How’s it going?
I’m back from an un-announced 2 month break. 😅 Also, happy new year and hope its been good so far for you.
A re-introduction – Hackletter is where I share my journey about building side projects, the lessons I learn and success I have. If this is no longer relevant to you, you can unsubscribe. We can still be friends, I promise!
Other than falling sick in the beginning of this year, it was good so far.
I started writing/journaling on physical notebooks and I’ve been consistent with it till now. I’m doing a mix of bullet journaling and morning pages on the paper notebook. I can talk more about it if you are interested.
I’ve been dwelling into Stoicism a lot lately. I’m reading a page of The Daily Stoic everyday and going though the works of Ryan Holiday. The teaching are helpful for everyone in every phase of their life.
These are my thoughts on how it can be applied to building side projects.
"The chief task in life is simply this: to identify and separate matters so that I can say clearly to myself which are externals not under my control and which have to do with the choices I actually control." - Epictetus
When building a side project, it’s easy to focus on things that you can’t control—like the opinions of others or the success or failure of the project. While it is important to validate the idea, we can’t control the reach your tweets get, how it performs on ProductHunt, etc.
But things like our attitude, our effort, and our response to the results are in our hands
"Never let the future disturb you. You will meet it, if you have to, with the same weapons of reason which today arm you against the present." - Marcus Aurelius
Stoicism encourages us to be mindful and to stay in the present moment. When building a side project, it’s important to stay focused on the task at hand and not get overwhelmed by the future.
I find things like journaling and writing down ideas and plans at a consistent place help me deal with anxiety caused by overwhelm. I’m doing more of it these days.
As I keep reading and relate with more things, I’ll collect them and write a part 2 for this post.
That’s all I have for now.
See you next Tuesday.