Are you documenting your indie hacking journey?
I'd love to get better at following people who are documenting their indie hacking journey.
Milestones can be added here on IH, but who else writes or publishes about all things indie hacking and personal progress elsewhere?
Do you have a blog? YouTube? Instagram? Twitter?
#ask-ih
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I did this when I started indie hacking more than two years ago: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/im-trying-to-become-an-indie-hacker-in-the-public-domain-any-feedback--KgNe4vEnLdN9egV51jy
I would highly recommend it. Even though I ended up building a product for a completely different audience, documenting my journey helped create accountability to myself, got me a lot of good free advice, and indirectly supported marketing (e.g. for SEO).
A few of my favorite indie hackers who work in public:
Thanks for the plug, Cory!
+1 to @czue's retrospectives, which strongly influenced how I write mine.
I'm currently just documenting using the Milestones really. Want to keep a bit of balance.
I'm enjoying @patwalls documentation on YouTube. He's a big Indie Hacker :)
Thanks brooooo
I'm failing pretty bad in that regard, but after reading the story of Prince of Persia, which was a series of journey entries by the game's creator... I'm at the very least, inspired to do so.
I kind of like the idea of just having a local journal that I can later publish, not even for the monetary aspect of selling a book, but the idea that I may not journal every day (I find daily writing to end up being somewhat redundant at a certain point).
Leads me to an idea that I've toyed around with for a while... as a developer, most of my "gains" are in the form of shipping code. I've always thought it would be killer to have some sort of "commit message journal" system that I could write a little journal entry either right in a commit message, or be prompted to write in there regularly.
Even though I think writing daily would end up with a lot of cruft, using an extension or something to prompt regularly would probably get any of us struggling to do this get into the habit.
Link to the prince of Persia series?
Absolutely!
Normally I'd hit you with an AMZ affiliate link, but since Jordan sells the books direct, I'd rather link you to that. Support the author directly and such:
https://www.jordanmechner.com/backstage/journals/
I've only read the Prince of Persia one, but there is another book that was published later that are journals from his time working on Karateka. Even though it was published second, the chronology of it came first, so may be worth starting there if you're interested in the entire journey.
Oh, this is interesting!
I started using notion.so app ,to document my journey, its quiet nice to look back and see my thoughts on the process ,it also motivates you to continue working.It doesnt need to be long posts, even just a couple of sentences as long as it makes the ball rolling.
I am noting on my Google doc. It's like a personal diary.
My daily practices are:
-> what I have done today, what not and why
-> what I am planning to do in next 7 days
-> what problems I am having in my life
-> how to solve them without getting hurt :D
That's what I used to do. I found the switch to hard copy journaling helped slow my brain down and do more deeper / flow thinking (but that might just be me). I've posted about it a few times already, but Heroa.co.uk do really good journals for this, especially designed for solo workers, indie hacker types, etc. (I'm not affiliated, btw. It's a UK based thing I think, and I live in the UAE).
I've also Bullet Journaled in the past, which has really helped. It's a really flexible system (as you basically build it yourself), but I didn't feel like I had the right frameworks for tackling my daily / life problems. But looking at your list, it looks like you might have cracked it?
I'm documenting on my Google doc. It's like a diary. I wrote:
It's interesting to read it back and sometimes very useful when I face the same problem again.
That's a really nice and simple way to do it!
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Wow. That's really cool. I don't do my journal by hand, but I do notes by hand when I read some books on marketing and business.
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Agreed!
I've tried but our customers don't really care about this info and it seems to distract me from the important things.
If my target market was other makers, Product Hunters, etc., maybe it would be a good use of time.
I did a daily writeup till my beta launch (on product hunt) - 105th day. I have been less regular now since it's significantly more work to keep the business up and running.
For the curious, here's a link - it's more like a stream of consciousness so don't know how helpful it'll be but it's all there :)
https://blog.crayonbits.com/
I am very bad at doing it. I'd love to see some examples of people who are doing it well!
I document my journey on www.hustleup.io and on youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UChlO8u2cb9YqSCMFNVVpOOg
I also keep notes in a document, where I reflect each month on the progress, on my goals, wins and losses.
Personally, writing about my journey brings a lot of clarity. On the other hand, it also takes quite some time. So, I try to balance the two.
I love following other IndieHackers on their journey!
I journal a bit myself, mostly to review things that I've done and whether or not certain processes can be improved. I'm not working full time on any of my ventures so I'm not too focused on things that aren't moving the projects forward. I think there's certainly value in publicly discussing some things but overall I have concern about revealing too many of the internals. It might not be an issue now but perhaps in the future if I wanted to sell the business.
I'm actually making some YouTube videos about it. But I'm finding its slow to edit footage so learning as I go. I'm going to break down everything we're learning and stuff we're shipping. I'll post some stuff here when it's done. Maybe only a week away.
I store everything in Evernote. I have a daily journal, a developer log, and many other random docs.
What I remembered is I used to do notes using blogspot, for example, this is one of my diaries I started soooo long ago http://developers-diary.blogspot.com/
The interface looked so naive :)))))
I started a podcast in December and also decided to start sharing more on IG (n0mad7) and my website, nomad7.dev.
I work mostly on my own. So I'm doing this as a way to meet and interact with others who are doing what I'm doing. While this site is excellent for that, I wouldn't mind following folks on IG, YouTube, or even a newsletter. An extra benefit I hadn't accounted for is how sharing and documenting is an excellent way to start journaling, which is something else I've wanted to do more consistently.
Yep. I started a podcast. I'm building a podcast directory. I don't talk much about it but I discuss books I read, design tools I use, and different marketing experiments
https://link.chtbl.com/6CXxiyiI
I like to think that my product's page (Stackmate) is kind of a log for the milestones I have in mind, then using a todo list to further break down those or write down internal information
Yes, I've started using my Ministry of Testing product page a lot more for light weight, useful and encouraging updates. It definitely helps my writing habit.
I actually am, though it's to some degree just a side effect of a practice of writing things down as I plan them. There are gaps there but it does span several notebooks and several product ideas explored over the past 7 years.
More recently I've been recording a daily personal stand-up as well, which I'm beginning to like as a free form record of what I'm working on and whatever comes to mind as I speak. It's only an improvement over writing in the regard that I am more likely to speak in a freeform way than I am to write unconstrained. It's still evolving, but I've been considering making that audio public at some point...warts and all.
No I'm not. Should I?
I don't know, should you? :)
It's one of the things I regret not doing, but hey ho, can't do everything. But now that my youngest mostly sleeps through the night, I think I can do it! :D
Sounds about right!
I'd love to (and do keep trying to) but it's just not 'the most important thing I could do on any given day'.
Maybe I'll set aside 10min each day to journal a bit more thoroughly. Not a big fan of writing about myself though.
Hi! I am working as an indie game developer in Turkey. I am trying to be more active on social media too!
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Emre_Unalll
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/swiftpandastudio/
I have been trying to do a blog as an indie game dev/ indie hacker.
https://yourfriendlygamedev.wordpress.com/
I documented the progress of my new project on Insta (https://www.instagram.com/owel.codes/). ... scrolling back, I see Jan 20 was the 1st entry. Just a sketch/block diagram on paper.
https://www.instagram.com/p/Bs3r35PhwQu/
I've been really enjoying Makerlog as a place to share daily progress on what I'm building. Some people post lots of fluff, but it's really motivating if you use the tool only to track real progress on your project. It's nice to see what other's are accomplishing, too.
Makerlog
Great question! I'd love to follow others as well. Been engaging more on Twitter over the last few months (@J_Schiff) and trying to do more on Instagram stories (but a tad inconsistent at the moment) @PodReacher over there.
Very good question, I'm not doing it yet. Are you doing it? Do you know people doing it?
I'm starting to write some things on my new blog. I'd like to explore new things at some point and write as openly as I can about it along the way. I've been 'sad' for a while that I haven't been able to be consistent with my writing.
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