My main overarching feeling this week is the sense that I haven’t quite found my rhythm in my new schedule and particularly
with my role at Dimagi.
In a part time role it’s important to be laser-focused on things that are a good use of time,
and I’ve been letting myself get drawn into a lot of things that might not be.
In a big company with lots of meetings and emails it’s very easy to let that eat up 16 hours a week if I’m not careful.
I’ve also been struggling to figure out the extent to which I should be trying to set direction and have opinions—something
I obviously did a lot in the CTO role—versus treating it more like a freelance engagement and letting the company guide my time.
This week I’m hoping to take a step back and think more high-level about my role and (fingers crossed) refocus.
Place Card Stats
$28 in revenue—a tiny bit down from last week with sales about the same but the average price per template slightly lower.
I raised prices a tiny bit on some of the more popular templates last night, so will see how that goes this coming week.
Goal Report Card
Another decidedly mediocre week grade wise.
| # |
Project / Area |
Goal |
Grade |
| 1 |
Place cards |
Move ball on printing test.
Evaluate (and run?) next pricing experiment. |
B |
| 2 |
Writing |
Write at least two hours. Just do it. |
A |
| 3 |
Make/Ship Stuff |
Push chat stats |
D |
| 4 |
Make/Ship Stuff |
Promote Mailchimp tools |
B |
| 5 |
Generate Revenue |
Continue pushing / working on freelancing engagements |
B |
| 6 |
Dimagi |
Continued smooth re-entry.
Provide good value to the organization without getting consumed by it |
C |
Comments
- Didn’t find time to get very far with printing. As I mentioned I did mess with prices at the last minute last night.
- Took the strategy of just blocking out time and writing whatever came to mind. Resulted in a potential two-part blog.
Hoping to ship part one this week.
- Didn’t find much time to work on chat stats, though am attempting to use the Product Hunt Hackathon to pivot
this into a tool for Slack and give myself a forcing function to ship something by the end of the month.
Made an upcoming landing page here.
- What a whirlwind. I posted Chimp List Helper on Product Hunt the day that MailChimp’s
two-stage confirmation workflow changed. It got featured, was starting to get some traction, and then MailChimp’s legal
team reached out to Product Hunt to shut it down. I’ve now been talking with them about what I am and am not allowed to do
wrt branding and name, and am hoping to repost it this week. But the momentum’s gone.
- Did not spend as much time on freelance as I would have liked last week. Just didn’t feel like there were enough hours in the day.
- Talked about this at the top.
Time
Nothing crazy here.
Contract work was a bit low and day to day life a bit high due to some ongoing personal admin stuff taking up a lot of time.
Week 33 time breakdown
Life
Did back-to-back 4+ hour hikes this weekend which is always rejuvenating—the “Skyline Path” over Hout Bay harbor,
and the Skeleton Gorge/Nursery Ravine hike from Kirstenbosch to the top of Table Mountain.
Also had to do some animal relocation when we found this not-so-little guy hanging out in our new flat.
—Cory