Week #5: Anti-goals and slow productivity
The biggest achievement of my week was that I finally submitted my first Shopify theme to Envato ThemeForest! 🥳
I am really happy about this. I've longed to achieve this milestone and here we are. I don't even mind if the theme gets rejected; I've set a deadline and I managed to stick to it.
What I’m most grateful for isn’t the result, but the mindset I practiced to get there. I let my result-oriented product owner self take control instead of my perfectionist developer self. Instead of following fear (disguised as "perfectionism") I followed the fail-fast approach, by publishing something that contains errors that could have been fixed. I strongly believe that by getting comfortable with the idea of failing faster we can also learn faster.
Gain clarity by defining anti-goals 🙅♂️
I was listening to the Dan Koe podcast where I stumbled upon an interesting idea: anti-goals. By writing anti-goals you outline the sacrifices you are NOT willing to make in order to achieve your goals.
By deliberately setting constraints you actually empower creativity, because you need to find ways to achieve your goals within those constraints. Having clear constraints also makes it easier to say no to other, less important things. And finally, having constraints leaves you with very little time available which forces you to prioritize quality work over quantity work.
I am not willing to give up on the following
After giving this idea some thoughts I realised I have 3 non-negotiable segments that will remain untouched during my entrepreneur journey:
- ❤️ Quality time with family. I consider myself smart enough to know: time flies quickly. I don't want to be the old cranky guy wondering where all "those" years went by. This promise is a no-brainer, and actually quite easy to keep: I cherish every single moment I am spending with my family.
- 💰 Financial safety. If I was younger and alone, I'd probably be open to make risky decisions (as I have). Now, I have people around me that rely on me. I've to man up, be an adult, and accept, that I have much less financial flexibility that I used to have. I'm not gonna have anxiety because I prioritized my family's well-being under my business goals.
- 🏃♂️ Running. Running is freedom. Running is stress management. Running is meditation. Running is performance. Running belongs to me. It's one of my oldest hobbies that doesn't have any dependencies: it doesn't belong to a community, or place, or a platform, or any other circumstances. It's mine.
Slow productivity 🐌
I found a funny meme on social media, that I can strongly relate to 👇
I believe many solopreneurs feel the same. The market constantly changes, opportunities come and go. You get older, your freedom is shrinking. Clock is ticking. We don't have time.
This feeling is what pushes us to do more. To get results faster. To work more. To do more. To push more.
This mindset of "push more" however, is dangerous. I believe that indeed there is such thing as pushing too hard. Sure, it sounds like a good and ambitious idea on the short run, but on the long run it leads to burn out. Pushing it too hard is simply not sustainable.
Yesterday, I was sitting in a traffic jam when I realised this: the feeling behind all this is fear. Fear of being left behind. Fear of missing out. Fear of not making it in time.
When we realize this, we can see why this "push more" mindset is dangerous. Because it is driven by fear. Fear leads to hurry. Fear leads to panicking. Fear leads to chaos.
This realization made the solution so obvious, I actually laughed at myself.
The cure to fear is clarity. The antidote to darkness is light.
Plan and acceptance 🧘♂️
In order to eliminate fear from your life, you need clarity. To gain clarity you need two things: plan and acceptance. Both are required to eliminate fear in a healthy way. Why these two things?
Because there are things in life that you HAVE control over, and things that you DON'T HAVE control over. For things you can control, you need a plan. For things you cannot control, you need acceptance.
That's why anti-goals are powerful. The set boundaries, and to stop the "pushing it too hard" mindset sneaking into your life. If you simply accept the fact that there is a possibility of not achieving your goals without meeting your anti-goals too, you'll feel relief. You'll feel relief, because that's simply not a trade you are willing to make.
Plans for next week 📅
Even though I have submitted Coffee World to Envato, I am not done with it. I would like to spend one more week on improving it, and also, to package it in a way that looks good in a portfolio. This goal includes tasks like:
- Fix errors if the theme gets rejected by ThemeForest
- Removing more default Dawn theme settings
- Better hero section
- Better contact page sections
- An introduction video
My goal is to build a portfolio, so I can start hunting for freelance jobs. My goal with freelance jobs is to embed myself in the community and see real world Shopify problems. My goal with embedding myself into the Shopify community is to find a problem worthy of solving with a SaaS. 🎯
Bonus recommendation
This week I bought Shottr. It's a tiny, one-time purchase screenshot software, which helps you to take beautiful screenshots. It has features like: blurring parts of your screenshot, adding step counters, adding background, highlighting parts of your screenshot and more. Recommended.