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22 Comments

The unreasonable effectiveness of just showing up everyday

  1. 12

    Paul Graham put it nicely in his latest essay 👉 http://paulgraham.com/hwh.html

    "Many problems have a hard core at the center, surrounded by easier stuff at the edges. Working hard means aiming toward the center to the extent you can. Some days you may not be able to; some days you'll only be able to work on the easier, peripheral stuff. But you should always be aiming as close to the center as you can without stalling."

    Similar message here.

    1. 4

      In the same vein: "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who had practiced one kick 10,000 times." Bruce Lee

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        Ahh I forgot about that quote. I remember when I first came across it years ago during a kickboxing class 😁

      2. 2

        And also, "hard work beats talent when talent doesn't work hard!"

        Can you tell I love these cheesy self help / motivational quotes and sayings haha

        1. 2

          ahah I love them too!

  2. 8

    This is exactly how I approached my very first commercial project, an iOS game.

    I worked on it over a period of 2 years. A half an hour a day or a couple hours. Adding a graphic, timing music, writing logic for the physics engine, fixing a graphic engine bug, etc.

    It’s challenging to keep working on a project for that long in such short periods, but indeed, as @kodalia mentions, it can yield something quite special.

    It’s this project that got me started on my indie hacker journey, so super happy I kept going and managed to finish and launch it.

    It’s a free iOS game now, no ads, no freemium, something really free.

    🌍☄️ https://eveofimpact.com/

  3. 7

    I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.

    William Faulkner

  4. 5

    “Most people overestimate what they can achieve in the short term and underestimate what they can achieve in the long term.”

    It's a famous quote I agree with. Consistency and showing every day matters, and it compounds.

    Be consistent.

  5. 3

    This is exactly what I need to read. Started my Scrum App 6 month ago, haven't worked on it for the last 3 weeks. Think I have to go back to work now

  6. 3

    I'd respectfully disagree with the idea that showing up every day is enough.

    It's maybe half the battle.

    If you don't have a plan, you will end up coding random stuff that doesn't deliver value.

    My process is:

    • Set quarterly goals: What would be a good quarter?
    • Set weekly goals that align with my quarterly goals
    • Each week and month, review progress + check I'm on track with the above
    • Show up every day ;)

    Sure, sometimes I get distracted, but this keeps my efforts focused and ensures I build things that will deliver real value.

    1. 2

      I think the point here is to have a system instead of goals. You might be distracted one or two days, but you'll fall back into the track after a while. It's like going to gym, you keep showing up everyday, some days you'll workout for just 10 mins, some days you'll maybe just chat with a colleague, but over a period of time, there's a good chance you'll actually workout and be in a better shape. Compare that to setting a goal of losing X kgs within y time, you miss a single day or a week or spend some days working out for just 10 mins, the psychological stress of failing to meet goals would dissuade the person from continuing to go to gym altogether !!

    2. 1

      Agreed that you need habits + goals. I think of them as a spectrum ranging from small, daily habits to long-term goals. Personally, I focus on habits and quarterly goals, but I think with a bit of experimenting everyone can find what balance works from them when it comes to changing their behavior and working towards a desired outcome.

  7. 2

    id like to say that the article is well written, positive, inspiring, and most of all, appreciated,, as we all need a little bit more positive vibes in our days!

    On a completely seperate note, i wanted to give you some constructivetive critisism that i would hope someone would bring to my attention if I were in your shoes (you do wear nike's correct? 😉 Jk)

    So while I am pretty certain I have your visual studio extension for typesense, (at least I assume it's your product, it has the same name none the less) which means I am at minimum, SOMEWHAT Familiar with it-hearing the name struck one of those tones when you think to yourself... "Hmm I KNOW that name, but from where?... ".

    While that's all good and dandy, actually GREAT imo as far as branding go, after reading your landing page, and immediately after, your about page, I am honestly pretty clueless to what exactly typesense even does.

    Had I known from the get go where I knew the name from, I would have been fairly certain that typesense is basically, in essence, fairly similar to intellisense and other similar extensions to help programmers with predictive help when it comes to coding/making mistakes coding.

    After the first half of your landing/I believe it was your home page, whatever the link on this blog post led me to, I became certain that it was actually a web page that would be no different from Google, except it has added features, like being able to tweak things such as telling it what words are synonyms and such. (which honestly would be a Great idea for Google, but unfortunately they seem to have been way past their stage of any kind of growth, now the company just has to focus on staying afloat in corporate America lol).

    So yes, I'll just sum it up that I truly think you may want to reconsider how your presenting your product to people, as I truly believe that I can not be the only one that that page has left scratching their heads, which would mean that if you did a little bit of editing or even paid a profesional copywriter, however you prefer, that you would almost definitely see an IMMEDIATE improved, smaller bounce rate for sure.

    And for the heck of it I'd sure like others opinions on this as well. Even though to be honest, unless it's one's first time looking at it, and they do not use your product or know anything about it, then the opinions in this group may be, well I'd bet almost guaranteed to be slightly biased, just because.

    Otherwise though I think things look appealing and all, and I'm going to go do a little more digging around your site to try and find out a little more. I hope you take this information lightly and know that I'm just trying to be helpful! And honestly, imo if my landing page is the only thing being critiqued, while I'd Def tweak it, I'd be pretty darn happy! Especially as it's the easiest to change then anything in the actual product! Too-du-loo now! 😁

  8. 1

    I am going to put this same theory to test with a year of daily LinkedIn video posts 😁
    @csallen Its like the universe is speaking to me here to go for it!

  9. 1

    Loved the authenticity in your post. Mentioning the struggles is very important because I believe doubts is the biggest enemy when building a product. Great story, here's to another 6 years!

  10. 1

    so good - “ I shall write some code everyday before or after work.”

  11. 1

    Love the post, love the message.

    But I feel the headline is misleading.

    The success of typesense is not just about showing up everyday, it's about what he said later in the post -

    Picking the right market and the right solution.

    I think that is a bigger challenge.

    Of course, everyone realizes that to succeed in anything in life we need to show up everyday.

    The real differentiator of success from failure is the market and the idea we choose to work on.

    If we work on the wronf thing everyday for 10 years, we are not going to see much success.

    Just my 2 cents

    Peace

  12. 1

    I love this! And it's so true! People waayyy undervalue consistency, looking for "growth hacks" instead that can balloon them to success. In my career so far, consistency has been one of the main factors of my success. Showing up, doing good work, being kind, being flexible.

  13. 1

    A masterpiece @csallen Thanks for sharing this brutally inspiring story.

  14. 1

    This was basically how my last business survived so long. We never had "made it" successes but we did pretty well and had a nice lifestyle for 8 years. We just kept showing up, everyday and progressing the business just a bit. We used to call it "sticking aroundness" we survived long enough and placed enough small bets for the business that stuff would "come up" and we'd find ourselves on the Amazon home page for 6 months or on TechCrunch, or on BBC News. Just sticking around has value.

    It's not glamorous but it does work.

  15. 1

    Hi Allen,
    Really it helps to boost our mind. how one can achieve his goal by little effort but regular.

  16. 1

    I do think there's something to be said for indie hackers attempting the bigger projects, things that don't get easier because you have 10 or 100 developers.

    Many focus on the things that can be done in a few weeks, but the accumulation of advantages you get from working on something for months and years without fear of running out of investor capital can make something quite unique.

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