a8b.io

Ameer Ayoub
Thoughts on play, life, software, and socks.

As an individual creating something, it's very difficult to trick yourself into wanting something to exist for any substantial period of time.

I think, in a way that people writing more raw and unfiltered is a natural evolution from generative AI. As people start asking AI more things and relying less on reading things from search results themselves, raw ideas will become more valuable. You needn't be as polished in presentation as long as the content is there, as it's being rewritten by a machine anyway. Similarly my own notes are becoming less structured and more about getting things down, as AI can answer questions as long as the data is there. I don't this will displace traditional blogging but is something that will become valuable on top of it.

Today I feel defeated. For a long time I've tied giving up, or the actual act of defeat in my case, with the sense of defeat. But I definitely feel defeated. And that's okay. I am accepting that over the last two and a half years I've failed to create a sustainable future down the path I wanted. There have been a lot of good things to come out of it. A lot of self growth, a sense of autonomy and taking control of my life. Yes, I've learned things technically as well as about operating a business. But I've also made real friends. I perform regularly on stage in front of people, am intrinsically motivated to go to the gym, and have gotten to a place with work where I feel like I'm at play. These are amazing things that I feel really good about for myself. It does not discredit them to feel defeated. To accept that right now in me is the feeling of defeat is not the same as to accept defeat. It's accepting the reality of my emotional state, and once that is accepted I can move on from a place of truth rather than resistance or fear.

It just occured to me today that the sunk cost fallacy applies to finding solutions to problems. The more you invest in a particular route the more emotional you get about making that particular way work.

I spent hours yesterday trying to fix an issue with routing on next.js with custom hosts. In the end I was so invested in trying to make it work through cloud front that I only investigated that path. Maybe there's something there about wanting to validate my previous decisions or intuition as correct. And to be fair there definitely is a way to make it work down that path. But as I was on a walk just now, and spending about the first 20 minutes feeling upset and frustrated at how things are going and looping over those feelings, I just stopped in the middle of the walk and pulled out my phone. I was going to solve it. So with that in mind, thinking how do I solve this, not how do I make this work. I went down a completely different path and found a solution in like 2 minutes. I'm not discounting the importance of mental space in problem solving. That solution may have been brewing subconsciously. But I was surprised how quickly I found it when I realized what I was clinging to.

It's funny that when I tell myself I'm going to solve this I immediately widen my options. Which tells me when I'm sitting on my computer, worried about making something work that I'm more interested in those emotions of frustration, and proving/disproving something that is at the root of that frustration, than actually trying to solve the problem. Interestingly when I have a deadline I tend to force myself into the state of letting go of potential solution paths quite readily.

What's the best thing to do about all this? Probably not enforce artificial deadlines all over the place, though I do that sometimes. But that thing I've been working on lately to notice my emotions as they're happening. If I notice the frustration I can feel it and let it be and move on instead of becoming stuck on proving something. Once I've let go of it, I can come back and find a solution.

Another thing that occurs to me is to investigate multiple possible solutions early on rather than diving into just one. That's kind of hard because 90% of the time the solution lies perfectly fine down that first path, and that kind of feels like I'm putting a crutch in place of my ability to let go when I need to.

A note to myself: Write about over engineering when those thoughts are fully formed 💭

There's a lot of advice out there on how to build software startups and I find that a lot of it doesn't apply to me. Simply because I am optimizing to be happy and fulfilled. That means I am not necessarily building the best thing I could build in terms of monetary outcome. The act of building software to me at the moment is a creative art. I find myself influenced heavily by @naval, Derek Sivers, and Rick Rubin e.g. in his book The Creative Act. The idea of software being art created for its own purpose, through me rather than by me, is extremely appealing and relevant to me.

I have tried other ways of being. I've started elsewhere. My first project was me searching for an arbitrage opportunity. Finding one, I didn't necessarily like how spammy it felt (this is because it didn't really help anyone), and I wasn't sure I had the will or interest to move it forward because it wasn't worth the headache, and moving on. Then I worked on another thing that was an arbitrage based business, and while I enjoyed some of the software bits I wasn't into the company as a whole. I had issues converting users, and when I realized the "easy arbitrage opportunity", wasn't as labeled on the tin, I got disheartened. I was having trouble converting trial users to paid subscribers. So when it faced issues with the credit card processor I actually just shut it down. There were a few other things, and most recently a Shopify plugin that I did actually really enjoy building, and, though not there yet does somewhat solve a real problem albeit not my problem. I haven't given that one up yet, it's just on hold while I work on this. But when I compare working on Jopro vs. Hypersonal (the Shopify plugin) the difference is night and day.

It's easy to look at all these projects and say that I quit too early. After all that is the biggest mistake you hear everyone saying when it comes to startups. But I quit my job to find something I enjoyed. And if I didn't enjoy what I was doing, and had to force myself to do it, why continue? I wasn't doing these projects for fame, glory, or large payouts. I wasn't even doing it for "freedom", though I've grown to appreciate it, and now prioritize it. I was doing it because I wanted to find more fulfillment. And if I didn't find it here, why not go back to a traditional job? There was a lot I liked and missed about it. Interestingly the thing pulling me back to optimizing for money to some degree, despite me consciously not playing that game or optimizing for it, was the fear of failing, and maybe more specifically and honestly the fear of being dumb. Because of that I constantly self sabotaged to move towards projects that were actually wrong for me.

I looked back at the thing I enjoyed the most in the last few years, which was prototyping, creating, and bringing to market a physical product that solved a real problem I had. I made it just because that thing annoyed me and I thought it annoyed other people too. It brought me great joy to bring it to the market place, and I enjoyed all the little bits of engineering, learning so many new things, and making a good solution that I liked and thought would bring others joy. I was proud of it, maybe for the wrong reasons, but I did genuinely enjoy it. So I decided to do something similar now, which is where Jopro comes from. I write a lot, and I believe strongly in the power of some of these reflective protocols I engage in.

With building Jopro I find it easy to get into flow now. I don't have to use a lot of external tools like I did when working on Hypersonal. I had weekly and daily to do lists, I leveraged flow club, boss as a service, co-working communities (that I still participate in) and mentors to help me move forward. I celebrated putting in effort to motivate myself to move forward. I split my personality into executor/programmer Ameer and planner/manager Ameer. I don't think these things are bad, mind you. They're actually really effective for me. And I don't necessarily dislike being in that state. But it does not feel as playful or joyful or effortless. It's not as sustainable, and I don't get nearly as much done. What I do now feels different. Everything comes bursting out of me, instead of being forced out. I work on this just because I think it's a really cool thing that I want to exist, and I think it will genuinely help people. And I use it all the time. And I care deeply about it. I care about the way the layout flows as you scale the browser to half screen. I care about the saving indicators and how they appear, and if they're too noisy, and the little widgets on the settings page that need custom APIs to work like checking for custom URL availability. I care about all the mundane things that I usually don't particularly. I'm not saying I will always care about every little detail. Or that I will never feel bad and need some motivational help. But I really enjoy the mindset I find myself in at the moment, the joy I get from creating, and the sense of sustainable enthusiasm I have for the product.

In short, what works for me is to not focus on monetary outcome or potential when it comes to a project. And I need to stop tricking myself in to that. Rather to focus on solving a real problem that I have that is important to me and to others. Something that I think needs to exist in the world. And approaching the problem as a piece of art. Having an opinion about the thing and expressing it. I know it won't survive contact with users, and that's okay. That is better than not bringing anything from you to the table and trying to get the market to tell you what to do. That is an easy way to build a product you don't care about.

I'm (finally) taking Naval's advice to find work that feels like play. I'm taking his advice that if you wouldn't work on it for 5 years then don't spend 5 minutes on it (paraphrased). I realize now the difference being motivated intrinsically makes. Not only do I enjoy the work so much more, but I am getting so much more done. This whole process just makes sense and seems to be clicking for me now. Shallow work rarely accrues rewards. While something like Jopro may not have as much market potential as Hypersonal, it solves a real problem that both I and others care about, and most importantly I want to keep on working on because I want it to exist.

I'm going to start writing using the Jopro app as the base for my blog. I moved it from a static site generator a few months ago to Hashnode. But I don't see why I wouldn't want to use Jopro for it now. It'll help me dogfood my own product and also I like the idea of being more free in publishing things. I think that would be more helpful for me as an individual.

This came up because I wanted to write a sock review. It's kind of out of left field, but I've been on a path to finding good socks recently because I've been migrating to barefoot style shoes due to a bunion on my right foot. Traditional socks feel a bit restrictive in the toe box and they make socks with wide toe boxes so I've been exploring that space. Anyway, I wasn't sure where to put this review. The new a8b.io on hashnode is more strongly oriented towards tech articles. And the yalpful.net endeavor I've been trying also feels really restrictive. There's something oddly hypocritical about taking such a formal approach to writing about play. Ultimately I just want a place to express myself and record ideas, more so than building a brand in a specific niche. So I think this makes more sense. As I write this I already have an idea for a new feature for Jopro by putting tags on each entry.

Doing this also makes me invested in the idea of allowing custom domains as I would love to make a8b.io point here. I think I would need to write some custom lambdas for cloudfront to make that happen though.

I think this is a big step for me to really feel uninhibited in make my blog now a site where my ideas are published instantaneously. I used to be very picky about vetting my work before showing it to the world. And while that has it's place to producing final pieces, for example if I were to write a book or make a post for another website, it's also stifling and inhibitory as I learn the process.

This is the end of a8b.io.
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