Lifelog

The missus and I did a review of our finances yesterday, and things aren’t looking good.

COVID had hit hard. Freelance gigs aren’t coming in. The runway from savings is getting alarmingly shorter by the month. And my products aren’t living up to hopes (yet).

In short, things will get ugly fast in the next few months if I don’t hustle differently to feed the fam.

It’s a humbling—almost humiliating—moment in my indie hacker journey. I hate it, but I now have little choice but to find work which I generally avoided if I can help it. I can no longer help it…

So fuelled by wartime urgency, I woke at 4am this morning to compile a Money Maketh Masterplan, to get our finances healthy again till the time my products catch up.

What do one do when self-doubt starts creeping in?

My goal to get to a sustainable MRR had been pretty long. A few years probably, just fiddling with different products and trying to find product-market fit. And the longer I take, the more self-doubt grows.

"The Lindy Effect for startups: The longer you go without shipping product, the more likely you will never ship product." ~ @naval

Naval’s spin on startups—and hence also indie hackers—is painfully spot on. It does feel like the longer I go without some form of successful monetization, the more like I will never reach it.

I have no solutions or answers at this point. Just writing to vent and make sense. Would love to hear any advice.

Asset = Anything tangible I can build once, sell twice (or more)
Responsibility = Any time or effort that I sell for a profit

I should really be spending more time on accumulating assets, not responsibilities.

Daily writing prompts are pretty popular on Google search. Let's find out if this works on Twitter!

...as a way to increase distribution and test if posting on my personal acc helps with more traffic => conversion

https://twitter.com/golifelog/status/1385147633438629893

New experiments:
- designed custom image using Unsplash photo for 1st tweet
- this thread was all about @mentioning other Twitter accounts (which are the tools) - read that I should @mention sparingly, but did the complete opposite to experiment
- added a new CTA, to ask people to follow
- tweaked the final CTA tweet to ask for RT to be relevant to what thread is about
- total of 3 CTAs at the end - is it too much?

The Start. Stop. More. Less. Keep. framework:

What do you want to start doing?
What do you want to stop doing?
What do you want more of (and you currently have)?
What do you want less of (but still want to keep)?
What do you want to keep as is?

I like the addition of “keep” - so often there’s many good things we fail to recognise we have, so that question helps with practice of gratitude.

Question to reflect on: What would I keep in my work and life right now as is?

Trying to publish more #learninpublic content on my personal Twitter account. The content is there anyway, I write daily on Lifelog, so why not publish? Gives me a chance to also share a Lifelog link and get more marketing juice out of what's personal writing. Takes some time though (~20min) to summarize and re-format, so that's some effort.

An experiment in progress...

https://twitter.com/golifelog/status/1384800181808365570

Experiments:
• Snazzy Unsplash image to anchor the 1st tweet
• Thanked the reader at end
• Applied new format: 1-liner opening, 3 bullet pts (each one longer than the previous), then CTA

What if real personal growth meant less, not more? Via negativa is... a simple and elegant rule of thumb – that less is more, addition by subtraction, on what not to do.

Things I would still love to eliminate:

• Mon-Fri work week - want to go 100% async, go out on weekdays, work on weekends.
• Sitting down to work - too sedentary, bad for health. Would be great if work can be done without necessarily sitting down in front of a computer, or even needing a computer!
• Less-than-liveable revenue on indie hacker products - $5k MRR is the goal
• Feeling like I need to work - financial freedom will ensure that I work when I want to work
• Zoom calls - let’s just do a good old fashioned phone call shall we?

It’s an interesting exercise to write down this second list of stuff I want to eliminate. Discovered new things I can experiment with, to learn and try (like #2)!

📈 Total one-off revenue: $600
📊 MRR: $60

Does this mean all the marketing is working?! 🧐

https://twitter.com/golifelog/status/1384424782146404353

Experimenting with:

- skipping the meme gif on the first tweet. Maybe too much of a good thing is not so good
- tried adding a "is this good/shit" poll at the end to get more data
- edit a headline 10x. Went with a more bolder statement "Starting a daily writing habit is EASY.." instead of "How to..." which is more meh
- got a point to make but not enough characters, so 'cheated' by tweeting out a single tweet about said point, then adding the link to the related tweet in the thread
- mentioned more famous authors like George R R Martin and Hemingway, used their quotes on snazzy custom-designed graphics

Words have a power over us, more than we realize. Use words that signal qualities that you look up to in your work.

❌ “I will achieve this goal”
✅ “I will learn my way towards this goal”
=> taps on my innate passion to learn

❌ “Will my plans work? We’ll see.”
✅ “Will my plans work? Let’s find out.”
=> taps on qualities I look up to - optimism, bias towards action

Always engage a bit before &/or after tweeting threads to bring attention to your account.

Learned about 'SEO' on Twitter search. Try searching for the common key words that people would use in Twitter for your content, and use those words in your tweet.

"What’s one high ROI habit you wished you had? What’s holding you back from not doing it today?"

The one high ROI habit I wish I had is… knowing how to rest well.

I truly wish I knew how to take it easy and take breaks regularly. I mean, I understand the principle behind why I should do it, but I’m not acting a the way that reflects that knowledge. In sports, I know that deloading is as important as loading. Rest days are as important as training days, and should be treated with the same level of seriousness and discipline as training.

So why am I not living up to that knowledge?

How to set up your own work space to keep you writing everyday
Ultimate guide to writing tools/apps

Discipline is freedom because it’s empowering one to achieve freedom from bad habits, poor choices, old, unwholesome way of doing things. It’s enabling a better future version of yourself to emerge. It’s freeing you from the shackles of past narratives of yourself, towards the dreams and aspirations you used to hold before those shackles snuffed them out.

When seen this way, oh hell yeah, discipline IS freedom indeed.

Doing this made me learn new things:

- Editing editing editing. I could really say the same thing with a lot less words, thanks to Twitter's 280 char constraint.

- Maybe I should do the opposite, a mobile-first approach - write a tweet thread first then post it on Lifelog with some edits/additions. That way I don't ramble on, nor spend so much time trying to summarize and edit when transferring from Lifelog to Twitter.

What’s my highest ROI habits?

• Keto diet
• Learning something new everyday and applying it
• Sleep biohacking
• Waking at 5am
• Daily writing

So what’s your highest ROI habits? Do tell!