Posted on

My June 2019 Retrospective

Time Distribution

Comments

It’s interesting to see that I spent so much time reading (16%) without having planned for that. After reading about how Naval reads multiple books in parallel, I gave myself license to do the same. The books I started to read where:

  • Dig your well before you’re thirsty (Finished)
  • The overwhelmed brain (Finished)
  • Manufacturing consent
  • Content everywhere
  • You’re a badass at making money
  • As a man thinketh (Finished)
  • Can’t hurt me
  • Elements of user experience (Finished)
  • Refactoring UI (Finished)
  • Love and addiction
  • The controversy of Zion
  • A new male sexuality

I also spent a good deal of my time (13%) writing. This is because I’ve been consistent with my new writing habit, however, I haven’t been able to design my habit in such a way that it is leading to a consistent publishing schedule as well. This is undoubtedly the next step. I published a blog post going into a bit more detail about this.

Key Accomplishments

Rapid Breakup Recovery

Time spent

12:28

Revenue

Ebook sales: 0

Total: $0

Comments

My time was mostly spent answering questions in the facebook group. This is time consuming and I’m not really seeing any immediate returns for it. It’s interesting to see the revenue dip to 0 now. As I’ve said in a previous monthly retrospective, this is primarily because I no longer have an email sequence set up. Since a convertkit subscription is less than $50 a month, it’s an obvious win. I just need to find the time to implement it. Instead of spending any more time on my current WordPress setup, however, I’ve decided to migrate the blog to GatsbyJS. The remainder of my time has gone to this migration.

Pingcoin

  • Implemented a ping-tracking feature to collect data on incoming pings
  • Added incoming pings to the database
  • Did initial analysis of incoming pings
  • Did a usability test with my dad

Time spent

12:11

Revenue

$0

Comments

After doing a usability test with my dad it became clear that there are still some serious usability issues with the app. Having said that, I’m also seeing continuous usage in the Firebase analytics. Setting up analytics for incoming pings has allowed me to look at the distribution of the resonance frequencies of coins. This is something I need to write a separate blog post about.

Pocket Revolutions

  • Agreed with Axova to implement an API

Time spent

3:27

Revenue

$0

Comments

Our project with Axova will pick up now that we were able to agree to implement an API for them instead of waiting for their contractor to do it in their in-house system. This is good news because the project had been on hold for a while.

Monthly Goals

Did I achieve my goals? If not, why not?

Figuring out how to bring in clients short-term & long-term.

  • One new client signed
  • Pocket Revolutions website up and running
  • Pingcoin as a portfolio piece on the PR website

I did not reach any of the 3 monthly goals.

FAILED: One new client signed

The main reason I didn’t reach this goal is probably that I didn’t spend time on it. I did read two books on the topic of networking (which isn’t counted in the above overview). I also did go to a Toastmasters event and met some people. One of my weekly goals was to get out of the office more and meet people.

FAILED: Pocket Revolutions website up and running

I’ve been researching different technologies that I could use to run the PR website. I’ve landed on Gatsby for Rapid Breakup Recovery and I intend to start using it for my personal blog as well as for the PR website.

I also spent some time researching what webdesign experts say about the process one should follow to design a website. Because I want to position myself as a technology expert I believe it’s important that my website is impeccable. So although I thought this task would be much quicker, it’s taking longer than expected.

Another reason it’s been taking longer is that in wanting to prepare Pingcoin and RBR as portfolio pieces for the website, I’ve dove deeper into them. I published some improvements to Pingcoin and I started migrating my RBR blog to Gatsby. On the one hand I’m splitting my time (as opposed to focusing), on the other hand I am polishing these projects up to serve as good portfolio pieces.

FAILED: Pingcoin as a portfolio piece on the PR website

Again, here I failed to turn Pingcoin into a portfolio piece, but I did spend considerable time on the project. Were these absolutely essential tasks? Probably not. But they are things that sooner or later needed to be done.

Comments

It’s somewhat confusing to see that I set out to find at least one client the past month and to publish my website, and I’ve not managed to do either. Not only that, but it seems that I haven’t spent that much time on these tasks directly. Why is that? What’s going on there?

(Bear with me as I think out loud. What follows is a recollection of how the month evolved for me. Incidentally this type of introspective writing is representative of the type of writing I do in my journal. You can read more about my writing habits here.)

At the beginning of the month I realize that to find clients (the goal of the month) I need to have a strong network. How does one build a network? I wasn’t really sure, so I started reading about it. I read two books on the topic and made some notes.

One of the things I realize is that I need to get out of the office more, so that’s what I do. I attend two networking events and meet some people.

At the same time I feel the pressure to start building my company website so I want to start with that. Then I realize I want to do a very good job at it, so I start reading about this topic.

Then I start looking at the projects I want to showcase as portfolio pieces and I see things that really need improving. So I jump in and start improving them case in point: Pingcoin.

Before you know it, it’s the end of the month and I don’t have any new clients, don’t have a website and haven’t turned Pingcoin into a portfolio piece.

Have I just been doing busy work?

I don’t think so, but I’m not 100% sure. I think what I’ve been doing is low pressure work. I improved several different areas and I did some careful research. I wasn’t sprinting towards the outcome I set. Instead I was carefully laying bricks.

Should I be sprinting instead of laying bricks? I think the answer is no.

Said differently, should I be pushing myself harder to just achieve the goals I set, or should I allow myself to get carried away with inspiration and curiosity?

In thinking about this I’m also reminded of Ray Dalio’s book Principles in which he says that you should distinguish between the “you” that designs your machine (your system to achieve your goals) and the “you” that works in it. I suspect that I’m allowing myself to get emotional and intuitive while I’m inside my machine. I’m then taking those emotions and allowing them to determine my strategy. As a consequence I’m not allowing my machine to behave very machine-like.

I think a better way of looking at the interplay between intuition and rational goal setting is that your intuition is sort of like the output of a finished process that was run by your subconscious. Your subconscious has a lot more processing power, a higher bandwidth for incoming data, access to more resources than your conscious faculties. And in general it has the capacity for coming up with answers that are much higher quality answers for your problems (taking more levels of your being into account). One challenge is that it is not always clear when it’s speaking or what it’s saying. It takes practice to get in tune with it and to dispatch questions to it to be answered.

The weaves of your subconscious also constitute your blind spots, your traumas, your pains, your limiting beliefs and a lot of neurological manifestations that will basically work against you achieving your goals.

It should be obvious that we should definitely be consulting this vastly more powerful processor with more resources, higher bandwidth and direct access to our bodies whenever we’re pondering difficult or impactful questions. But we probably shouldn’t be listening to it all of the time and in any situation. In other words, letting your intuition guide your weekly (or even monthly) strategy in the middle of the week is probably not the right thing to do.

Consult your intuition during the “machine designer” phases. This is where you’re zoomed out and you’re trying to objectively look at you the worker. This is also the perspective you want to have when you are designing the solution. However, I’ve come to believe this is not who you want to be when you’re doing the work. When you’re doing the work itself, have faith in the design. If you doubt it, make a note, and change it the following week. Don’t change it during the week. This will force you to be much more careful with planning, but it will be easier to determine whether or not a given design change produces the desired result.

(The above could be a good start for a new blog post. Agree? Let me know @jessems)

Yearly Goals

Am I on track to achieve my yearly goals? If not, why not?

1 month of >10k CHF revenue [Financial]

It’s hard to say where this money should come from, so it’s hard to say whether or not progress was made. Materially, no, no progress was made. In fact, reaching $0/month on RBR for the first time in a while actually constitutes regression. Having said that, 1 or 2 good clients with Pocket Revolutions would get me to $10k a month. My final verdict would have to be: MORE-OR-LESS

120 hours of self-study German [German]

It’s somewhat strange to see this goal up here. I spent 0 hours studying German this month. Even though I’m also surprised the actual number is 0, in May it was only 4 hours, 11:30 in April and 22 in March. So it seems I’ve slowly been deprioritizing this topic. I’m not too bothered by that. German does feel less important right now and perhaps I should deprioritize it as a yearly goal as well. I will be setting more conservative weekly goals for German and see how I feel next month. Verdict: NO

<Private>

…

What went well?

  1. Spent a lot of time reading after identifying this as an area where I wanted to spend more time
  2. Spent a lot of time writing
  3. Published a Pingcoin analytics feature

What should I do differently?

  1. Turn more of my writing into published content
  2. Set goals that are more in line with how I truly feel about things (and don’t change them mid-week or mid-month)
  3. Get out at least once a week meeting people [track people met]

Determine Kaizen

  • Turn more of my writing into published content
Posted on

Reflections on a new writing habit

Several weeks ago I became intrigued by some advice I kept hearing from many people I follow online. The advice was: write consistently and good things will happen. I suspected there was a profound meaning to those words which I wasn’t fully appreciating. So I decided to dig a bit deeper.

I laid out what I believed was the underlying meaning of what they were all saying in subsequent blog post. What I believe they were saying is that one should write regularly because writing clarifies our thinking (and consistently clarifying your thinking leads to all kinds of positive outcomes). Since then I’ve implemented a daily writing habit which I’ve been consistent with. In this article I’d like to take a moment and reflect on this new habit.

What have the results been so far?

For one, it’s been creating a lot of output. Since starting my habit I’ve written over 40,000 words. That’s not a trivial amount and a whole lot more than I’ve written in any period leading up to it.

Having said that, I haven’t *published* 40,000 words. And there’s a key discovery for me in this process:

Simply generating writing does not result in publishable content.

Duh, right? You still need to edit and you often discover that you also still need to do more research.

Editing and researching as needs that emerge from writing

To date, I’ve got about 8-10 draft blog posts now that have come out of this new writing habit. All of them still require significant editing. Some of them require more research. Both editing and researching are not covered by my habit, but it’s become increasingly clear that those steps are necessary. Since then, I’ve iterated on my habit by including blocks of editing and researching into my weekly calendar (with mixed results).

Some draft blog posts sitting in my Scrivener folders
Some draft blog posts sitting in my Scrivener folders

I’m less surprised by the need for an editing step as I am about the need for a  researching step. Call me crazy, but I thought I could grind out more cohesive and valuable thoughts without having to defer to a book.

Let me give you an example. After talking to an old friend (a software developer) who was about to embark on a new project with German clients, I was reminded that individuals from different cultures often face challenges in working together. Working with Germans happened to be an area where I felt I had some experience, so I decided to write my thoughts on how to work with them (ze Germans).

I started off by writing from experience, but quickly I felt I was running out of ideas and my language did not feel very precise. I became interested in what research literature might be out there about this topic, e.g. cultural differences at the workplace.

Then I discovered there are (at least) two worthwhile books that have been published on the topic. I then began to realize that the insights I had intended to publish would likely appear trivial in comparison with the body of research that apparently existed.

There was still some value in my personal experience and in my anecdotes, but scanning through the literature on the topic made me realize that some of the conclusions I was arriving at were likely flimsy and heavily influenced by my own inherent cultural bias.

Not having the time to immediately devour these two books, I was left with a slab of text — not yet edited — and some open questions waiting to be researched.

Clearly, to turn this text into something coherent, valuable and readable, I would have to do some more reading and pass over it again. It made me realize that there are different stages in the process that are necessary to bring a piece of writing to completion.

The most useful mental model I’ve come across for thinking about this process comoes from a guy called Kevin DeLaplante on youtube, who, in one of his videos makes the distinction between writing to discover and writing to present. (I hope you follow my recommendations, because youtube’s own recommendations suck)

Writing to dsicover vs. writing to present

Kevin DeLaPlante's diagram of writing to explore vs. to present
Kevin DeLaPlante’s diagram of writing to discover vs. to present

We can think of the stages of writing a single piece of content as falling on a spectrum that goes from writing to discover to writing to present. In general, when we start with a new piece, we start off by writing to discover. In this stage we’re not evaluating what we’re writing. Instead we try to pull in different pieces of relevant information and try to explore our thoughts on the topic. At this stage we might not yet know how we think about a topic. The audience for this type of writing is you.

As you explore the topic a structure may slowly start to emerge but and you can start to knead and prune your piece. As your piece becomes more defined you simultaneously become more evaluative and you’ve entered the domain of writing for presentation. When you’re in the presentation stage, your audience becomes the person that is going to read your writing.

My daily writing habit puts me in a generative mode. I’m generating writing and postponing any evaluation to a later editing mode. Usually this means I’m on the side of writing for discovery, but occasionally I’ll know what to say and It will feel closer to writing to present.

My writing habit covers the generative step of the process but rather than resulting in publishable content on the first pass, it instead often surfaces areas that require me doing more research.

Interestingly, even within the act of generative writing (if we can call it that), I’ve found a noteworthy distinction between different modalities of generative writing.

Different modalities of generative writing

I sit down to write at least twice a day. Once for my daily journal and once for my daily 1000 words. Although the felt experience of both these routines is often similar, usually they are quite distinct.

During my daily journaling routine I simply try to empty my head and express my emotions. I start with a question such as “What needs attention?” and I simply let my fingers generate words. It’s often a dialogue with a wise version of myself and it’s almost always a very insightful process. It feels like this puts some daily grease on the hinges of the door between my subconscious and conscious mind.

A screenshot from my journaling app Day One and a typical entry

When I sit down to write my daily 1000 words, I usually manage to get into a different mode. I try to explore an idea and figure out what insight I have on a given topic and where my knowledge is lacking. Sometimes it takes a lot of effort and it’s slow. Sometimes my fingers can barely keep up. Usually it’s very conceptual and it doesn’t veer far from the topics that pertain to my day-to-day challenges.

I’ve noticed that there’s sometimes overlap in these two activities. Sometimes the things I write in my journaling session are exactly the type of things I am hoping to write in a writing session. Sometimes the opposite also happens and a writing session becomes infused with emotions and self-inquiry. The common factor between both modalities is that I’m clarifying things that exist in some form in my mind.

I’m not sure yet if should insist on the separation. For now I try to keep my journaling as a place where I can express emotions and thoughts, empty my mind and have a therapy session with myself. In contrast, I try to keep my daily writing habit about the things I’m exploring in my projects, or meta-observations about how I’m progressing towards my goals.

Generating paragraphs and putting them into topical buckets

Before I start my daily 1000 words, I glance over my folders in my writing app (Scrivener) and see what pieces could use some more thoughts. Sometimes I’ll find a topic that resonates with me on that particular day, but often I’ll just start without a prompt of any kind.

After writing my 1000 words I take the resulting text (usually spanning 1 or 2 topics) and then I copy and paste it into a fitting folder inside Scrivener.

I maintain a separate Scrivener file for my agency, one for my coin testing app and one for my breakup advice website. Within each file I maintain folders for the topics I’ve been writing about so far.

 

Conceptual diagram of my daily writing and categorization process
Conceptual diagram of my daily writing and categorization process

But as I mentioned before, the texts that sit in my Scrivener are mostly unfinished pieces. In some cases they need editing, in some cases they need more research, but in most cases I don’t know what they need or if they’re even candidates for a standalone piece of content. It’s unclear to me.

What I’m working on right now is to see if I can turn into a routine the process of editing and the process of researching. The main worry I have is that together with writing these habits will take up too much of my time. Although I enjoy every bit of the process so far — I also need to get my agency up-and-running and make some money!

Another thing I’ve started to experiment with is to use my reading time to read books that help me with my writing research (something I understand Nat Eliason does as well). Up until now I was simply reading whatever I felt like reading. This has been made easier by following advice on reading books from Naval. After that I’ve given myself license to read more books in parallel as well as doing more skimming for new ideas.

I’ve experimented (and so far failed) with a weekly publishing deadline for this website as well as for Rapid Breakup Recovery. After failing initially I’ve introduced editing and researching blocks in my calendar for both (I’m writing to you during one of those blocks). I hope to share with you how this all pans out.

What do others say about their writing process?

As I’ve been designing and tweaking my own process I became interested in what other online writers were doing. How do they distribute their time between writing, researching and editing? There is no shortage of generic advice you can find which boils down to this:

  1. Write no matter what. Do it daily. Probably in the morning.
  2. Have an editorial calendar where you commit to publishing on set dates
  3. Brainstorm your ideas beforehand

There is however, surprisingly little specific advice on how to incorporate a researching and editing phase into your writing schedule. I only found Rosie Leizrowice who talks about her writing process in these terms. What I like about what she says is that she has a specific research phase for every article.

Based on that, the process I intend to move towards looks something like this:

  1. Braindump + generate article ideas
  2. Evaluate ideas (e.g. look for highest SEO potential)
  3. Plan ideas (editorial calendar)

Then, per idea, the following tasks should probably exist:

  1. Research, determine books to be read
  2. Outline
  3. Draft
  4. Edit
  5. Finalize
  6. Publish

This system seems like it could work for shorter articles, but what about the longer ones? This is one of the questions I’m pondering next.

In conclusion

I’m very happy with my new habit of writing 1000 words per day and I’m also very pleased with myself that I’ve been able to stick with it. Having gotten this far has made me realize that to translate the writing I’m generating into publishable content, I still need to introduce regular editing and researching sessions. Doing this much writing I’ve also started to appreciate nuances between the different modalities of writing, such as writing in my journal vs. writing my 1000 daily words. I haven’t quite figured out yet how to publish regularly, or how to approach longer articles, but I’ve got the feeling that with some more tweaks I’ll figure it out. I’ll keep you all in the loop on how things progress.

Posted on

How I came up with a name for my agency

Background

As of this writing I am in the process of founding a product design & development consultancy in Basel, Switzerland. To register your company with the commercial registry you need a name. As a brand you need a name that works well for your business.

As eager as I was to rush the process and get started with actual business, I knew that picking the right name could end up making a big difference.

This was complicated by the fact that I am founding the company with a friend who is financing the whole endeavour. I wanted us both to be happy with the name, but as we discovered, our brains work very differently from one another.

How I started

Before I started brainstorming I suggested a name that I had already come up with beforehand:

Product Nerds

I thought it communicated the right things. I’m focused on digital “products” and ”nerds“ conveys that we’re good at what we do.

My friend saw things differently.

As he’s not familiar with the world of digital products the word “product“ to him conjured up imagery of a classical factory-produced product. And nerds, for a German speaker, doesn’t have the same expert/funny connotation as it does in English. In German a nerd has a derogatory charge (one of the dictionary translations translates back to English as “asshole”). So although I still like the name, it became clear it was the wrong name for this situation.

Then, I just started brainstorming lists of words. I tried to seed my brainstorming with words that sounded nice and which I thought were related to my industry, such as “prototype”. And then I started looking up the latin translation for certain words. Why? I’m not sure, I think I thought it sounded professional. I documented my process in Figma and here you can see a screenshot.

Opus is Latin for work and cura is the Latin word to heal. I thought that they sounded cool together and my friend is also the founder of a NGO that helps children in Thailand (healing work I guess?) so I thought it was fitting. Then I tried to combine it with prototype and I arrived at Protocura.

I thought that was pretty cool. The people I asked responded luke-warm. My friend didn’t like it that much. He thought it sounded like Prokura, which in German means something like having signatory power in a company. Not quite the what I wanted to convey.

So I decided to read a book on the subject. I decided to read “Hello my name is awesome” by Alexandra Watkins.

I read a book on coming up with a brand name and here’s what it taught me

The book was illuminating. First of all, it made me realize I hadn’t put too much thought into what a really good name sounds or looks like. Luckily the author had several of her own that she had come up with. One of my all time favorites?

Gringo Lingo — as a name for a language school in Latin America.

What an amazing name.

In her book Alexandra Watkins tells us to stay away from Latin names, as well as trying to sound cool by sticking stuff to the end of names e.g. -ly and -r.

Interestingly Alexandra emphasizes that getting the .com domain name is actually not THAT important. Getting the right name is key, and you can come up with a clever domain name after that if the .com isn’t available.

I was doing the opposite, for every name checking if the .com was available.

Once I dropped that requirement, new options started opening up.
In her book Alexandra presents a framework and a process for coming up with a name. Her framework is as follows.

A name should be:

Suggestive – It needs to evoke something about your brand
Meaningful – It needs to resonate with your audience
Imagery – Visually evocative to aid in memory
Legs – Lends itself to a theme for extended mileage
Emotional – It moves people

Alexandra also provides some rules to avoid bad names:

Spelling challenged – Stay away from names that aren’t spelled the way they sound
Copycat – Don’t choose a similar name to a competitor
Restrictive – Don’t get locked into a name that you may outgrow down the road e.g. diapers.com
Annoying – Don’t choose a name that annoys customers
Tame – Uninspired names e.g. Cloud Net
Curse of knowledge – A name that only insiders get e.g. Eukanuba (pet food)
Hard to pronounce – e.g. Sur La Table

In additional to these rules, Alexandra has a whole process you can go through which she lays out in the book, which she calls your brand roadmap. I went through this process and you can view my brand roadmap in the presentation here.

Going through Alexandra’s process surfaced some good candidate names. Here are some of the names we arrived at that are worth mentioning.

Hello World Studios

“Hello World” is a reference to the output statement you usually learn first when learning a new programming language. It’s also an upbeat name, easy to pronounce. Unfortunately the .com was taken by a small German web development agency who didn’t reply to my emails.

Happy Path Studios

In UX jargon the Happy Path is a sequence of envisioned steps a user can take as they move their way through your product which leads to the desired outcome. This name checked many of our boxes but the “th” sound in English isn’t easy for German speakers to pronounce (one of our requirements) and it requires insider knowledge.

Flowability

A reference to the psychological state of “flow” in which someone feels in-the-zone and loses track of time. This may be what you want to design your product to accomplish. Also a loose reference to ”user flow”, a UX term for the conceptual path a user may take to navigate through your product. And lastly, also a loose reference to usability, another UX term which aims to capture how easy it is to use a certain product.

Studio Click

Because the agency would help make things “click” and also because my girlfriend was planning on integrating some of her photography work into what we were doing (and camera shutters *click*) and we wanted to reflect that in the name. (This, by the way, is an example of how the requirements for the name evolved a bit as we were going through the process.) Although the .com was taken, the .ch was available and it sounded authoritative. We almost went ahead with this name, mostly out of impatience. We decided to abandon it when my friend’s wife told us it was shit.

Finger Food Studios

A great name for a digital product agency. Finger food is a funny way of referring to apps as they represent software experiences that are accessible through our fingers. Unfortunately others came to the same idea and Finger Food Studios is an innovation studio in Canada. But I took this to mean that the process was working, we were coming up with good names.

More brainstorming was needed

Regarding brainstorming Alexandra has some very valuable advice: Do it alone and do it on your computer. The group brainstorms we had weren’t very productive. It was much better to do the brainstorming alone. Her brainstorming tips are really good.

Let starter words seed your imagination. After that, follow you curiosity. Type a word into google, try the urban dictionary, try a name generator. Some words might tickle your interest, save those, and move on.

Tools I used

  • Namelix (Great AI driven name generator. Can give you ideas for names as well as ideas for new seed words)
  • Instantdomainsearch (Great for a quick check of domain availability
  • Urban dictionary to find jargon related to my industry
  • Google searches such as “digital product jargon”
  • I used Figma to create artboards for each seed word and then put the words it seeded in the artboard. This lets you easily zoom in and out and the word clouds you’re generating in the brainstorming process.
  • Powerthesaurus. Probably the best thesaurus out there. Great for coming up with tangential words based on a seed word.

Some other notable strategies

Since the name needed to be pronounceable by German speakers, we tried starting with words that are known English words that have been adopted into the German language. These are so-called Anglizismen and there’s a nice list of them on Wikipedia. This gave some interesting seed words.

We also tried starting with so-called “compound words” in English, like finger food. These are words that consist of two separate words. This also gave some interesting seed words and led to the cool name: Finger Food Studios (unfortunately taken).

Plugging a word like “programming” into Namelix will surface a bunch of different words related to programming that go beyond synonyms. E.g. it will surface words like “syntax” and “modeling”.

Finally we landed on…

We finally landed on the name Pocket Revolutions inspired by this article.

How does it square up against Alexandra’s categories? Here’s my take based on the feedback we’ve received so far (bear in mind this subjective).
It’s suggestive because it evokes the idea that we’re doing something revolutionary, and that someone that works with us can start a revolution of their choosing.

It’s meaningful and evokes imagery because most people understand the link with “pocket” and the the reference to a technological revolution.
It has legs as we’re thinking about calling ourselves revolutionaries and inviting clients to start their revolutions.

It’s emotional because aren’t all revolutions bursting with emotions?
Both pocket and revolutions are easy to pronounce for German speakers and they sound quite playful together.

One of the notable differences with the other names we came up with is that Pocket Revolutions really seems to convey a brand. My buddy said it best when he said [about the name]: ”that’s really a brand”. I feel the same way.

Some lessons learned

Finding a good name can be really, really hard

It really helps to know and feel what a good name looks and feels like e.g. Gringo Lingo or Key Values. It’s also worth realizing that working more or working harder doesn’t translate into progress. I would brainstorm for 3 hours and come up with a handful of mediocre names.

Brainstorming is best done alone and using your computer

Although you can bring some methods to bear, in general it’s a very random walk type of process. You need to let certain things inspire you and save the things that draw your attention onto a big canvas for later contemplation.

“Letting it go” doesn’t always result in ideas

In some other creative endeavours “letting it go” helps you come up with new ideas. Somehow your subconscious goes to work when you stop focusing on the problem you’re trying to solve. This didn’t happen for me in this case. All my ideas came while spending conscious effort on it.

(Note: Although the title says “I”, coming up with the name was ultimately a team effort and I would like to take the opportunity to give credit to my business partner. Extra credit goes to his wife for calling us out on the name we were peddling before.)

Let me know if any of this was useful. I’m @jessems on Twitter!

Posted on

My May 2019 Retrospective

3 things that went well

  • Spent a lot more time writing
  • Succeeded in creating a mock api with Google Sheets
  • Found a new name for my agency

3 things that I need to improve

  • Do more German
  • Exercise more (did not reach 2 workout sessions per week on average)

What did I not achieve and why?

I set out to find one client last month, but I didn’t find any. To be honest, I didn’t spend much time looking. I spent my time coming up with a new name for my agency, writing a lot and learning some new technologies which I’ll be needing (like Angular and RxJs and Firebase).

I did manage to get all the documents sorted for the founding of the company. We decided to change the name last minute. The name of the agency will now  be: Pocket Revolutions.

Time distribution

The time spent on JesseMS was actually also time spent writing. So in total I spent a little over 20% of my time writing this month!

Pocket Revolutions

  • Changed the name of the agency (previously Studio Click) to Pocket Revolutions. I’m very happy with the new name. Post about the naming process is upcoming.

Rapid Breakup Recovery

  • Published 1 blog post
  • Started coding my own CMS for RBR

Revenue

Ebook sales: $38

Total: $38

Pingcoin

  • 5 coin recordings were submitted by users and were added to the app
  • First blog post about Pingcoin was published here

Monthly Planning

  • Sign 1 new client
  • Launch the Pocket Revolutions website
  • Publish a portfolio piece on Pingcoin
Posted on

Pingcoin in Iran

After publishing a new feature for Pingcoin where users can submit coin recordings for addition into the app, I’ve seen users submitting coins every week. This is incredibly encouraging. The only drawback to this situation is that although the system is getting more coverage (e.g. more coins) it’s not getting necessarily more accurate (e.g. more recordings per coin). I’ve been thinking about how to solve this.

It’s worth noting that I’ve received two recordings from Iran so far from the Bahar Azadi coin. A young trader has reached out to me and has been kind enough to explain to me a bit more about the situation in Iran. For one they’ve recently been hit by a market crash which sent the value of the dollar and gold plummeting.

Two gold Azadi coins submitted by a user in Iran

 

He’s told me of the situation in Iran where there is a 8% markup above spot price for gold coins from the Iranian mint. This has given counterfeiters the incentive to mint their own coins of correct composition, to capture this markup value. One of his questions was whether or not the ping test would be able to catch these types of counterfeits.

Iranian plaza where gold coins are bought and sold (image submitted by my new friend in Iran)

 

My answer is probably not, but I’m willing to do some more research with him. Like a musical instrument, the sound of a coin depends on its shape and its material. If you manage to mimic both, you will mimic the sound as well. Thus a counterfeit coin which uses the correct composition would sound the same as a genuine one. I suspect there might be some differences at the microscopic level (e.g. differences in crystallinity) between different minting processes, but whether or not these will be great enough (or predictable enough) to detect a difference, I don’t know.

I know from doing some research into the German Reich 20 mark coins, which were minted by numerous mints, that some differences were detectable between the mints. The distributions for each resonance frequency was centered on distinctly different frequencies. The problem, however, was that the distributions themselves overlap. So although there would be some coins which you could tell apart, many of them you would not. I would expect a similar situation for the Azadi coins.

Having said so much about the domain specific things within Pingcoin it’s worth making a meta comment about what’s going on here. My goal with releasing this feature was to initiate a user feedback loop. I wanted to get in touch with users. To better understand them and to iterate on the product. This is now happening and it’s great for more than one reason. For one it’s great because it’s satisfying and motivating on a human level. I am talking to people across the world that (apparently) value what I’m doing. That’s amazing. It’s especially nice to hear that my product is making a difference since it’s not an industry I’m deeply embedded in myself and because I had honestly given up on that hope much earlier. The reason I got this far has more to do with an unshakable compulsion to finish what I started, rather than some clear value-driven mission.

Secondly, it’s great because it’s teaching me more about my users, their use cases and the context of their use of my product. For instance, my Iranian friend mentioned that he trades coins in 10 packs and that trades happen quickly, making it difficult to do a manual test for each coin. This information will inevitably feed into the product and improve it. These two elements, motivation plus direction from the market, are what I was missing the last time I was working on this idea (2012-2013). It’s incredibly gratifying to find these here now.

It’s also interesting to note that my process for improving the app is quite slow. Even though I created the submit-a-coin feature as quickly as I could, I tend to think carefully about the problems I’m trying to solve and their solutions. I really let the problem marinate in my head and try to come up with various solutions in my head (which I also often sketch out). I’m not deliberately slowing down the product development process (perhaps because I’m not devoting 100% of my time to this idea), however, my sense is that it takes time to arrive at a solid idea. Often I’ll have a good idea with some drawbacks, followed by another good idea with some drawbacks, and then through the marinating process I’ll combine them into a super solid idea, without drawbacks. Reading Kolko’s while I’m doing this is also just perfectly on point:

Design is slow and not just because it takes longer. Because it’s reflective, contemplative, and methodical, design encourages marinating and stewing, exploring and dreaming.

-Well Designed by Jon Kolko

What’s marinating in my head right now is how to move to a situation where my app is getting progressively more accurate due to the data it collects. This is made difficult by several factors:

  • I don’t have access to many coins myself
  • I can ask users to contribute coins, but I am not able to verify whether these are authentic or not
  • I’ve asked dealers (who would be able to verify coins) to contribute to this cause, but so far they’ve not been very interested
  • Even if someone is interested, it could be a bit cumbersome to upload a 5MB .wav file every time you try to do a quick test
  • Even if you’re willing to upload a recording, I need additional information about the coin to be able to add it to my database (e.g. year of minting). This can be cumbersome to enter.

Meanwhile there are some usability issues that also need to be resolved, most notably the onset detection part of the coin testing flow (e.g. detecting the moment a coin gets flicked). This is also something that has been marinating in my head and for which a first solution is already fairly clear (a web-based onset labeller). More on that as I progress.

I remember the app being in a semi-finished state and feeling torn about whether or not to proceed with it. Initially I chose not to, but it kept bugging at me. Then I revisited it, but did not build a submit-a-coin feature (instead routing users to a web form with a recording option). It was only after seeing that users were trying to send me coin recordings that I realized it would probably be worth building the feature properly. I can only say, I’m glad I did.

Posted on

On writing at all

An essay on why I hadn’t started writing in spite of being aware of the apparent benefits it has brought people whom I admire.

People I admire recommend writing

I was listening to the Indiehackers podcast episode where Rob Walling tells the story of how he got started as a bootstrapped entrepreneur.

What stuck with me was that he seemed to attribute much of his success to writing a weekly essay on his blog.

Among other things, he shares how his writing allowed him to grow an audience which he would later leverage to launch his book.th

One reason this part of the story stuck with me is because it’s not the first time I’ve heard it.

Other entrepreneurs I admire (e.g. Nathan Barry, Chris Guillebeau, Brennan Dunn, Nat Eliason) have also emphasized a similar lesson about writing and it seems to go something like this:

When you write regularly, good stuff tends to happen.

They are not claiming there to be a direct relationship between writing and beneficial consequences, like, say, between caloric intake and bodyweight.

No, they’re saying that there is something about a regular writing practice which somehow results in you experiencing benefits you would have had a hard time anticipating beforehand.

What they are saying is that writing benefits you… somehow

Although Rob was able to leverage the audience he had grown in order to sell his book — he did not set out to write with the explicit goal of writing and selling a book.

The book emerged from his consistent practice of blogging in public.

Nat Eliason also touches on this topic in a recent essay while discussing the success of a Kegel exercise app he developed:

I didn’t make Stamena until I saw how much traffic my articles were sending to the app store for someone else’s app.
…

When you already know you have a stream of people asking for a product, making that product gets much less risky.
…

This logic is probably why so much passive income advice comes out to some form of “start a blog!” That’s not terrible advice, but most blogs don’t make money. The better advice would be “start a blog that talks about things people will pay for.”

Analogous to Rob’s story, Nat did not start writing articles on Kegel exercises so he could sell a Kegel app.

Instead, through his practice of regular public blogging, that opportunity emerged.

Opportunities emerge when you write a lot.

That seems like a fair enough statement, but is there anything else we can say about why that would be the case?

Is it simply due to an increase in your surface area on the internet?

I suspected that wasn’t the case and I tried to figure out if perhaps there is more to a regular writing practice that would warrant this consistent, yet somewhat nebulous advice.

What can be said about how writing benefits us?

Writing sans publishing helps us refine our thoughts and edit them

One way we think about writing is as a process where words are chosen and transferred onto paper (or a screen) in order to communicate an idea.

In this mental model of writing the idea is clear, all that is left is to find the right words to accurately map it into language.

This, as I’ve discovered, is not a very accurate mental model of writing.

A more accurate, and more helpful, mental model is one where you start with an idea that is not entirely clear, and in your attempts to capture it with words, sentences and paragraphs, it becomes more refined in your mind.

Prof. Dr. Jordan Peterson stresses this point in some of his writing and in some of his talks.

He describes writing as formalized thinking and refers to it as one of the most important things you can practice in life, in general.

You can find out more about his ideas on writing in a quirky little word document, an essay-writing tutorial for his students, which has been floating around on the internet.

In it he says:

The primary reason to write an essay is so that the writer can formulate and organize an informed, coherent and sophisticated set of ideas about something important.

The act of writing, he says, helps you formulate your thoughts. But he goes a bit further:

Why is it important to bother with developing sophisticated ideas, in turn? It’s because there is no difference between doing so and thinking, for starters. It is important to think because action based on thinking is likely to be far less painful and more productive than action based upon ignorance. So, if you want to have a life characterized by competence, productivity, security, originality and engagement rather than one that is nasty, brutish and short, you need to think carefully about important issues. There is no better way to do so than to write. This is because writing extends your memory, facilitates editing and clarifies your thinking.

You can write down more than you can easily remember, so that your capacity to consider a number of ideas at the same time is broadened. Furthermore, once those ideas are written down, you can move them around and change them, word by word, sentence by sentence, and paragraph by paragraph. You can also reject ideas that appear substandard, after you consider them more carefully. If you reject substandard ideas, then all that you will have left will be good ideas. You can keep those, and use them. Then you will have good, original ideas at your fingertips, and you will be able to organize and communicate them.

According to Prof. Peterson writing requires you to explore a topic and in doing so you are required to clarify and edit your thoughts.

You stand to benefit from clearer thoughts because actions rooted in clear thoughts will do more to bring you closer to your goals.

Writing is not like taking dictation from an internal thought stream.

This used to be my mental model.

It’s inaccurate and unhelpful.

Writing is thought-refinement through exploration.

Writing and publishing increases our surface on the internet

This is the most straight-forward benefit and the one that is the easiest to intuit.

As you write more you increase the amount of space you inhabit on the internet, through which you are increasing the odds that one of your ideas reaches someone and resonates with them.

As a result they may interact with your idea, spread it, or both.

Writing and publishing gives us the ability to iterate on ideas

Once you’ve refined your thoughts you can take the additional step to publish them and invite others to interact with them.

Through these interactions your idea might evolve.

Everything you write and publish can be seen as the start of a conversation.

Conversations about ideas can allow you to iterate and improve on those ideas.

Starting a conversation about an idea may also tell you whether or not the idea is worth iterating on at all.

Through iteration, ideas may lead to opportunities (business or otherwise).

Thinking of a published piece of writing as a prototype has the added benefit of lowering the internal barrier you maintain for yourself when it comes to publishing.

Writing and publishing keeps us honest

Prof. Jonathan Haidt in his book The Righteous Mind explains how the public nature of the academic review process helps balance out the individual biases held by the researchers taking part in it.

The governing dynamic is that we behave differently in public compared to how we behave in private.

If we believe we are being observed and that what we say or write will be scrutinized by others, we are more honest and by extension more scientific. Writing in public contributes to us being more honest and accurate in our thought processes. The more accurate our thoughts, the more helpful they will be in aiding us while we navigate reality.

Adam Wathan touches on this in his Indiehackers interview. In it he explains how weekly interactions with his following keep his honest and keep him focused on making progress.

Writing and publishing persuades

Writing seems like it could leverage many, if not all, of the 6 principles of persuasion as identified by Dr. Robert Cialdini.

A valuable blog with a regular publishing schedule could contribute to the influence you wield through the principles of consistency, likeability, authority and reciprocity.

Increasing your influence may lead to opportunities or may give you the ability to seize upon them when they present themselves.

Writing regularly may help you hone this skill.

Writing will help you with your reading

Taylor Pearson says the following:

The more I write, the more I need to read. Last year I got really busy and stopped reading for a month. When I sat down to write an article, I couldn’t think of anything to say.

When I’m reading consistently, my ideas for new articles to write, new approaches to consulting engagements, or new things to do in my personal life turn into a torrent.

Was any of this really a surprise?

I was aware many successful people recommend writing.

I was aware a blog could probably increase the serendipity in your life.

I would have believed that there were probably multiple worthwhile benefits to a writing regularly.

Why, then, did I never start writing?

If it wasn’t a surprise, why didn’t I act on this earlier?

When I started writing this essay, I asked myself this question and no answer came to mind.

None. My mind drew a blank.

I didn’t have a clear reason.

Or perhaps I should say, I wasn’t clear on the reasons.

That is, until I started writing.

Through the process of writing this essay, answers to this question have emerged and have become clear.

This, as I’m coming to understand, is arguably the most powerful benefit of writing.

Writing is idea-refinement through exploration.

Here is what my exploration uncovered:

I never clarified my thoughts about why I wasn’t writing

Possibly the main reason why I wasn’t writing regularly is, ironically, that I never took the time to write about it.

Without writing about the question why I wasn’t writing, I never explored it in earnest, and never clarified my thoughts.

Now, after writing about it and organizing my thoughts on the subject, I am able to present them to you here.

I didn’t consider myself a “writer”

One of the first feelings I identified as potentially holding me back from writing is a feeling of not feeling like a writer.

Nathan Barry writes about this very feeling and perhaps it can be fully described as a manifestation of impostor syndrome.

Having said that, I never felt like I lacked the capability of being a writer — a feeling I believe is a prerequisite to impostor syndrome.

Being a “writer” was not part of my identity.

Productivity expert James Clear talks about how identity forms the basis of behavioral change.

Lasting behavioral change, according to James, comes from a change in identity.

Change your identity and your behavior will follow.

Keep your identity unchanged, as I did, and your behavior will remain the same.

I didn’t think whatever I would do would make an impact

I didn’t think anything I would write could have much of an impact, because my reach seemed severely limited.

This is another thing that Prof. Peterson invites us to reflect upon.

He makes the case that we are connected to millions of people just by two or three degrees of separation.

Without appreciating the results of this simple thought exercise, we’re likely to underestimate our potential impact.

I certainly was doing so.

I felt discouraged every time I discovered I didn’t understand a topic

A second feeling I identified is something that occurs when I choose to write about a topic and I erroneously (and naively) assume that I understand it.

When, through the process of writing and trying to pin down an idea, I realize I cannot, I become disappointed.

I can sense my internal time estimation for finishing the article (or essay) as quickly growing and becoming increasingly uncertain.

Before, I might have thought I could finish the article in an afternoon, now I’m not even sure another day would be sufficient.

(This has happened to me a lot while writing content for my men’s breakup advice blog and has happened multiple times while writing this essay.)

My inner talk shifts to: “Who do I think I am writing about something I don’t even understand?”, never realizing that uncovering and grappling with the unknown lies at the heart of what writing is.

Writing is exploring — not taking dictation.

If you consider yourself an explorer, unknown territory is the norm.

I tried to connect the dots looking forward

Let’s imagine we’re speaking with Rob Walling back in his early days, right before he committed to writing on a weekly basis.

Imagine we were trying to convince him to start a weekly writing habit with full knowledge of the exact results it would bring to him and his career in the future.

Now imagine the argument we could formulate in that situation:

“Rob, you need to start writing on a weekly basis because it’s going to lead you to launch a successful book (which you don’t yet know you want to write) to your audience (who you don’t yet know.)”

Even with perfect knowledge, not only does this seem like a strange argument to be making, it also doesn’t sound very convincing.

This reminds me of something Steve Jobs said during his famous Stanford commencement speech:

You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards.

The dots definitely connected for Rob, but he would only be able to make those connections looking backwards.

The serendipitous benefits of writing will only be apparent looking backwards.

This was never as clear to me as it is now.

How can I act on this now?

By writing about why I wasn’t writing, I’ve clarified why that was the case and why I should write going forward.

I want to write because I want to refine my thoughts on certain topics.

Above all, I am interested in improving the quality of my ideas and my ability to communicate them.

I want to write in public because I value accuracy and because I appreciate the power of iteration.

In writing this essay I’m also making a public commitment to writing and I’m also proving to myself that this is now my identity, laying the foundation for lasting change in behavior.

Lastly I have a new level of appreciation that any serendipitous opportunities that may come from my public writing won’t be seen looking forwards, only looking backwards.

Posted on

My April 2019 Retrospective

After reading Results: The Agile Way, I’ve decided to switch up my retro format a bit so it’s more in line with the book.

What are 3 things that went well?

  • Brought the app for my client, Axova, to a presentable level and presented it. Now waiting for their dev to get in touch with me so he can set up an API to communicate with.
  • Finished editing and launched the first RBR podcast episode. Super happy about that!
  • Shipped a Submit Coin feature for Pingcoin which allows users to submit coin recordings themselves.

What are 3 things I need to improve?

  • Exercise more. Only averaged 2x a week this month.
  • Find a new client.
  • **Private**

Although I’m happy with the progress I made in launching the RBR podcast, the Axova app and the new Pingcoin feature, I haven’t gained any ground financially this month. Next month this will really have to take center stage and I’ll either need to focus on finding a new client, or something else.

What did I not achieve and why?

I’ve been putting off setting my yearly goals since, well, the beginning of the year, because I felt tremendous resistance towards it and I didn’t feel like I had the right framework. I think after reading Results: The Agile way I’m ready to do it.

I didn’t find any additional clients because I didn’t spend much time looking

I didn’t participate in the local Basel incubator Startup Academy because so far I’ve not felt energized to go through with it.

I didn’t finish the Axova app yet because I’m dependent on their dev, who I’ve not been put in touch with yet because he’s busy.

Time Distribution

image.png

Rapid Breakup Recovery

Key achievements

  • Published the first episode of the RBR podcast

Revenue

Ebook sales: $19

Total revenue: $19

Ebook sales have been down ever since canceling Drip and not moving to an alternative. This is a bit counterintuitive because my understanding of the analytics was that my free 7-day email course wasn’t generating much sales. Perhaps I was mistaken in that. 

Pingcoin

Key achievements

  • Launched a Submit Coin feature

Revenue

Total revenue: $0

Right now I’m waiting for people to submit coins and plan to add them to the database as soon as they do.

Monthly Planning for May 2019

  • One new client signed
  • All founding documents for the founding of my company sent to the attorney
  • ** Private outcome **
Posted on

My March 2019 Retrospective

Introduction

I’ve started a digital product development agency to earn a living, get better at product design & development and to create space to develop my own products. (Working title: “Happy Path Studios”)

As of this writing I have two clients and both are interested in improving existing offline processes through the development of software. German-speakers like to refer to this as “Digitalisation” and it seems this would be a good focus for an agency.

This month I focused most of my time designing and developing the first version of an app for one of my clients, axova.ch, a solar-panel installation service provider.

March Goals

  • Yearly goals set
    • Failed. Did not take the time for this
  • Intercompanion podcast episodes edited and published
    • Failed. Did not take the time for this.
  • RBR podcast episodes edited and published
    • Failed. Did not take the time for this.
  • Accounting ready
    • 90% ready
  • Ionic course ready
    • Completed!
  • Taking part in the startup academy
    • 90% completed.
  • Finish onset detector
    • Failed. Did not spend any time on this
  • Finished Andy’s app
    • 80% ready

Even though I missed quite a few of my goals, I think it’s more a reflection of my difficulties in predicting what I want to be doing in the month to come. I’m very happy with my focus on the Axova app as well as with the progress I’ve made there. I wouldn’t want to sacrifice that for any gains in the above categories. What I’m taking from this is that I need to be more careful when setting my monthly goals. I’ve overestimated in the past, but this month I also set goals I lost interest in.

Kaizen: Account for your tendency to overestimate what you can get done.
Provoking Question: How might I set goals at the beginning of the month I still support at the end of the month?

Time Distribution

Project Distribution
Axova App 39.9%
Learning 19.9%
German 14.1%
General (Business/Productivity/Alignment) 12.5%
Reading / Summarizing 4.7%
Personal (Administration, Bills, Chores, etc.) 2.7%
Language Learning Logistics / Research 1.8%
My Basel Startup 1.6%
RBR 0.9%
Product Discovery 0.8%
Following My Curiosity 0.6%
Pingcoin 0.5%

Total: 155:56:47 (~35 per week)

Most of the Learning was spent learning Ionic using Maximilian Schwarzmueller’s Ionic course on Udemy (which is great). This is the second developer course I’m taking on Udemy and I find myself surprised again how good the quality is. It seems like there’s stronger competition between course authors on Udemy vs. subscription platforms such as Pluralsight which results in higher quality courses. It’s also worth noting that you can find some courses on Pluralsight or on Oreilly’s learning platform that are also avaialble on Udemy. You’re just missing out on the super valuable reviews on Udemy.

I also spent some hours figuring out how to best learn German (Language Learning Logistics / Research) and then 14% of my time (1 hour every morning) learning German. I’m not sure if my approach is worth writing about yet, though.

Updates by indie product

Rapid Breakup Recovery

Spent almost no time on RBR this month, because I wanted to focus on the work for my client. This also means that I still haven’t filled the vacuum left by removing drip. In other words I haven’t had an automatic email sequence for my subscribers in a while.

Key accomplishments

  • None

Revenue

  • Ebooks sales: $38
  • Coaching calls: $0
  • Total March 2019: $38

Pingcoin

Spent almost no time on Pingcoin this month. I fixed one bug that caused the app to crash for users.

Key accomplishments

  • Reached 100 downloads on the Google Play Store.

Revenue

– $0

Total Indie Revenue March

  • $38

What went well

  • Created goals for the month
  • Created a wireframe for the app, got it approved
  • Learnt Ionic
  • Started coding the app

What did not go well?

  • Not following up on my Kaizens
  • Felt a bit less present this month
  • Missed one week of planning / retrospective
  • Came up with the idea to timebox tasks, but never did it
  • Feels like I’m not reading enough
  • Goals w

What should I do differently

  • Make Kaizen review more explicit

Kaizen

  • Make my reviews of Kaizen more explicit
  • Account for your tendency to overestimate what you can get done.

Provoking Questions

  • How might I set goals at the beginning of the month I still support at the end of the month?
Posted on

My February 2019 Retrospective

You can find a description of the projects mentioned on my Projects page.

Key achievements

  • (Pingcoin) Met with a Swiss coin dealer to speak about a possible collaboration. To be continued.
  • (Learning) Completed the web developer bootcamp Udemy course
  • (My Basel Agency) Got a verbal go-ahead for my second client for my (still nameless) agency

Other/personal

  • I’ve decided I want to reach native level fluency in German. This will help me in running my business here in Basel, Switzerland. This will be reflected in my goals for 2019.

Monthly goals check-in

  • Writing (5/10)
    • Started writing longer pieces in my daily journal
    • No other writing
  • Financial independence (8/10)
    • Found two clients that have agreed to first project together for my Basel Agency
  • Full of love (7/10)
    • Did okay. Daily meditation, gratitude journaling, EFT
  • Seize every day (5/10)
    • No particular achievements here
  • Reading (6/10)
    • Finished the Startup Owner’s Manual
    • Finished Emotional Design
    • Started The Overwhelmed Brain
  • Explore my subconscious and integrate my shadow (7/10)
    • Daily journaling and shadow ritual
  • I am strong (1/10)
    • I broke my routine here after getting sick. Haven’t been to the gym since Feb 7.
  • Travel (N/A)

Time spent

Total: 167:55 hrs

The plurality of my time was spent on Pingcoin, which had been more or less my plan. I’m working on an onset annotator in javascript, but it’s taking me a bit longer than expected.

A considerable amount was spent on the Following my Curiosity category. This is mainly due to the 18 hours I clocked working on the antique map with 3D relief. This was not planned, but I felt such strong curiosity and motivation that I felt I had to work on this. I’ve been trying to make it a policy to trust my subconscious and let it pursue anything that gives me energy. Next step? No idea. I’m really pleased with the end result though.

Revenue

Rapid Breakup Recovery

Ebook sales: $38
Coaching calls: $50
Total: $88
I removed Drip and thereby my 7-day email course. This has impacted my sales as I haven’t taken the time to replace it with anything else yet.

Grand total: $88

Overall

What went well

  • Clocked a lot of hours
  • Finished the web dev course
  • Got my second client

What did not go well

  • I have still not edited the RBR podcast episode and the 4 Intercompanion podcast episodes. I am struggling to balance my desire to focus with keeping existing projects alive. This month I tried to focus on Pingcoin (which you can see by the time that was spent there). However, in order to do so, I neglected other projects. I can’t help but wonder if I’m approaching this correctly
  • I still haven’t laid out my goals for 2019.
  • I’m behind on my personal accounting

What can I do differently

  • Do my accounting at the beginning of the month

 

Posted on

Digitally rendered 3D elevation + 1798 political map of Switzerland

I came across the maps of Scott Reinhard on Twitter and I fell down the rabbit hole of the art of combining old maps with modern 3D elevation data. This is what I was able to create playing around with QGis, Blender 3D and Photoshop:

Inspired by the work of Scott Reinhard.

Thanks to Daniel P. Huffman for the tutorial that got me started, and to Andrew Tyrrell for his hint towards georeferencing.

Original map

Elevation data from Copernicus Land Monitoring Service.

Made with QGis, Blender3D and Photoshop.