(from the latest issue of the Indie Hackers newsletter)
Most founders have tons of to-do list items each day:
Want to share something with over 100,000 indie hackers? Submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter. —Channing
I've recently made the leap from employee to startup founder, and of all the things I thought that I'd find difficult, organizing my day wasn't one of them. I've tried the usual advice: Complete the hardest task first, use the Pomodoro method, set deadlines, etc., but despite this, I'm still having a hard time.
I'm not really sure what the problem is. Does anyone have any advice?
Miguel Lorenzo says that difficulty with organizing happens sometimes, depending on your mental and physical state at the moment:
The thing that has worked for me is building routine and structure around my duties:
Lastly, I've had ups and downs, and periods where I could not even open my laptop. Just listen to your body and mind, and respond to them accordingly.
I've been following this for many years now to manage my full-time job and side projects, and it has been working so far. Hope my experience can inspire you!
Donald Ng uses a measured approach:
First of all, congratulations on taking the leap of faith into the world of the unknown!
It is not just about doing the hardest thing first. Most of the time, all you need to think about is the thing that you absolutely need to get done that day. Prioritize. Most things can wait. Most things don't matter.
As founders, we have to identify which task is the most impactful, and which takes the least effort. Organization is about striking the balance between these two.
Every morning, before I start my day, I jot down one thing that I must do that day, according to the impact and effort of each task. I find that jotting them down makes it easier for me to keep track of my progress. As someone with ADHD, I have many things going on in my head at any given moment, and this is how I organize them.
Andrew Kamphey has two suggestions:
1\. Join an accountability group: I'm in two, and that works for me. As a founder, most days I am not accountable to anyone, including myself. I use those days to just explore and do whatever I want. Instead of a daily to-do list, I keep a general list of things that I want to do, ideas I have, etc. That moves from paper to dry erase board to Google Docs, depending on my mood.
But then, I have days where I am extremely accountable to a completely voluntary group of people with whom I have mutual respect and camaraderie. One group, High Signal, is run on Telegram. The other group is in person. If you can't find a group, create one. I used to host Indie Hackers Meetups in Bali at local co-working spaces. At 9 AM, everyone would introduce themselves and share what they were working on, and at 4 PM, they would demo what they had made.
This kind of accountability has been tremendously helpful. I schedule my week and my plans around that one meetup day.
2\. Create spaces that help you work your best: This is probably the least talked about, but is actually the most important thing. Creating a productive physical space can help you get things done! Make sure you are optimizing your space to give yourself the best chance to work efficiently.
Tying cost to revenue helps some people. Say you travel 20-30 minutes to a cafe, restaurant, or library. Charge yourself the cost of the gas, plus your meal or coffee, and make sure that you complete enough "billable" (to yourself) hours to make up that cost.
Create different spaces within your home that are optimized to help you complete different tasks. Blast real cafe sounds from the speakers (Check out Coffeehouse for these sounds). Use binaural music in your earbuds. Your audio adds to your physical space.
Davide Muzzarelli shares his setup:
What are your tips for organizing your days? Let's chat below!
Discuss this story.
from the Volv newsletter by Priyanka Vazirani
🛍 Here's how TikTok has changed the way people shop online.
🍺 Move over, work from home. Bars are now offering work from pub.
📱 BeReal has become one of the most downloaded social media apps, but people aren't using it.
🤩 Virtual influencers have very real influence.
🇸🇻 Busting myths about El Salvador's Bitcoin experiment.
Check out Volv for more 9-second news digests.
Founders have two major hurdles when it comes to launching successfully:
But here's a pro tip: Launching something quick and easy can help you overcome both of these hurdles. It diversifies your revenue streams, and allows you to knock out that easy product to get you into the habit of shipping. Read on for more!
Indie Hackers caught up with founder Ayush Chaturvedi, who is working on launching 25 products in 25 weeks. One such product is the Indie Masterminds group. Here's his advice on launching quickly:
Most of [my products] are infoproducts or curation-based, because I have to keep the scope very narrow and actually ship the product in a week. A SaaS would take at least a month, even if I built it with no-code.
Remember that not every product needs to be a SaaS. There are other options, and they exist for a reason!
Ayush always pre-launches to his Twitter following (~4.5K) with nothing more than a landing page. This is how he validates and gets pre-sales:
When I launch, I give away the first seats for free by asking people to reply to my tweet with an emoji to get the link to the product. Then, I DM them the link using a Twitter scheduler. This brings in hundreds of replies, which causes the algorithm to push the launch tweet to more people.
I used to think that I needed a huge Twitter audience or a large email list before I could start selling my products. But waiting too long before promoting your products can train your audience to expect free stuff, so they'll never actually buy from you in the end. If your goal is to eventually monetize, you should start testing products from the beginning.
Want to turn a profit in a week? Here's how Ayush does it:
I launch between Tuesday and Thursday because that's when Twitter has the most traffic. I plan the product, make a table of contents, decide on the bonuses that people will get, and set the product up on Gumroad with the pricing details and the copy. I schedule the launch tweet to go out later in the day.
As the product gets initial sales, I increase the price of the product. This helps me to decide on pricing, which I set after 2-3 updates. The next day, I start working on the product. Assuming I have some validation, I start creating it. By the weekend, I have a fair idea of what the product will look like in its final form.
I use Monday and Tuesday to do the final edits, and add more sections or bonuses that I may have missed. I also promote the product in my newsletter, and talk about it on Twitter throughout the week.
Finally, by Tuesday or Wednesday, I send a launch email to everyone who bought the product, thank them, and officially release it on Gumroad.
There are a million ways to grow a product. Check out Growth Bites for more ways to do it!
Are you having trouble coming up with ideas? I wrote about some ways to do this. Also, check out Courtland Allen's post on this, which is the most popular Indie Hackers post to date!
What's your experience with shipping quickly? Share in the comments!
Discuss this story.
by Josh Spector
I'm sharing growth tips for creative founders! Here's this week's:
Clarity is king.
If people can’t immediately understand what you create, who it’s for, and how it can help them, your creations will fail.
Confusion is your biggest enemy.
Subscribe to Josh's For The Interested newsletter or I Want To Know podcast for more.
by Bruno Hiis
Hi, indie hackers! I'm Bruno Hiis, founder of Featurebase, a user feedback tool. A few days ago, we reached 25 active subscriptions and $765 MRR! Here's how.
We're starting to grow faster and more organically, but I still feel that we haven't landed on a marketing strategy that is totally the right fit for us.
We are on track to hit our end-of-the-year goal of $1K MRR. We removed our free plan because many large companies (20+ employees) were using it, and getting good value from it, without paying anything. Most people who use your free plan never plan to upgrade.
It's becoming clearer to me that you are playing the game in difficult mode if you aren't actively building an audience comprised of your target market. So, we're going to double down on content marketing next, and focus on building our audience!
Discuss this story.
I post the tweets indie hackers share the most. Here's today's pick:
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Also, you can submit a section for us to include in a future newsletter.
Special thanks to Jay Avery for editing this issue, to Gabriella Federico for the illustrations, and to Pavati Dasani, Priyanka Vazirani, James Fleischmann, Josh Spector, and Bruno Hiis for contributing posts. —Channing
The point I relate to the most is creating a routine and doing my best to stick to it. More often that not, I find my mind wandering off to the pending list of tasks which are equally important, but I'm not supposed to do today. In these cases sticking to a routine helps.
Obviously this presumes I need to be making good routines in the first place. That is why I set time aside every night to plan my next day.
I do the same thing. This is particularly difficult when one has multiple projects. It can be a time-sink to get to work because they all feel equally important and urgent.
Inspiring! I am not a founder myself, but aiming there! Thanks for sharing!
thanks for reading, Ana!