity is one by just looking?

Here’s a few non-obvious traits I look for:

• Not originating from routine: I try to look for them in places or platforms where I don’t frequent.
• Potential for virality or scale: All things being equal, sending a random DM to one person has less possibility for scale or amplification than say a tweet.
• Inspiration is perishable, act immediately: This is a bit harder to describe. It’s just a feeling. Call it inspiration, a light bulb moment, gut instinct, or just a “Hmmm!” It’s a I-don’t-know-what-but-I’m-gonna-just-go-for-it moment.

What else did I miss?

IH post: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/indie-hacker-opportunities-in-googles-graveyard-3af4fcb8f7

Original canonical post: https://golifelog.com/posts/indie-opportunities-in-googles-graveyard-1648602851140

I need a better system to get back to being fit AF.

Something that would work even on my worst days. Even if unexpected mishaps happen. I have a bad habit of leaning too much on willpower to build habits, and it’s definitely shown to be ineffective in this case. Things should run as per usual even if I forget or willpower is lacking.

Reflecting, I think some things are lacking or I can do more of:

• Cues
• Environment
• Rewards
• Temptation bundling
• Habit stacking

What other habit hacks do you use to get yourself to exercise more?

"Quick question to everyone:

Do you expect to have to write daily for the course? Or prefer self paced?

Benefits to writing daily is is helps build the habit. But understand that it might be intense and not always possible for our schedules/life"

Interesting new framework I learned today: the luck-skill continuum. Sahil Bloom was talking about non-obvious traits of winner, in particular, how they can tell what’s luck and what’s skill:

---
Common Trait: Differentiate Luck & Skill

Humans are storytelling creatures.

But our stories are flawed. We are notoriously bad at differentiating between skill and luck.

Stories of success tend to downplay the role of luck; stories of failure tend to overplay the role of luck.

Average performers think like this:

• Good outcome? I’m a genius.
• Bad outcome? I’m unlucky.

Top performers have an understanding of @mjmauboussin’s luck-skill continuum.

They identify where an activity or outcome exists on it and adjust future actions accordingly.
---

That luck-skill diagram definitely got my wheels turning. It got me thinking:

Where does entrepreneurship/indie hacking lie on the continuum?

Doc link - please comment too if you like:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_DcIe03cC5E0OzoYf-aYO1gPNVxVv2cJ5BgbC9hutPQ/edit

I’ve been chatting with the Twitter folks who expressed interest in my writing course. The group DM is like the minimum viable product for my course – everything I’m not sure about the product, I DM them and ask. I even shared how I felt imposter syndrome and unsure that I’m even qualified to teach. Turns out, they encouraged me back! (Btw the answer was: they needed a facilitator, not teacher)

What a refreshing way to build something!

Since hitting 100 members on the 5am club for creators, I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a short ebook on sleep biohacking. A little resource guide for beginners in sleep biohacking. Just quick actionable tips, with only as much or as little of the science as is needed to explain the point.

I thought I should write the brief here just to get it out of my head:

Why
Help beginners to get started on sleep biohacking and 5am productivity

Who
Folks who are:
• new to sleep management
• interested to try out sleep biohacking
• not sleeping well and/or want to sleep better
• want to switch from night owl to early bird

What
A short ebook of about 3000-5000 words perhaps. Nothing too long. Something that I can sit through to read on a commute. A tool for easy and constant reference in order to build a new daily habit. Possible contents:

• Who this book is for
• Why manage sleep
• Why wake early
• How to sleep better
• How to wake at 5am

How and where
A few steps I foresee:
• Write contents page
• Create wait list
• Share with group
• Share on Twitter
• Sense interest
• Decide
• Write ebook on Google Docs
• Get feedback from waitlisters, chapter by chapter
• Edit edit edit
• Launch on Gumroad
• [Maybe] Launch on Amazon (Kindle shorts)
• Add link to Telegram group
• [Maybe] Create group on Indie Hackers
• Distribute in other ways to bring more into the community
• Create a project on Makerlog

What else did I miss?

“What opportunity can I leverage on today that will have the most impact for the least amount of work?”

I’ve taken to repeating this every morning now. It’s my opportunistic trickster mantra to pivot my identity into being better able to sense and spot business, marketing opportunities.

And I’ve seen it work.

Last month I doubled my earnings on my Carrd plugins sales because I was doing the whole opportunistic trickster thing.

But this month I’m starting to get into a comfortable routine at work again.

Reply tweets
Craft the day’s tweets
Write on Lifelog
Code a bit for Sheet2bio
Or discuss about cohort course

I’m unknowingly going back into non-thinking mode…again.

I got to fight the urge to be comfortable in routine in order to switch on the opportunist part of the brain.

It’s almost like these are two polar opposites:

Routine in lifestyle – good for creativity
Routine in work – not good for creativity

The way I move about online when seeking opportunity is very different from when I’m creating or consuming.

When I seek opportunity, I take more detours, check out profiles I never do, post in forums I usually don’t, do things based on inspiration.

Basically, taking smart chances on things.

When I’m creating, I do my usual workflows. Efficient and effective. Consuming is even more passive and un-random.

So how does one make being an opportunist a default mode of being?

I really want to know the answer, beyond just “more practice”.

I’ve always seen investment as something separate from building a business. Yet if you compare the returns, they might be more similar than you think.

My side hustles in total provided about $11,000 of returns for 2021 (I know because I just did my taxes) – not too shabby eh? I would have to save about $370,000 and invest 100% of that amount in bonds to get $11k in returns – a feat that’s harder to do than just trading my time, energy and ideas for the same returns.

Crazy!

So I’m a investor now. Just in assets that’s not your typical financial investment assets.

Everyone needs a hobby that’s:

not monetised
not productised
not recorded for social media.
It keeps you sane and helps you disconnect.

What’s your hobby?

– @getpaidwrite

“We work with our brains but rest with our hands.”

Maybe calling it a hobby sets it up for failure. Too many connotations and expectations associated with the word. That it has to be done daily, weekly, frequently. That I must be super passionate about it. That it has always got to be great fun.

Perhaps it’s enough for it to just be a “nice distraction”, things that I do to disconnect and to do without purpose other than just for it’s own sake.

We just passed 100 members in the 5am club for creators! As of today we’re at 104 members – a growth milestone that I feel I should write about. I started it on 14 Aug 2021, so it took about 7 months to get to 100. I did a review when the group was at 90 members on 12 Mar, so it took about 1 month to grow 10 members! Surely a slow growth project, a labour of love.

What I love most about this project
It’s a great learning opportunity on community-driven product development. I started the group chat not thinking about a product, but just as a way to learn collectively about sleep. But in the back of my mind, I always knew the possibility of building something for it in the future. So this is my own way of learning by doing, for community-driven products.

What I found challenging about the project
Engagement. And patience. Thankfully it seemed to have reached a threshold at 100 where more members are active, posting their wake times, and chatting about sleep. From 0 to 70-80, it felt like messaging into the void. I was probably the one who’s active on the chat.

What my hopes are for the project
I wish to keep growing the club. The funny thing about sleep biohacking is, it’s an infinite game. You’re never done, or can ever be done done. So there’s always something to work on, some new or old lesson to learn and share. So likewise, I’m not sure there’s a endgame here for the community. It can keep going and growing. People will come and go, but everyone still needs to sleep, so there’s always a need for it.

Regardless if you like NFTs or not, those projects are proof of amazing marketing feats.

If a non-existent yacht in a fictional metaverse can sell for $650,000; if a jpeg on the internet can sell for $23.7M, it makes me feel we creators and indie hackers can market and sell any product even if we thought it’s too niche or expensive and no one will buy.

Honestly, I’m in disbelief at the crazy money people are willing to pay. But disbelief or no, I find it’s super intriguing and curious to learn about the marketing, hype and culture around it… I feel there’s likely bits we creators can learn from:

• Community...
• Incentive design...
• Marketing...

I just launched a beta for Sheet2bio, a link-in-bio page for creators. It’s an alternative to popular link-in-bio pages like Linktree and Bio.link, and what stands out is how you can use Google Sheets as like a CMS or admin dashboard to build and manage the link-in-bio page.

What’s Sheet2Bio
You can show all your links at a glance: products, content/writings, and social media profiles. One link to funnel your audience to the right offering they are looking for. Demo:

👉 https://sheet2bio.com/jason

Why I made it
It started off as an itch I needed to scratch - I needed a link-in-bio page but didn’t feel like signing up for yet another social platform. I used Google Sheets-based nocode tools like Sheet2site in the past and always enjoyed how easy it was to get up to speed on the interface because it’s all done on Google Sheets. Since then I’ve always tried to use Google Sheets as a small database/CMS in my products whenever I can. For example, the announcements banner in Lifelog here is updated via a Google Sheet. That meant I didn’t need to deploy my site to production for minor, frequently updated changes to website copy. The convenience and ease of use is the key. I think creators often have new offerings or calls-to-action, and being able to simply update it right away using the Google Sheets mobile app is awesome!

How - the tech stack
This is where it gets technical - skip ahead if you’re not technically inclined! Frontend built using Vue.js, with a Github repo and hosted on Netlify. CI/CD built right into Netlify means I make an edit on my Github repo and the code is automatically pushed to Netlify right away. Backend is Google Sheets of course - I tap on the API and use the data to populate each link-in-bio page upon page load. Everything follows from a JAMstack philosophy, to decouple the frontend from the backend. Right now I’m still manually creating each page. If and when this takes off, will have to start thinking about more automation.

Future feature ideas
Some future feature ideas - analytics, link tracking, custom domain, email newsletter form, integration with Notion/Airtable.

When is it available?
Beta is open now, and it’s free (for now).

👉 https://sheet2bio.com

"I started dividing my to-do list into 1) things I have to do, 2) things I want to do, and 3) things other people want me to do. Life changing! I often don’t get to 3 and I finally realized omg, is this what it means to have boundaries?! 🤯🤯🤯"
– @jdesmondharris

I love the 3rd to-do list – a to-do list of things that others want you to do.

Because so often we lump them together with our own to-dos, and our priorities go whack. What I love most however is how this is a concrete way of having boundaries.

Having this others’ to-do list feels like a more introvert, composed way of asserting boundaries. You want me to do something? Sure, let me put you on the to-do list and I’ll prioritize it accordingly. You’ll have to wait though…

Now out with the “to-do, doing, done” kanban board to-do list, and in with the “have to, want to and others’ want to” to-do list!

The real idea you spent months perfecting. Zero demand.

The joke idea you tweeted on a whim. Validated demand.

Oh, how Fate loves irony.

I tweeted something as a joke. As sort of a satirical shitpost about how everyone and their grandma is launching a cohort based course.

Apparently the joke was lost on everyone, but instead of moving on, they stopped at my tweet and did something surprising - they replied about wanting to sign up!

So now the joke’s on me. 🙃

I wasn’t even planning to create a course. I don’t even like coaching! But now I feel like I must because of everyone’s kind support.

So now I’m seriously considering starting a cohort based course, probably associated with Lifelog. It might look like this, broadly:

Low-to-medium touch on time and socializing. Something great for introverts!
Low bar for commitment. Engage in pockets, at the edges of your day.
As little content/curriculum as possible, delivered over email or messages. Just enough to take the first step, and maybe the next.
Asynchronous. Check in, check out. Anytime.
Self-paced, broadly structured.
Free(?!), or freemium, like small payment for maybe events(?).
Write in public, chat on Telegram/Discord.
To be honest, I have no idea how that can look like. What should it even try to achieve?

Writing better? Or just developing a daily writing habit?

I should speak to users more.

*What else should I be considering? What other aspects of a typical cohort based course do you hate?

I can earn $5k/m just from either one of these:

5 × $1000 websites
25 × Carrd plugin integration jobs
334 × Carrd plugin sales at $15 a pop
500 × Lifelog subscriptions at $10/m
1 × $30k consulting project over 6 months
1-2 courses at $2000-3000 per course
[New!] 25 × unlimited Carrd web design/support at $199/m subscription
[New!] 10 × unlimited Carrd design/support for unlimited sites at $499/m subscription

OK but it’s hard to expect to sell 334 Carrd plugins in 1 month when my current sales is like average 10 per month. So maybe I can do a mix:

2 × $1000 websites = $2000
34 × Carrd plugin sales = $510
1 × $30k consulting project per year = $2500

Or something even more realistic:

2 × $500 websites = $1000
1 × course at $1000 total sales
20 × Carrd plugin sales = $300
20 × Lifelog subscriptions at $10/m = $200
1 × $30k consulting project per year = $2500/m

Just breaking it down this way makes it feel so much more attainable! And assuring.

Anxiety levels going waaay down now.

When a joke tweet becomes serious... now the joke's on me to make a course! 🙃

https://twitter.com/jasonleowsg/status/1511010244582801413

How I structured my portfolio of small bets:

From selling time, to more leveraged/scalable income streams. It’s really a spectrum, where the endgame is to move the ratio of your time/effort spent from left to right:

Services → Productized services → Info products → Micro-SaaS → SaaS → Marketplaces

The goal is to go from selling time to disconnecting money from time. Of course, it doesn't mean I will only do SaaS in the future. I would still want to have a mix, a portfolio. But the ratio of time spent might evolve. I'm spending more time on the left side of the spectrum now, hoping to flip the ratio towards the right side in the future.

Taking a portfolio approach has it's benefits - it's more resilient and antifragile:

• Services (e.g. consulting): Immediate payoffs but more random, feast & famine cycles
• Info products: Higher payoffs in the beginning but fades away over time
• SaaS: Low revenue in beginning but builds up over time

They cover each other's shortcomings over their product journey:

In fact, now I'm thinking I could add more into the spectrum, and do some experiments in:

• Dropservices could go into the productized services stage.
• Courses could be a thing on its own, in between productized services and info products (since it's a mix of both)
• Where does ecommerce come in? After SaaS, before marketplace?

What else can I add?

Work under uncertainty:
- Hard work → Trial & error
- Focus → Many things at once
- Optimization → 80/20 rule
- Consistency → Intensity
- Avoid distractions → Embrace randomness
- Practice 10,000 hrs → 100 bets
- Goals → Stay in the game
- Efficiency → Slack in the system
– @davassallo
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Working in chaotic situations calls for a completely different approach to working.

We’re used to working in predictable, stable environments. School, sports, office. There’s a rule book for working there, and it’s about following the rules.

Hard work, reducing distractions, increasing focus, making things more efficient and productive, 10k hours of practice makes perfect, set smart goals and KPIs.

That’s the rule book there. It’s familiar, it assuring. and it works.

In stable environments.

But throw yourself into entrepreneurship, social media, the jungle and any environment where things are more influenced by chance and chaos, and that rule book gets ripped to shreds.

Working in chance-based environments like entrepreneurship requires a total 180 flip on how I’m used to working. This is a totally different approach to work and working.

Not rule book but playbook.

I’m going to need to transform my identity from diligent, conscientious student to devil-may-care, ‘lazy’, “let me copy your homework” opportunistic trickster.

Less Thor, more Loki.

Ok this is gonna require more rewiring than I thought.