Day 2/62
a couple things that happened yesterday towards this dry december, dry january, build time pathway. need a better name for this, btw. maybe, “shut up and build”
Shut up and Build
i put it out there in the world, and as the world does when you’re asking something of it, or telling something to it authentically, it looks back at you. sometimes, it notices you through language. yesterday it did through a few friends on X. that was good.
before just jumping in and doing something, i spent a good 30-45 minutes with chatGPT sort of exploring what to build. could be a new thing, might be a current thing. i think it’s a current thing, but this chatting (yapping as they say) helps me because i tend to just start things without overthinking. i like this about myself. but here, it’s good to consider What and How and then go off and start building. otherwise, it really is, work a little bit (hours!!) on this and then get bored/stuck and then start on something else.
i sorta did that yesterday: “Distraction is my problem. what if i built a MacOS app or a chrome extension that’s the most minimalist takeover of your workstation and makes you 10x engineer!” so I started on that. got the first iteration back in Replit, loaded it (unpacked, whattup), and was like, “nahhhh, waste of time.”
i’ve realized with these agents that if you have an idea and you think it’s something, it can actually be quite helpful to write the prompt, wring it out a few times, and then give up on it and move on. just to hit that dopamine and realize that’s all it was. next.
and, it led me towards another idea in this “build something to improve my workflow for working on the big things i want to build” path. and this comes from a frustration with how Analytics tools work. they’re very fluffy and confusing to me. what i expect to see is not what i see. e.g., I expect to log in and see, “these 5 links were clicked. 2 of them i’m 99% confident were human clicks.”
or, context around Views and Impressions. all these metrics make you feel good when they’re “number go up!” but when they’re stagnant or absent, it’s like, “what do these even mean and how do i put any weight on them?”
so, to help me understand what my Views, Impressions, Clicks are like on foundationessays.com, i’m going to keep going down this Analytics path today and work on trying to build this lightweight, easy to read, version of an Analytics tool, that’s specifically for solo builders, today.
but first, conventional wisdom says I should validate whether or not anyone would want this and pay for it.
so, that I will work on today as well.
—
- on x/twitter: scrolled lots still. it’s hard to not be on there. there’s inspiration and it’s a way to think too
- on elevating aesthetics: nothing figured out here on the physical space front. i have a totem in mind, though. and i did find the music that words for me: Hiroshi Yoshimura who just makes very good sounds
- on halfway working: Sabaath was very good relaxing time. did most of my work (mostly thinking like i mentioned above) in the afternoon while the kids were napping. still worked while the kids were around and up, but that didn’t necessarily strike me as halfway on both
- on exercise: no exercise yesterday