Lifelog

I wonder if I can ever get to the point of “strong motivation, loosely held” for my work. I’d always had a problem with not resting enough, and driving myself too hard, often to the point of burnout and health issues. It’s just Sisyphean cycles of intensity and burnout all the way.

How can I learn to loosely hold on to work?

New hacks tried
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* Planned bedtime routines
* Started using Sleep Cycle app to track my sleep
* Cold showers before bed
* Took magnesium before bed

New experiments and hacks to try
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* Buying a timer power plug to go with the night lamp, to slowly rouse me awake using light instead of a sudden jolt from the alarm
* Track not just my coffee intake but also tea, and the type of coffee bean

As part of Fund Feb goals:

1. At least 1 task per day to monetize something.
2. Setting aside at least 1h everyday to work on money.

✅Chatted with IHers and shared Lifelog 6x
✅Shared about https://plugins.carrd.co/ on IH Carrd group

🎉🎉🎉 Celebrating a belated monthiversary on Lifelog! Some reflections:

⏱Has it been a mth? Time warps..
👥 Journeying alongside & helping my 'competitors'
👯‍♀️ No Lifelog without the grace of others
❤️ Trifecta of joy, purpose & (some) profit

As part of Fund Feb goals:

1. At least 1 task per day to monetize something.
2. Setting aside at least 1h everyday to work on money.

✅Tweeted out to 3 potentials about Lifelog
✅Shared #sweetjamsites on FB

And in tech, what’s same but new:

IRC > Slack
SMS > Whatsapp
Sell-a-vision > Youtube ads
Dial-in conference call > Clubhouse
Tetris game console > Nintendo Switch
Segway > hoverboards
RC helicopters > drones
Pagers > smartphones

Made me think: What was super fashionable and popular 20-30 years ago in tech, or when you were growing up? Is there a digital or smartphone equivalent right now? If not, that’s a business opportunity right there!

As part of Fund Feb goals:
1. At least 1 task per day to monetize something.

2. Setting aside at least 1h everyday to work on money.
✅ Talked to people on Twitter about daily writing, habit formation and goals (aka 'marketing'). Shared #lifelog 8 times
[UPDATE:] Oh wow someone replied saying they would give it a try! Did I just acquire a customer directly via organic engagement??!! 😱 It never works like that!

"...the first part of getting money is actually wanting it, isn’t it? For my whole life I have had a strained relationship with money, thinking that it’s dirty, and only dealing with it out of necessity but in distaste. So I can see how this little ceremony can help with my money mindsets and beliefs.

Every drop counts, when you’re trying to drill through stubborn rock with just dripping water."

"I will learn my way towards $5k MRR by 1 Jan 2022. In return, I will learn how to grow my indie products diligently, and adhere to a millionaire habit system."

"...For too long, my relationship with money had been tenuous and strained. So mindset-wise, I would love to start working with and for money in a different way. A more grown-up, sensible way, perhaps. Not as an after-thought, or a necessary evil. Money is just a resource, a collectively agreed representation of value in the form of paper. It’s ethically and morally neutral in and of itself. It’s the attitudes and beliefs we bring to it, about how it’s earned and spent, that taints it with human morality. So while I work on getting money, I would like to see if I can also change my mindsets around money. I’d come here before, asked the same questions, wished the same outcomes. Looks like this is a long game."

"...it’s nice to be “firing on all cylinders” in the first month of the new year. Not of course without some potholes like getting dengue, and an epic bug related to the streak in Lifelog. But all signs of better things to come (right now I’m just telling myself that, to hype myself up).

Onwards to February!"

"...Perhaps I don’t have to be the one with all the good ideas for social impact projects. They can come to me instead. I can call for project ideas from non-profits and charities, and have a mechanism to filter and select the ones that I can reasonably accomplish. And it’s always better to be working with experts out in the field, who are close to the beneficiaries and the social issues at hand.

So I guess I have to launch this now… no more excuses!"

And, joining #teamstreak today on Lifelog!

"Gratitude is the exquisite, nourishing sense of having enough. Abundance is experiencing what this means: that there’s nothing here, there’s no odds of something favourable coming, but there’s still enough for you for something to happen."

"How would a successful bimodal “barbell” approach look like in my work and life?"

Extract from the book Antifragile:
A dual strategy, a combination of two extremes, one safe and one speculative, deemed more robust than a “monomodal” strategy; often a necessary condition for antifragility. For instance, in biological systems, the equivalent of marrying an accountant (stable life) and having an occasional fling with a rock star (good fun); for a writer, getting a stable sinecure and writing without the pressures of the market during spare time. Even trial and error are a form of barbell.

FINALLY launched the highly-requested feature on Lifelog - notifications! It's just basic notifications for now - you get a notif when someone comments on your post. No @mentions, no notifs for comments you made on someone else's post...yet. Soon to come!

I must admit, this took me quite a while to figure out and get right. My initial idea of the solution was 10x more complex (involving web sockets, lifecycle hooks etc) than the simple one now which just uses a dumb CRUD API endpoint. But actual implementing and integrating both backend and frontend inflated the complexity back up again! Never had to make so many different components, pages talk to each other in realtime this way. Phew! So glad it's finally out!

Big shout-out to @yuyu helping me with the nitty gritty frontend stuff on Nuxt.js! Drinks on me next time! 🍻🍻🍻

Added v-bind:class and watcher to update the style of read/unread notifs upon clicking.

"...I noticed other product categories emerging on stuff which we probably considered too small or insignificant to paywall, like selling your Notion templates for managing your newsletters, selling tiny e-books and docs on Gumroad, selling access to view an Airtable full of resources.

In other words, if you can paywall, you can sell it. Anything. Everything. Having a sellable product no longer needs to conform to the image of a traditional product—be it digital or physical—with a high barrier to entry in terms of material substance, packaging, marketing, capital. "

"...from the trifecta of sleep, food and exercise, to the singularity that is energy, where sleep, food and exercise become ways to provide, restore and expand energy respectively."

🛌🥩🏋🏻‍♀️ "...If I can do these three things well, I’ll be unstoppable."

📈 Total one-off revenue: $600
📊 MRR: $40

Integrated API endpoints into frontend by making the form submission send 2 `POST` requests, one to create the comment and the other to create the notification. No lifecycle hooks/methods needed, just a plain ol' POST request! Didn't know why I couldn't see this before and went down the rabbit hole of over-thinking and complexity...

Managed to add an if statement to prevent user from sending comment notifications to self:

`if (this.post.author.username !== this.$auth.user.username) { ... }`

Next up: how to reduce notif count on click event of each notification.

"...Can one approach ‘normal’ work as an artist or wanderer does? 80% spontaneity, 20% structure? I wonder if these categories are in fact getting in the way. Because as the tweet eludes, curiosity leads to flow, flow leads to deep work, and deep work is, in fact, the ultimate form of productivity. It’s the best of both worlds. But flow cannot be forced nor planned nor structured into existence. It has to be allowed to happen. Like gardening. You till the soil, add fertilizers, allow just the right amount of water and light, and let the plant do the rest. You can’t force the plant to grow, but we can create the conditions for it to thrive. Same with flow. Perhaps that’s then the intricate dance of structure and spontaneity.

Structure to steward just the right conditions on the outside, but relinquishing all control beyond that. Everything else is left to spontaneity to sprout.

The plan to follow is to follow curiosity."

"Is trying to maximize productivity actually—in effect—achieving the opposite?"

"......The irony was how hard I fought against coding in the initial days. But now it’s like a balm. Ahhhh. Apply code directly where it hurts."