Lifelog

Mission centred authenticity vs money centric utility

• Start back on indie projects as ***main hustle***
• Stop job applications
• Double down on finding consultancy projects and freelance platforms as ***side hustle***
• All remote, freelance, part time, flexible
• Nothing fulltime
• Do some training/coaching - 20% of time

"Harry Chapin was a singer-songwriter and he had this to say about his grandfather.

My grandfather was a painter. He died at age eighty-eight, he illustrated Robert Frost’s first two books of poetry, and he was looking at me and he said, “Harry, there’s two kinds of tired. There’s good tired and there’s bad tired.” He said, “Ironically enough, bad tired can be a day that you won. But you won other people’s battles; you lived other people’s days, other people’s agendas, other people’s dreams. And when it’s all over, there was very little you in there. And when you hit the hay at night, somehow you toss and turn; you don’t settle easy.

It’s that good tired, ironically enough, can be a day that you lost, but you don’t even have to tell yourself because you knew you fought your battles, you chased your dreams, you lived your days and when you hit the hay at night, you settle easy, you sleep the sleep of the just and you say ‘take me away’”. He said, “Harry, all my life I wanted to be a painter and I painted; God, I would have loved to have been more successful, but I painted and I painted and I’m good tired and they can take me away.” ~ A Learning A Day blog

Overall, a failed month.

I tried everything. Nothing worked. Not sure what else to do now.

I’m disappointed in myself.

I’m tired.

Study what’s old and true, not what’s popular. What’s true never changes. Human behavior (needs and wants) has always been the same. Only context and culture changes. Use this to your advantage by building new things with old concepts. You’ll be right more than you’re wrong. ~ @jdnoc

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom. ~ Viktor E. Frankl

Your relationship with your emotions will change when you view them as information.

From "Why is this happening to me?" to "What is this telling me?"

Tl;dr - don't learn from high signallers. Learn from those in top of their field but counter-signal on what you/we commonly perceive as an indicator of quality.

Work is love made visible.
And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.
For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man’s hunger.
And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distils a poison in the wine.
~ Kahlil Gibran, in The Prophet

It’s been a month of experimenting with 4am wake times since starting on 25th April:

I generally woke around 4:20am or 4:40am
Earliest was 3:58am, latest was 5:03am
Sleep scores hover around 60-70% in the beginning
Later 1-2 weeks I’d been getting high 70% scores, a few 80% even
High 70%-80% came from 7h sleep or more, often with 9pm bedtime
The sleep charts from these high 70% scores also showed more regular peaks and valleys, with no interruptions from night pees or anything
I also self-reported my alertness level (on 1-10 scale) when I woke. This one was a strange one - no patterns. On some good score days I found I reported low alertness levels even! Not sure if I’m doing it wrong…

I’d come to a sort of a rough framework and decision matrix on what i should focus on to get the highest return on my efforts to make money fast.

In order of priority:

1. Immediate pay-offs
2. Warm leads
3. New product ideas
4. Cold leads

I’m starting to wonder: What if there’s no normal to return to?

I had long accepted that for life in general. That our lifestyles will never look the same post-pandemic. But seems like for work opportunities, I’m still holding out for the familiar past to return to ‘save’ me.

It’s time to let it go.

So… what if instead of hunkering down, I just went ahead and do what I always wanted to be doing in the future, as if it’s already arrived in the present?

"Strategic incompetence”:

It’s saying, “Decide what you’re going to suck at, to be great at something else.”

It’s saying no so that you can say yes to the one or few things you want to be great at.

It’s giving yourself permission to be incompetent in things that don’t matter. And that’s a-okay.

Few understand this.

Most would be familiar with how bullish I am about self-employment, indie hacking and entrepreneurship. I subscribe to the school of thought that eventually, everyone will be a creator in a creator economy. In fact, it’s already happening, and pushed forward further by COVID-induced remote work. That future is already here, just not evenly distributed.

But looks like before that dream can be realised, I might very soon need to get back into employment. Regretfully.

Freelance gigs are still non-existent. The little bits and bobs of income from my side projects are small change, not enough to sustain a livelihood and a family.

I really want to continue working on them—Lifelog included—but ironically I might now need to get a job to sustain them. At least until this pandemic blows over. Which could mean 2-3 more years, optimistically speaking.

"Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you.
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.
You may give them your love but not your thoughts.
For they have their own thoughts…
You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday."
~ Kahlil Gibran, in his book The Prophet

Because if you write the way I do, that seemingly mundane writing advice actually translates to profound life advice.

My real world voice is my inner voice is my writing voice.

And so if using lots of qualifiers is how I speak to myself, we can then infer that I hedge a lot. And I’m probably not even conscious of it…until now.

What if, for once, I went all in boldly, and not hedge…at all?

How would that translate in mind, body, and speech?

“Be bold, don’t hedge.”

When I was young, I was an idealist. I found beauty, wonder, and meaning everywhere I looked. When I got older, I became a realist. I saw a world of rough edges and difficult truths. This grew tiresome. I decided to be a surrealist. Things got pretty weird after that. ~ @grantdraws of Incidental Comics

When you’re truly financially independent and free (even running a $10k MRR business doesn’t count – it’s about having enough to even walk away from a $10k business), you can’t be cancelled.

Let that sink in a bit: With enough money, you can’t be cancelled.

You can be free to to talk about and share opinions that’s counter-cultural. Sure, there might be social consequences, people might unfollow you, your real friends might drop off, but people will no longer be able to cancel you and hold you hostage by harassing your employer, partners or customers. They can certainly try, but you certainly don’t give a f**k. I’m free to have my own thoughts and opinions.

True ideological independence.

Who would have known… that even though money can’t buy everything, it can buy a free thinking mind.

For any business, you need this trinity of roles and skills to keep things running and profitable. And at any one moment, a solo indie hacker can be embodying all three:

Entrepreneur – the one who started it all. Optimistic, reality-distorting, collecting ideas, betting on opportunities, taking risks. The dreamer, the visionary, the idealist, the master generalist, the hustler. He gets sh*t done, or finds the people who can.

Technician – the one with deep expertise, the craftsman, the introvert coder who loves to solve challenging technical problems. The Entrepreneur starts the business, but the Technician ensures you even have a product to sell for the business.

Manager – the guardian, the adult. When there’s chaos, the manager steps in to ensure things are well-organised. He puts in place processes, systems, and rules.

"don’t think of side projects as “spinning plates”. think of them as quilts. somedays you sew on one quilt. other days, you sew on another. each unique in their own way; each has its own path…" ~ @searchbound

That’s it! This is how I will describe my side projects hereon.

Not juggling or “spinning plates”, but quilting.

Quilting is making an eclectic patchwork.
Quilting is done with care.
Quilting is hard crafted.
Quilting is done slowly, calmly.

Ideally, quilting is done in a way as a grandma does, by a fireplace, with a cup of tea, and pet cat purring at her legs. It’s an image of bliss, working with your hands, with love and care.

Holding that vision in my head is helpful. It’s mindful, delightful, blissful.

A better way of marketing: Be the proof - "demonstrate that what I’m doing is working and have people come to me to ask what I’m doing rather than trying to go out and grab people." ~ Lobacrow

I believe it’s a better way to connect with like-minded people, make friends, build an audience, do marketing, sell a product, because:

• Being legit, with real street cred over having to bullsh*t your way to customer acquisition.
• It’s about attracting, rather than chasing.
• Making friends instead of acquiring strangers.

The easy way is often the hard way. Shortcuts, one-sided deals, and selfish behavior create debts. You only look like a winner until the bill comes due. Short-term actions become long-term frustrations. In hindsight, the hard way only seems slow in the moment. ~ @JamesClear

...writing still never gets easy.

I likened it to a cold shower. Is it possible to never feel the jitters before jumping into the ice cold water, or to stop ever feeling the shock of the cold? I doubt I’ll ever get used to it, but it gets done somehow, some way.

Writing feels a lot like a cold shower. Even after writing for more than two years, it never gets easy. What gets easy is the acceptance that it’ll never be easy.

So, let’s go win, and help win.