Lifelog

My toddler son has way too many toys. He plays with one set for a day or a week, gets bored, and then moves on to the next set. In time he returns to it, but plays it in a different way, or learns how to play it ‘properly’ (if the toy was previously above his developmental stage).

Somehow, the way he learns is emergent on how he plays.

Learning loops. Always coming back, then relearning but learning just a bit more this time. Until he had learned all there is and he moves on, permanently.

I like to think that as builders and makers, our projects are our ‘toys’. And we could take a cue or two from the way children play. In this case, how we can rotate through our projects, and learn in loops, getting better with each loop.

Truth is, I’ve been hammering away at the same 1-2 ‘toys’ for many months now. And the best way get a break-through is to acknowledge that I’m bored, stop playing, and move on to other projects for a while.

That’s the upside of having a portfolio of projects instead of being all in on one.

Do as a child would. Move on unapologetically once you get bored, and just keep on looping through, iterating.

Most of all, play.

Just have fun.

- Don't reply to each reply to your tweet in the notification feed. Wastes time to click on and wait for page to load each time. Open up the tweet page and reply from there direct

“Impatience with actions, patience with results.” - @naval

“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” — Vladimir Ilyich Lenin

But I could never embody them. But Gary Vee changed my mind:

"Ambition and tenacity are amazing things to have, but if they go unchecked, they can lead to some negative effects like anxiety, lack of self-confidence, and burnout. The best way to keep your ambition under control is by having an equal amount of patience to balance it out."

My mental and physical health is important to me. Now I see it. Now I’m convinced.

All the impatience is doing is it’s making me anxious. Anxiety makes me over-clock on work, and then burnout ensues. It’s not sustainable.

Who looks like they are having more fun than everyone else, and yet making a ton of money in the process?

Mr Beast, Joe Rogan, Elon Musk.

That’s the counterintuitive part about the role of fun in wealth.

We often think, fun ≠ money.

Fun is a hobby. Hobbies don’t make much money. And if a hobby does make you money, it ceases to be fun. It becomes work. Anytime there’s money—especially big money—involved, then it’s serious. Not funny. Not fun.

But as these three guys show, that’s the secret. A simple and open secret.

“Just have fun.”

So simple but so hard to do. Because when things scale, it gets harder to have fun every day, isn’t it? Yet fun and the ensuing joy, is the ultimate differentiator.

Joy is the ultimate creator.
Fun is the ultimate wealth generator.

#notetoself

I’m feeling stuck bootstrapping my SaaS. The success I seek isn’t quite panning out.

But reading Daniel Vassallo’s thread made me realise perhaps going for success is the wrong approach. Simply not failing is better.

It’s more about removing chances in order to avoid my worst case scenario, than increasing chances to achieve my best case scenario. At least when starting out.

Prevent downsides first. The upsides will come once you got the downsides managed.

Survive, then thrive.

I want to see what happens when I try launching low cost, effort-capped small bets even if they weren’t the most enjoyable things.

Cockroach > unicorn
Not failing > succeeding
Survive > thrive

- Wordplay on the structure of viral tweets might help but that alone doesn't work if you miss out on the next core element of virality - the emotion it elicits! Structure + emotion

I find I go through cycles of structure and chaos in any given year. Serious seasons where I hunker down and get after pre-determined targets, and relaxed seasons where I follow my energy, chase my curiosity and leverage random serendipity.

Perhaps the reason I had a bad Feb and continue to stay in my slump is because it’s time to follow my energy instead of goals. When energy wants to follow goals, it’s all peachy. But when energy wants to follow inspiration but instead gets misdirected to goals – that leads to confusion and stagnation.

That’s my working hypothesis.

Tactically and practically, I know that the best way to get the creative flywheel started again is to just let go and go to wherever my curiosity wants. That way I at least start on something, and riding on that borrowed energy, perhaps other goals and targets can come in.

So yes, onwards to a Mad March!

(And yes, the only goal in March is to follow my creative energy and curiosity.)

- I need a funnel. Top of funnel - free, lots of value. Middle of funnel - more value, get to know me better. Then a few steps down is the ask.

Feb numbers:

📈 MRR: $120 (no change)
📊 One-off revenue: $105
🐦 Twitter: 450k impressions, did well. Most numbers are up. Had quite a few viral tweets! But ROI stayed same - just 5 sign-ups.
🔌 Sold 6 plugins
🛌 Hit 1 year of sleep biohacking
🐢 Still in a slump

I realised my root endgame is to do whatever it takes to not go back to 9-to-5. Not time/creative freedom or whatever MRR goal I set. That's good-to-have if I can achieve "no 9-to-5".

Here’s a new product idea:

A Twitter fill-in-the-blank templates swipe file.

Templates are the ultimate productivity tool. We use them all the time. In emails, business concepts, memos, white papers. Forms and questionnaires are a type of template too, to make it more efficient to extract information from people in a standardised way.

So how about one for Twitter?

I’m not talking about plagiarising tweets from others here. No word-for-word copying. But borrowing the structure of the tweet and adapting it, adding your own spin and tweaks to make it your own. Same structure, but totally different content, audience and message.

A tweet remixer.

I’m been enamoured by the concept of slow growth lately.

The idea runs head on against the typical Silicon Valley hyper-growth culture, that if you’re not developing and growing your product by 10x every month, then you’re doing it wrong.

Move fast and break things, they say.

Even if I don’t harbour any ambitions of building the next $100B unicorn, there’s still a social pressure of having to move fast within the indie hacking circles.

These narratives tire me.

Yes, I want to make a living off my products, but not have to live at such a crazy pace. I enjoy coding, but don’t want it to take over my every waking hour. I love marketing, but don’t want to be on Twitter 24/7.

I want to grow things mindfully. At a pace that works for me and my lifestyle.

Move slow and grow things.

Slow growth.

- Based on the data, my best posting times are 10pm and 12midnight. Ok so new tweeting schedule looks like this, with RTs every 6h:
• 22:00 - indie hacker/BIP tweet
• 00:00 - writing tweet with Lifelog plug
• 04:00 - 1st RT (auto) of 16:00 tweet
• 06:00 - 1st RT (auto) of 18:00 tweet
• 09:00 - 5am club tweet
• 10:00 - 2nd RT (manual) of 16:00 tweet
• 12:00 - 2nd RT (manual) of 18:00 tweet
• 16:00 - 3rd RT (manual) of 16:00 tweet
• 18:00 - 3rd RT (manual) of 18:00 tweet
• 20:00 - RT (manual) of old tweet from ~1 month ago
[• 22:00 - new tweet cycle starts]

This new schedule works better because why not just tweet it out at a time when followers are up? Also, I wouldn't be replying to tweets a few hours before and after the original tweets go out (so that helps with the algo). My RT of older tweets from 1 mth ago also go out at better engagement times.

I wake up at 5am, but really I wake up for 7am.

It’s just a short moment in the morning. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes. Yet the best time of the morning.

It’s this in-between that’s most worth savouring.

Isn’t this true of life and death in general? The Big Bang. Birth of a child. Passing of a loved one. First kiss. Last kiss.

It’s in this in-between that I feel like I thrive the most.

There’s a concept in mental health called “functional depression”. It’s depression that doesn’t look like it’s there. Folks who have it look like well-functioning people on the outside.

I think there’s an equivalent in sleep deprivation. Just look out for new mums and dads at work. This hypothesis comes from my own experience. Because the past two years of caring for a kid had impacted my sleep. And I get by. Only just.

But the long term sleep deprivation creeps up in subtle, subversive ways.

On days when I think I’m doing okay, I skip my power naps. And my mood just goes way down in the late afternoon. I’m still somewhat alert. I don’t feel sleepy or tired. But in a really sucky mood. Everything feels stupid. And I thought I’m being a jerk.

I’m functional, but sleep debt had crept into my moods and emotional wellbeing.

Another parallel I can think of is being hangry. You’re hungry but you don’t really feel it, and it’s making you angry at everything else. Once you eat you mood lightens up.

Sleepy and angry.
Sleepy-angry.
Slangry.

So, my take-away is:

You’re probably more sleep deprived than you realised.

Don’t skip on your 8h of sleep every night.
Don’t skip on your naps if it had always worked for you.

Don’t be slangry.

Over the past month, I’ve binge read on wealth building - books, Twitter accounts, blogs.

Truth is, 90% of them talk about the same thing. Here’s the top take-aways so that you don’t have to read them:

Interesting observation: Half of them isn’t about money.

• Invest in yourself
• Growth mindset
• Develop wholesome habits
• Health is wealth
• Social influence
• Spend less
• Avoid debt
• Automate money
• Invest early
• Create assets

What else did I miss?

- don't just engage accounts that I turned on notifs for. Not enough. Got to look at my feed and lists once every week too

- research wikipedia/blog/news for business case studies, then repurpose into threads? Add your own experience for real substance/soul. Eg Mcd's is real estate, Starbucks gift cards

- Interacting hack by @dagorenouf: "Basically I stop interacting entirely with other people's content (except replies to my tweets). 2h before / 4 h after my tweets of the day go out. Else I noticed the algo wouldn't favor my own as much at the crucial time when they need early traction. Basically the algo has to pick what it shows from you at moment X. can be a reply, an old tweet, a like, a new tweet... whatever gets the most instant traction wins. So if you are engaging on stuff other than your own tweets, you're at risk that people won't see it first. So if I reply to a tweet that’s viral, then more likely the algo will optimize for that reply than my own tweet as there’s much more attn there now.. I got some very good tweets get outshined by good replies I made just before"

Reason: Not the product but not the right season for him. Busy with other writing projects.

Observation: Customer asked for a discount and signed up because of it. Beginning to see that folks who signed up due to discount or got in for free, mostly don't hang around long. Counterintuitively, those who paid full price used it the most and was most engaged. Time and again this validates the hypothesis: if they truly valued your product, they will pay and they will use it. Having free tier and promo codes might attract more sign-ups but just not the right kind of customers

Rant incoming:

Don’t support indie hacker products.

Especially if you prefer stability.
Especially if you hate it when features break.
Especially if you want your tools to be dependable.

Being an indie hacker myself, my first reflex is to support my peers. Most of the time, it’s a good decision. You get up close to a product as an early adopter and it’s development journey, and you’re rooting for the underdog founder to succeed, which by extension, I’m also rooting for myself. It’s a mutually enabling relationship.

But as a consumer, f**k does it annoy me when:

- Maker launches with a big show, makes grand promises about how the product is his/her “life’s work” (when he’s just 20), and then disappears later due to burnout, personal problems, or lack of interest
- Maker gets acquired/sells out to a competitor. Shortly after, the acquirer announces that they will stop development for the product, and they can sign up for the other product instead. It ended up being an acquisition to kill competition, and leaves the community in the lurch.
- Maker keeps developing the product – a good sign initially, and over time makes the product increasingly worse. Product gets unstable, and even basic features stop working, while new features are non-starters and white elephants.
- Maker rebrands product multiple times and with each time it further alienates the community from original spirit that you had signed up for. Rebrands mostly achieves nothing but it’s next level to create larger and larger rifts between your community and the product.

These complaints isn’t just from one product or maker but based on many I had tried over the years. And it’s happening often enough for it to not be a fluke or outlier.

F**k this, I’m going for enterprise products the next time.

/rant

- Find a time slot to QT someone's tweet you love, or about someone's progress/work. It's about starting conversations on your feed as much as replying to other's tweets on their feed

- Ask a question in your tweet instead of factual penny wisdom 1-liners - that opens up more engagement and just more fun

Here’s an interesting hack when it comes to setting goals: Start a chat group.

I had started Telegram chat groups for a few new habits – keto diet, sleep and 5am wakes, and just recently, money habits.

What began unintentionally as just a way to socialize with others around a topic is becoming a habit hack—an intentional intervention—to ensure accountability, learn from others, and to grow collectively.

It's not really a newsletter but a mailing list. As a backup in case i get deplatformed, hacked or denied access for any random reason. Since I'm taking Twitter seriously, good to have a backup so that I can bring my audience elsewhere.

I’ve been in a slump since 2022 started. It seems like I always have either too much momentum, or too little. Seldom just enough.

It’s time to confront it here through writing. A few anxious questions that keeps replaying in my head:

• What will happen if my old consulting gigs dry up before my revenue is ready?
• Will I ever hit diaper-profitability for my products? What am I really missing?
• When will this global crisis be over? When will the world reopen?
• What can I do to pick myself up?
• How can we all heal?

I have no ready answers nor solutions.

But by naming my demons through writing them down, I drain them of their power. So that I might be better placed to solve them after.

I need to write more.

- Help people out in DMs. People had been approaching me for help, so I give it as freely as I can.

- Quote tweet if you want to take the whole tweet structure word for word but change the key words, like it's a meme - see https://twitter.com/Nicolascole77/status/1494601223672147968

What’s your freedom stack? Mine:

• Singapore citizenship, as native home base
• Bali, Indonesia for retreats, as a second home, with business visa
• Kyoto, Japan for inspiration, shorter tourist stays
• $10k monthly revenue from all my products
• Location independence on all my work
• A remote career for my wife
• Remote schooling for my son
• Ability to pay for airfare for grandparents’ visit anytime