New goals for Q3 (weekly post)

Starting of Q3 I want to set a new goal for myself. I have always struggled with completing projects and writing consistently. To help me build this habit I have set out 2 goals:

1. Finish 1 Idea per week

Ideas are always constant, the hard part is how do you know what is a good idea and what is bad one. And the next thing is what ideas should you pursue and what ideas should you let go. Sometimes even good ideas are not always the right time for you to pursue it. The best way to answer both questions above is to ACT and FEEDBACK.

ACT

To gauge how interested you are to work on the problem, and how interesting the problem is. Exploring the problem. BUT, important to note, don’t get to deep in the rabbit hole. Set out limitations for yourself. One of them is time (1 week to ship).

FEEDBACK

This could be the slap in the face that you need. Or the external motivation and validation that you need. Important that you share.

What is the Idea: a side project idea OR feature of an existing product

Finish definition: Launch and share to public

2. Write Consistently

I have sort of lost touch of this habit. It was really useful for me in the early part of the year to clear my thoughts as sort of a meditation. The next step maybe is for me to learn good writing structure and write good stories. The first step is to untangle the mess of the mind, the next step is to piece the puzzle (or words) in to a beautiful art work, as the best to my abilities.

• Personal Journal Daily
• Topical every other day
• Post and Share weekly
• Write 200 words daily

Writing Habit

The benefits for me to form a good writing habit:

1. Practice mindfulness by writing
   You have to think of something to write, when you start writing but can think of something. Most of these thoughts are self-reflections. You have to dig a little beneath the surface to uncover suppress feelings, anxious thoughts. It feels liberating when you acknowledged these feelings and let it go by writing about it.
2. Practice clear thoughts by writing
   The thoughts in your head are a beautiful mess of unstructured neurons firing at each other. When you write you form a structure to your thinking that rewires the neurons. Practice this enough and unconsciously you will think differently about how you think.
3. Practice clear writing by writing
   We live by communicating with each other, there is no other way around it. Written form of communication is a powerful leverage. Of course there is also miss-communication. Writing has limited bandwidth to show emotions, so you need to be able to write clear and concise to convey your thoughts. Your thoughts are unique they deserve good writing.

Happy Birthday Alissa

Today is Alissa’s birthday. I’m always afraid that I not doing my best to set a good example and teach her. A parent can do two things: (1) Set a high standard of examples as a role model that you want your child to become. (2) To listen deeply, understand and be there when they need it most.

The first one is simple but difficult to execute.
You know what you have to do. basic hygiene for them to keep clean one day. Basic discipline, for them to know what discipline looks like one day. Open Communication to belong, understand and grow in the social world. It’s hard to keep all of this up. But you have to know it’s not for you but for them and your are not perfect so all you can do is your best.

The second on looks simple but it is more complex, but easy to execute.
You have to listen to them, when you are working. You have to be patient when they call you and you give attention. But when you call them, they don’t hear a thing. You have to know when they feel bad, but they don’t know what or how to process those feelings. You have to always give, knowing that the reward is already given to you. You have to let go at some time, knowing that you have done your best (at that given moment). It’s easy to do, but the hard thing is to realize and be aware.

By the Morning Brightness

A Beginners Mind

A first principle is to be optimistic.

I have felt depressed in my life and gone through toughs times, thinking there is no way out. At that moment I didn’t know what to do, how I was supposed to feel and think.

I was lacking an understanding of this first principle to be optimistic.

When the dark times come, even when you are in the middle of despair. You must remember to be optimistic that the light will come. The morning brightness will reliably come after the dark night.

And remember all of the other times that you were in despair and it turned out the future is better for you than the past.

References:
https://quran.com/93
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OqXaCx_tNmg

Distribution and marketing

Distribution, PR, marketing is an area I have little experience, interest, and skill.
The first part to tackle is Interest, you need to overcome this to start increasing experience and then skill.

Why do I have little “Interest”?
I think it’s a connotation that I have in my mind for tricking other people to think you want them to think. I need to change this because it’s not about that.
I should think marketing as expressing and communicating an idea to find some other people that have the same interests or common thinking.

Next is “Experience”. This is pretty simple, all you need to do is start and practice. There is no complicated science or logical fallacy about it. Just start and do the practice when you feel like it and when you don’t feel like it.

Last of all is “Skill”. This is a combination of talent, interest, and experience. I probably will not be the best at marketing, but I can be better than I am now (which is zero skill). To be better don’t forget a beginner’s mindset, there is always something more to learn from a skill.

2019 favourites

I’m ending the year on a road trip to east java, going to Bromo mountain and Dad’s home town of Kediri.

Before the dawn of new year 2020 here are some of my favourite things in 2019:

Books
Atomic Habits by James Clear
Make book by Peter Levels

Podcasts
Peter Attia – new podcast discovery for this year, loved the with Dan Harris, Jason Fried, Matthew Walker dan also racing topics.
Derek Shivers – his voice is so soothing, and I like his unconventional point of view
Tim Ferris – talks with kevin rose random show, Neil Gaiman and Jim Collins.
Kevin Rose – Ryan Holiday.
How I built this – Headspace.
Joe Rogan – John Carmack really geeking out and Naval.
Indie Hackers – key values, Tyler Tringas, Jason Fried.
Rework – Matt Mullenweg.
Aresecast extra.
Nouman Ali Khan – essentials of islam.
Go Figure – Gojek topics.
personal collection of podcast episodes I favorited this year.

News letters / blogs / Articles
Ryan Holiday – daily dad

I will add some in a couple of days. I’m writing this in a rest area, this post is not finished, I want to publish it before the new year. 🙂

Scratching an itch with no-code

Trying to create a no-code project, “expense tracker.” 
The goal is to go from concept to working prototype the fastest.

So, the steps for me to create an app with no-code tools:

• Concept: picking what kind of app I wanted to create
• Design: quick mockup/wireframe of what the app looks like and what it should do
• Build: the part where you build the app

Concept

Some background on why “expense tracker”:
I wanted to create something quick and simple but useful for me. I’ve been dabbling with personal finance for a while now, but because of multiple reasons, nothing sticks. 
Stuff I’ve tried
App Based: Money Lover, Wallet, Toshl, a game-based app
Google Sheet
Chat Based: Telegram chat.

The most consistent way for me so far is to use google sheets and update monthly expenses there. But daily cash expenses are still missing, and I don’t know what I’m spending my money daily. One app that helps track my debit card transactions is tillerhq.com

The hypothesis is that most tools have a significant barrier to input. (need to download an app, need to signup, need to fill in a bunch of forms) For this app, we only need a couple of clicks then done. No (variable) reward for input, creating a habit is hard; one thing that could help this action to be more rewarding is to add gamification or variable reward when doing an action.

Design

I know I’m not much of a designer, but that’s partly the point. You don’t need to have the best design. In the beginning you just need a starting point. 
The first screen, input expense amount screen. Should be simple, the fewer clicks/taps a user can input expense the better. 
The second screen, info that the expense amount has is saved, add a reward for the effort to open the app and add an expense, then give incentive if they want to add category or note to the expense. 
The third screen is a bonus screen to show variable reward with total points the user has and also a quote that changes everytime. From this screen, the user can click a link to add a new expense or see all expenses they have made.
The fourth page shows the list of expenses for the user.

Build

The build phase is usually the part where you decide what development platform you want to build the app/webapp/iOS/Android and using what framework Ralis, Python? For this project, we are going to choose what No-code tool we want to build our app. (Some links to no code tools: https://www.makerpad.co/marketplace). I will be using bubble.is

Challenges of no-code
Some times with code, you feel like creating something with coding skills, even though it is a simple something, it is more rewarding to see the simple something go to live (because the origin was just text). 
With no-code, something working is a given. The output you expect is more than just works, but it should work as expected.

V0.1

http://finna.bubbleapps.io

Final Thoughts

Building something habit-forming is hard but challenging. You also need to remember that it requires constant iteration.