The Weekly Review: Vol VI Issue 9
Hello good people!
This week’s issue starts heavy, but hopefully there’s more good than bad. Let’s keep keeping things real. And, as always, your feedback brings me a lot of joy. Replies welcome!
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Running your own business is hard — and it’s not for everyone
I speak from my own experience. But I’ve also heard this same sentiment from many others. This week, Jonnie Hallman shared that he took a position at Stripe. Why? Because running his own product and business had a major impact on his mental health (and therefore, his physical as well).
Earlier this year, I experienced my first panic attack. It was easily the worst experience of my life. I’d like to think that I’m a mentally strong person, especially after being independent for so long, but this broke me. The perfect storm of uncertainty, pressure, and overwhelming responsibility led me to completely spiral out of control and transformed me into a fragile, easily-triggered version of myself. I found a way through it, but even months later, I’m still recovering.
He’s not alone. Jay Fannelli shared that he’s leaving Cotton Bureau after 10 years. He also mentions Jonnie’s post:
Reading @destroytoday’s post this morning was like looking into a mirror. A long period of professional independence, modest success, and relatively stable mental health finally undone by a meat grinder 2018 and an early 2019 financial torpedo.
Running my own business led to my own battle with anxiety. But I never experienced the kinds of things Jonnie describes above. However, we are no strangers to anxiety in our home. One of our children developed OCD around 10. Another struggled with separation anxiety early on, and, ever since a bad flu this winter, has really struggled with anxiety about being sick.
Worst of all, my wife has struggled with anxiety her entire life. She’s experienced wonderful moments of growth and healing over the last several years, but had a major relapse this spring. Panic attacks, feeling hopeless, never feeling like you can cope with the stresses of life — these are all a part of burnout and not something anyone should have to experience.
It’s important that we keep talking about this kind of thing.
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Items of note
I'm Walking Away From the Product I Spent a Year Building
Derrick Reimer shares the story of his last year. He had left Drip and started working on Level, an alternative to Slack (reminds me a lot of Twist), before choosing to walk away. His desire to build a calmer chat tool is laudable and the story is interesting.
But one point leapt off the (web)page and grabbed my attention. After building an early prototype and sharing with interested users, the results were not what he had hoped:
The response did not live up to my expectations. Only a subset of people who paid booked an onboarding session. Of those who did, some never touched the product. Some who did poke around the product never gave it a real go with their team (and didn’t show much interest in following up with me). A handful did convert. Every conversion funnel leaks, but I was admittedly disheartened. There seemed to be a curious mismatch between the sentiments I gathered early on and the actions people were taking. If people were ravenous for a solution, why weren’t most people even attempting to pilot Level?
He decided that he needed a larger sample size and invited another 1,000 people to try his product. To similar results:
I observed how people were using it for about a week. There was a lot of poking around and, once again, virtually zero evidence of anyone piloting it with their team. I reached out directly to everyone who made it into the product: are you planning to test Level out? What can I do to help? It became clear pretty quickly that the gap between interest and implementation was of canyon-like proportions… Small teams (who have a much easier time making the jump due to their size) didn’t seem that compelled by Level. In follow-up conversations, I discovered that Slack was at most a minor annoyance for them. Suboptimal? Yes. Worth going through the trouble of switching? Probably not.
It turns out that his message resonated with people. But the pain they experienced in their current toolset was not enough to prompt change. This is where the forces behind the jobs-to-be-done framework are so key.
Our work with Conveyor feels similar to what Derrick experienced. We’ve had multiple rounds of user testing and I’ve learned to not trust the exact words people say to you. Their actions speak much more loudly.
Building a successful product is no easy feat.
Benefits of a daily diary and topic journals
Derek Sivers shares his practice of keeping a journal and the kind of stuff he writes about. It’s a good review of things talked about by a lot of people in recent years (this space included).
If the habit is hard for you, this is the key piece of advice from the article:
If you’re feeling you don’t have the time or it’s not interesting enough, remember: You’re doing this for your future self. Future you will want to look back at this time in your life, and find out what you were actually doing, day-to-day, and how you really felt back then. It will help you make better decisions.
Day One’s On This Day feature drove this home for me.
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Quote of the week
When it comes to narrowing down my list and deciding which goals I will pursue, and which ones I will leave for later, I ask myself a couple questions: How much will this goal cost me in terms of margin? Physical, emotional, time, financial, and mental? Is the pursuit of this goal worth the trade-off in that area of margin? Some goals have a disproportionate amount of margin they will consume. Which may cause me to rethink the goal in a smaller scope, or scrap it altogether.
Isaac Smith, “Margin” as Part of Your Decision-Making Process
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The dumb phone I already own
The act of replacing one’s smart phone with a less capable version is a growing trend. As digital decluttering and internet detoxes become more popular, so too is making the more permanent change of having less capability in your pocket at all times. Some people will pull out an old Nokia from their drawer, some will pick up the latest flip phone (they still make these?), and some will try one of few new options available in this category (i.e. the Light phone).
Me? I’ve kicked the idea around a few times. I gave it serious consideration once again when I saw that Isaac Smith made the switch recently. But there was an aspect of my job that required me to be on call for periods of time where a smartphone and some specific apps were needed — this had stopped me from truly considering the idea.
That requirement changed suddenly a couple weeks back and I no longer have to be available after hours. So I once again thought about getting rid of my iPhone and getting something less functional, and therefore less distracting.
My requirements
Truthfully, social media and a lot of the things Cal Newport talks about in Digital Minimalism are not an issue for me. I don’t use Instagram and apps of that sort. I don’t have a Twitter app on my phone. The most common “entertainment” activity I perform on my phone was reading books.
Yet I still feel the need to use my phone less. I still suffer from the “just checks”. It’s just that what I check on is all work related. And, in a house of 6 where screentime is a common point of discussion and focus, I want to lead by example.
So I looked at my phone and thought about all the things I like to do with it. These are activities that are either necessary or something I consider enjoyable and a good use of my time. The only question is when I should take the time to do them.
- write in my journal
- including adding photos
- documenting and reviewing my personal and professional goals
- completing my weekly reviews, which includes those goals and my calendar
- reading books
- logging my habits
- memorizing Scripture
- recording and reviewing my runs
- reading RSS and email newsletters
- taking photos
- looking at our photos
- reviewing maps when on trail runs
- reading my Bible during a church service or when travelling (I use my hard cover Bible at home, but it’s big enough I don’t want to lug it around)
- paying for items when on a run
- transferring funds when out and about
- scanning documents and receipts
- work related items (checking Slack, Basecamp, Help Scout, Intercom, and email)
I’m sure there are some other items I haven’t thought of yet. I considered how to approach all of these if I was to move to a dumb phone. I’d probably want to get a Kindle. Some activities I could switch to doing on my laptop (but with less frequency). Some might be dropped completely (reading a digital Bible, paying for items with Apple Pay). And the purpose of this exercise was to do the work related items during my workday from my computer.
But when discussing this with my wife, she had a really great suggestion:
Why not turn the phone you already have into a dumb phone?
Great idea. So I did just that.
I removed all apps that get me picking up the phone to “check”. Slack, Basecamp, email, RSS, and Strava. I reviewed the Notifications panel in Settings — things were pretty clean already, but I removed a few more. I also disabled vibrations and reduced the number of apps that could post items on the Lock screen.
I’m looking forward to seeing how this plays out. Early returns are looking good — my phone has not been in my hand much the past week.
One other benefit of the dumb phone is not having to pay a ridiculous price for your data plan. I get a bit frustrated that we have very few options here in Canada and they’re all spendy (we pay around $200 CAD/month for 3 phones and data). So I’m still considering the dumb phone as a possibility at some point.
But for now, I appreciate the supercomputer in my pocket that lets me do most of the items I listed above. But with far less distraction now.