Looking back, I think I started September with goals more ambitious than I realised. “Singular September” meant a singular focus, on getting 1 product launched, 1 customer and 1% weekly improvement in my keystone habits. How it panned out:

Launch 1 product while learning Rails

• ✅ Deployed a rough minimum viable product called Your Life In Months

I managed to deploy a seriously bare bones minimum product called Your Life In Months. It’s a site that allows people who does regular, deliberate experimentation to log and share their monthly goals, and get inspired by other doing the same. Kind of what I’m doing here. It’s definitely something I want to build for myself and others in this niche group. It’s so bare bones now it’s actually embarrassing, though that’s not necessarily a bad thing. The faster I ship, the faster I can get real user feedback, and the faster I can iterate and learn if there’s even product-market fit. I do wish to build out a few more features which I think are piviotal to it’s value proposition before any official launch. Right now, it feels more like a beta site. I seriously under-estimated the effort and time needed to do this properly, so that’s a huge learning point there (and a corresponding hit on my confidence and ego, because I’m an over-achiever and I like to reach my goals, but, oh well…?‍♂️). But compared to not knowing anything about Rails before and now after 1 month having this app to show for it… I think that’s pretty commendable, if anything. 

Get 1 customer

• ❌ Zero customer acquired

I totally tanked on this one. Not possible to even get one because I couldn’t get payment gateways deployed in time. For someone who was used to one-click installs in Wordpress, I must say this is quite frustrating. Everything that I used to take for granted - payment, getting SSL, creating a database, setting up custom domain - now takes several hours, if not days to deploy and troubleshoot. I guess this is the trade-off for the customizability that comes with coding your own product rather than using templates? Even if I could hack together a payment gateway using cloud solutions like PayPal, I also didn’t have time to market or share with enough people. One of the things I learned from @yongfook is how I should know where my first ten customers are even before starting. I’m ashamed to say I don’t. Which makes me worried about finding a market for this product (even if I recognise that I’m building this for myself). This is definitely something I need to spend more time and effort in the coming month.

1% weekly improvement on keystone habits

• ✅ Keto + intermittent fasting: at least 3-4kg weight loss so far after 1 month. 
• ⏸ Maintenance mode: Fitness, meditation, deloading/review, deep work
• ❌ Sleep actually deteriorated due to keto diet! But am slowly getting back to restful sleep.
• ✴️ Added new #100daychallenge of practising kintsugi and finishing up a piece by the end of the year

One of the things I picked up from James Clear (author of Atomic Habits, which I based my habit system on) recently on his podcast was how I didn’t need to track everything, or expect 1% improvement on all my habits. Some habits just need to set and forget, like meditation, deloading. It happens so long as I perform it. And it’s hard to track everything all at once, so it’s probably easier to vary the focus month on month, to watch the things that might need more attention to track, like my diet changes. Of all the keystone habits, doing keto and intermittent fasting were the hardest thing this month, as my body was still adapting. I was also experiencing a lot of energy fluctuations, still learning how to better manage it, and lacked knowledge of the right foods to eat, therefore it definitely needed my attention. Once I settle into this, I can probably run it on maintenance mode, and then move on to focus on other keystone habits. 

Books finished or started on

Finished -

• Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• The Anti-fragility Edge: Antifragility In Practice, by Sinan Si Alhir

Started on -

• The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want, by Sonja Lyubomirsky

Q3 (Jul-Sep) review

Rounding up…it’s been a crazy, transformative quarter for sure! 

• I took a forced, ‘off-the-grid’ month-long break to refresh and re-energize myself, just reading books in July, no appointments, no work, just books, coffee and lots of thinking ahead. It felt so great to be able to do that, and I started off the quarter feeling much more rested and ready. I need to do this more often!
• In August, I did some massive envisioning and planning ahead for my million dollar project, kickstarted on my keystone habit systems, traveled to Bhutan, and had a health scare (which reminded me to once again listen to my body, my harshest teacher). Being somewhat of an introvert dreamer, I realised I really enjoyed toying with new ideas, and applying them by imagining and planning a possible new future. Perhaps a bit too much!
• September was a month of doing, doing doing. I kind of over-reached myself, trying to learn Rails and also launch a product within a month, and all the while, trying to stay sane from carbs withdrawal and associated low spirits. By the last week, I was getting pretty harsh on myself, all over again. I didn’t enjoy that. I loved playing the enforced goal deadline game with myself - it pushes me to procrastinate less, and deliver more and faster, but often at the expense of mental well-being, health and time for other important things in life. But that was my old way. In my new way of running a calm, not crazy business, I don’t want to do that anymore. I got too serious, and forgot to have fun and to play. So, important lesson learned. I wonder, what if I didn’t play the enforced goal deadline game, but instead just installed a habit system to ensure I deliver good quality work at a regular but a calm and fun pace? Would that still work?  

Overall, if this was the start of a new season of being an indie maker, and the beginning of a new journey of working and living in a vastly different way from my 20-30s, I think I would look back at this quarter as the foundational months where the first decisions were taken, important choices made, old habits forsaken, core mindset shifts started.

A quarter of transitions, of metamorphosing, for sure.