Lifelog

I think I went too much the other way when it comes to embracing failure.

Yes failing is a sign that I’m taking risks, putting myself out there. With each failure, if I learn from it, iterate and improve my approach from it, then it’s not counted as a failure. It’s actually growth.

By associating failure as necessary to success, the only way to pave my way to success was through failure.

I was so wrong.

Failures—especially grand failures—are costly, inefficient, demotivating.

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. But to muster up a response after a big failure, is hard. Not too smart too. It’s so demotivating. What if you don’t pick yourself up?

Why go through the extremes of high highs and low lows?

Small wins can pave the way to success better than learning through failure.

I’d put grand failures on a moral high horse, on a pedestal where there’s none. As if grand failures are better and more effective in getting to my goal than small wins.

Indeed, why do I need to feel like a martyr and have to crash the plane in order to say that I survived and got stronger?

What am I truly after? My endgame (financial freedom), or being able to show off my battle scars?

I was so wrong. So so wrong.

Small wins > grand failures

- Use "I" more often than "you". More authentic, tweets do better, and it pulls me back to sharing my own experience rather than being a sage on the stage

What are the things that I usually don’t feel like doing but seldom ever regret doing?
What are the things that my future self will thank me for?
What would a lazy-ass regret not doing enough of?

Here’s mine:

• Planning
• Workouts
• Taking walks
• Taking it slow
• Sleeping early
• Writing to-dos
• Swimming in the sea
• Buying hardcopy books
• Spending time in nature
• Reading hardcopy books
• Writing cards to my wife
• Getting up from my chair
• Having coffee with close friends
• Buying grassfed/organic/free range
• Doing something just for making money
• Being patient with someone or something
• Messaging a friend I’d not talked to for years
• Paying for a nice, wholesome, healthy but tasty meal
• Buying high quality but expensive shoes/glasses/clothes/bed

I could feel my curiosity and energy moving towards a few things naturally:

- creating more plugins for Carrd, peddling them more
- doing more build in public tweets
- making small bets again, e.g. Sheet2Bio, tweet remixer
- getting back to developing Lifelog features

For April will be keeping things semi-open and still follow my energy as an overall strategy, but keep doubling on those things which are pulling me in.

Will also work with an opportunist mindset rather than a hunker-down-in-hard-work mindset - "What opportunity can I leverage on today that will have the most impact for the least amount of work?"

So more opportunist-ing in April!

📈 Current MRR: $123
📊 1-off revenue: $250 (~150%🔺)
🐦 Twitter: Hitting 3k followers soon (261 new follows)
🔌 Sold 13 @Carrd plugins
🤒 Survived COVID

- To find tweets/accounts related to my writing tweet (so that I can engage these accounts/tweets), click on my tweet, scroll down to see "More Tweets"

I remember listening to a story by Sam Parr on the My First Million podcast about how Google kills projects even if they made a few hundred million in revenue per year.

Hundred million a year!

Hell that’s a whole lot of money! But it’s a pittance to the multi-billion dollar business that is Google, so comparatively, it’s nothing to them, and not worth the effort to pursue. These are good, functioning businesses, not just lame ones like Google+. Just killed because it’s deemed too small for a giant.

But imagine the potential of these products for us non-giants – solo entrepreneurs, indie hackers, bootstrapped founders. Even a fraction of that hundred million dollar business will be a life-changing amount of money.

It’ll be FU money. That kind of money that we can say we’re free. Totally, financially free.

I wonder if people had ever looked through the graveyard of Google projects and made an indie version of it.

Just look through the ideas here on killedbygoogle.com. There’s 264 of them currently. Just a quick scroll down shows some good potentials already

They might not all be million dollar revenue projects, but with some slight tweaks they can go on to be great indie products for niche audiences.

Makes me want to go make some now!

The recent hit on my MRR hit hard. Made me reflect a lot on my creator journey. I’ve also been thinking: I’ve been hustling on one product for some time now. Since Sept last year probably, and slightly over 2 years since launch. I think it’s time to pivot myself. I’ve given it a good go. Though I don’t think I’ll ever stop marketing Lifelog or developing it, my focus needs to change, it needs a change.

If anything, it’s for my sanity. For the creator spirit in me.

You can’t keep pushing without positive feedback. There’s only so much motivation and drive can do. After a while all the uphill struggles get to you.

Maybe finally moving to creating other products will help me with my revenue woes. Maybe taking some time away will benefit Lifelog. Maybe getting back to developing new features for Lifelog will help too - I’ve also neglected Lifelog’s development for some time now, since I went all in on marketing it last Sep. It’s been 7-8 months!

I don’t know for sure, but I do instinctively feel this is the right thing to do.

I need to feel creative and alive again. And I need to make. Create stuff. Anything.

I need to do something about my worries about feeding the family, so I need to make more products that could have a bigger payoff.

I need to restart my maker engine and start small bets again. Aggressively timebox my effort and commitment for each small bet, and curb my ambitions.

I need to start experimenting and having fun again.

Like how, just yesterday, I started on a small project for myself, called Sheet2Bio. It’s like sheet2site.com but for link-in-bio like Linktree. All done via Google Sheets instead of having to create yet another account on a social platform. I needed a bio link but decided to make one myself, and potentially for other creators.

Already, once I started on that, the worries become less worrying. Some hope and optimism returns. I can feel movement, and movement brings more motivation. The creative flywheel starts humming.

Creating in itself is an act of optimism.
Creating clears the head.

I create, therefore I am.

- Used to use Lists but found the feed for Lists to have too much noise. I just want to engage the accounts on their own tweets, not their replies to other people's tweets. So changed my Twitter List into a Bookmark folder on Chrome browser - just right click and open all profile pages as tabs and engage from there - more efficient

Yes it’s sweet to support an indie hacker, out of no other intention than to support his work. It’s like being a patron for an artist.

But something about the patronage approach for indie hackers always bothered me.

It means that someone bought your product without necessarily seeing value in your product. They just wanted to support you, the person, the maker.

Though I appreciate it, I find that adds noise. The signal that I’m seeking from the market isn’t how many people support me, but how many people find my product useful and valuable in helping them solve a tiny problem in their lives.

Customers > patrons

So the best way to support me is by buying my product because it solves your problem. Buy because you need it, because you will actually use it, not (solely) because you want to support me.

If it doesn’t solve a problem you have, don’t buy it.

If you want to support me, you can always do so in other ways - retweet my tweet, talk about my work to your friends, buy me a coffee, DM me how you enjoy your content. All that is sincerely appreciated.

It might sound foolish turning away free money, no matter how fleeting, even if it’s out of patronage support than actual utility. But that’s just how I roll. I’m purist that way, a pragmatist that way.

I take a practical sort of pride in my craft, and there’s no better praise that affirms my craft than a paying customer who uses my product every day.

When your monthly revenue matches your monthly expenses, you hit infinite runway.

Some call this ramen profitability. I like ramen, but not that much. There’s a larger sense of possibility by calling it “infinite runway”. By not calling out the bare minimum but highlighting the theoretical maximum, it’s so much more inspiring.

Infinite runway is that ideal state where you can keep going, working on your product, at your own pace and time, yet still keep feeding your family. It’s where you can start to taste the freedom. The total freedom from not needing to think about going back to a 9-to-5. That sense of relief, that freeing feeling, is the best feeling in the world.

Taste that freedom long enough, and you start to acquire a liking—even addiction—to it. It becomes your default. You can’t do it any other way anymore.

You become unemployable.

Yes, infinite runway is where I want to end up on.

- Every day on Twitter, dont just read to engage. Read to spot opportunity. FIND ONE OPPORTUNITY EVERY DAY.

I’m clear! Tested positive for everyone’s favourite virus on 17 Mar, then turned negative on 25 Mar.

Nine days.

I’m just relieved the episode is over for the family.

After two years of bracing ourselves for this eventual showdown, I’d say we survived intact.

Now, back to some semblance of normalcy. We’re heading out for a family dinner to celebrate. Just as the government announcement easing of more social distancing measures.

Finally, something’s looking up this year.

A ray of sunshine and hope.

Hopefully, a sign of better things to come.

I want to run a calm company of one. Like the folks at Basecamp say, it doesn’t have to be crazy at work.

“It’s crazy at work.” has become so normalized that it’s crazy.

Even though I work for myself, it’s still easy to get sucked into the craziness. In fact, exactly because I work for myself that it’s easier to push myself even harder.

I’m not there yet, but I want to get there.

The real reason I’m building my own business is that I’m tired of helping someone else build their dream.

“Why not me?” I asked myself.

If I’m going to give so much of myself into my work—and it’s good work I do—then might as well let myself be the main beneficiary of that effort.

In fact, “Why not me?” should be a default way of being. I’m realising it’s a powerful way to prompt thinking and promote action.

“Why not me?” gets me out of my own comfort zone.
“Why not me?” makes me think I can achieve what others did too.
“Why not me?” shows me where I’m lacking in imagination.
“Why not me?” prevents me from talking myself out of trying.

“Why not me?” invites social comparison, yes. They say “Comparison is the thief of joy”. It’s true. If you just compare and don’t do nothing, envy and jealousy will embitter your heart. It’s also true if you compare on the big things in life (that you have no control over) than the small things (that you can actually act on).

But here’s the nuance – social comparison can be a force for change, if you know how to use it as bushmen use small bush fires to fight the larger forest fire.

Just compare the small things and actually go do it.

It’s friendly competition.
It’s mutually empowering rivalry.

It’s like Edison versus Tesla. It’s Einstein versus Hilbert. It’s Wright versus Langley.

I dare say, “Why not me?” fulfilled more dreams than “I can do it”.

Naval’s roadmap for life:

First… get out of your parents’ basement
Then… get your own place
Then… ditch the commute to work
Then… ditch the alarm clock
Then… ditch the calendar
Finally… get away from email & text messages

https://podclips.com/c/its-better-to-do-nothing-than-work-on-something-youre-not-excited-about

Now that’s an interesting roadmap there. What I like about it is how progression and success is a series of letting go, of getting out of stuff, rather than gaining or accumulating more things to own or do.

A via negativa approach to winning at life.

Where success means asking myself, “How much have I let go of so far?”

Can’t wait.

With my purchase of a second mechanical keyboard, I’m officially a mechanical keyboard hobbyist now. Yes, you need at least two keyboards to count as an enthusiast. Because who needs more than one keyboard? Nobody. Only enthusiasts and hobbyists want more than one keyboard because it’s…well, a hobby.

The best part this hobby? It’s fun but also productive. Totally mixing business with pleasure here.

Right up my geeky, workaholic alley.

It’s important to have strong goals, but hold them loosely so that you’re not blind to trade-offs, opportunities, creative detours, course-correction.

Strong goals, loosely held.

"Never set goals without cost constraints:
• I want to make something… without spending more than a week on it
• I want to make $100K… without working >10hrs/wk
• I want to get promoted… without sacrificing family time
… and so on
Else you become a slave of your goals"
– @dvassallo

Here’s the ideal cost constraints to my goals:

I want to hit $5k MRR without:
• compromising my health in any way, mental or physical. That means prioritising my workouts, rest, sleep, stress hacks alongside work.
• sacrificing family time and important occasions
• working more than 4h per day (maybe per week in the future!)
• compromising ethics and my integrity/conscience/values

I want to get fit af without:
• getting injured
• spending more than 3 sessions a week
• spending more than 30min per session
• having to go to the gym

I want to have great sleep without:
• compromising family/social time
• having to sleep a lot (>8.5h)

Finally decided on the Twitter tool I want to settle on - Zlappo, made by an indie hacker @therealjayber

Got it at a great deal from Appsumo. Usual LTD is $449, on Appsumo it's ~$100