[rdrd]

As a solo/indie dev who's currently early in building a product, I've been keeping a journal of "ideas" for content in a txt file in the codebase as I hate context switching and want to build this up before I get to it.

Here's what I've done:

- At the top of the file I've listed my audience, 3 personas

- My content has to be useful to one of those

- If I see an interesting post/take on social media I hold the link and write an idea for my own spin/take (takes 30 seconds) - log it

- If I have a problem/issue that I resolve that would be useful to my audience - log it

- If I have a key product/design/UX choice that took some time to think through - log it

- If something takes me much longer than I thought because there's more to it (iceberge effect) - log it

I've been doing this for about 6 weeks now and I've got 100 ideas for pieces of content.

One of the best pieces of advice I read is that when you're solo, many times people/community rally around you. You are the product too so you have to share what you're doing, it's interesting to many, not just your customers. They care about the advice you give, the input you have, the way you build things. You are a subject matter expert in this domain, so you should structure your content with this in mind.

"You escape competition through authenticity." - @naval

[RobRivera]

I have a paper notebook next to my keyboard entitled 'sleep deprivation induced fever-dreams'. It is an excellent collection and useful tool so I dont let my ideas runaway with my attention.

Often when I return to what I write, about 60% I look back at with the novelty gone, and reassess from a more suitable eye and cross them off the list.

[rdrd]

I get the same whenever I get my daily walk in. Pure unbounded epiphany of ideas and experiments, surging with creativity. I'll revisit them a few days later and for 90% of them my immediate internal response is "that sounds like a really sh*t idea".

[dmoy]

Yea 90% is a more realistic fail rate of my 2am ideas which seem great at 2am, but then terrible a few days later with good sleep. If GP is batting almost .400 for insomnia fever ideas, that sounds pretty stellar to me.

[pessimizer]

And, if you're like me, you notice sometimes that you've been rediscovering the same interesting thought over and over again, and should really give it some structure and start building on it, rather than rewriting it again and and again, years apart. That's on the list of things I think that LLMs could help with.

Of course that's also an opportunity to combine the best of all of those iterations together, and still toss out a bunch of paper (or archive a bunch of bits.)

[euroderf]

> Often when I return to what I write, about 60% I look back at with the novelty gone, and reassess from a more suitable eye and cross them off the list.

Related: "Write drunk, edit sober."

[sbinnee]

That is a perfect name for a notebook like that. I have one in my head and it never lets me sleep. Maybe I should keep one like yours to dump mine into it. btw 60% is incredible.

[neilv]

> If I see an interesting post/take on social media I hold the link and write an idea for my own spin/take (takes 30 seconds) - log it

Not quite the same thing, but a perspective to be aware of...

For example, I used to be on a semi-private forum, where some people would lurk without participating, and then seemed to "arbitrage" ideas from there, to blog and social media posts, to promote their brand.

Ideas generally should be shared, and I wouldn't say that this "arbitrage" behavior is wrong, but it can sometimes seem a bit like leeching off a group without contributing.

I suppose this is more noticeable in smaller groups that are closer to "communities". Maybe no one would care if it's just more conventional social media posts where there's no community, and most people are just playing their own promotion games.

(For example, probably no one cares if someone else also forwards around the same LinkedIn inspirational leadership image post, which they themselves took from someone else. Because usually no one at all cares about those, not even the sender.)

[neilv]

Incidentally, from what I saw of undergrads at Brown University, I think Lisa Simpson would've fit right in. I mean that as a compliment to both.

[MH15]

I do this on paper, with each page dated with the date I started filling the page. The goal is to check off most of the improvements before or shortly after starting a new page.

[adidoit]

Same! My only challenge has been getting the product to be decent enough to the point where I start sharing these. Perhaps I shouldn't wait though...

[Poomba]

I personally enjoy reading about the journey most solopreneurs take, and that includes the mistakes they made, their thought process etc. So definitely start sharing instead of waiting.

[chrisweekly]

Sounds like great advice. Thanks for sharing. I'd hoped to see a blog link in your HN profile; do you have one?

[Kiro]

> many times people/community rally around you

But most of the times not a single person cares about you or your product.

[rdrd]

True. 99% won't care, but that shouldn't hold you back. You get outsized returns from even a handful of people caring - feedback, amplification, motivation, moral support etc.

[throwaway290]

How much feedback people give you on your stuff matches your 3 personas?

[AuthAuth]

>"You escape competition through authenticity." - @naval Except none of this is authentic. Its just another form of marketing and it should be illegal to go around spamming posts advertising a product. Or the accounts should be marked as sponsored or promotion accounts so they can be filtered out accordingly.

[rdrd]

> Its just another form of marketing and it should be illegal to go around spamming posts advertising a product

I think this is the dogma that holds a lot of devs back, the belief that sharing your work, the product, the thought process, the journey, the mistakes, the wins etc is “spammy”. Would save your rhetoric for those who actually spam - ai slop generators, bots, link farmers, paid shillers etc. Not indie devs on HN trying to build something for the world.

[AuthAuth]

I'd consider cold DMs to be spam. What if every business did this? This b2b call center stuff happening on peoples social media accounts. Its gross and I dont like it. Please keep advertising within advertising channels. You arent authentic by spamming people's DMs.

[riehwvfbk]

Yes, by all means, build and promote your product.

Planning out interactions according to 3 fake personas is still fake though. Not that I have any better ideas, we all have to engage with this nonsense and waste our lives producing it. It would be nice to somehow not have to.

[rdrd]

To be clear, the "personas" are customer/user personas. Not sure what the "fake" aspect relates to.

https://www.mural.co/blog/creating-user-personas

[riehwvfbk]

The whole parasocial aspect of it is what feels fake, distasteful, and icky.

The very idea of gaining power in the modern world is through parasocial relationships. Think Taylor Swift: her fans follow every single one of her updates even though they are highly scripted to engage exactly their "user persona", and present a Taylor who has nothing to do with the real one, another persona. Whoever can be at the top of this pyramid (i.e. make enough people believe that an Instagram-mediated relationship with a fake media persona is real) - wins the game.

I don't claim to have an answer, however, consider this. A few years ago it was considered impossible to win the battle against Big Food. They would continue to shove increasingly fake food simulacra down our throats and we'd be doomed. There was a backlash. With parasocial relationships, I feel that AI has tipped the scales into "enough is enough" category and people will demand real connection over personas.

And maybe we are just talking past each other. Maybe.