Getting unstuck
The critical skill you need to quickly build and launch products
Hello everyone, Lior here.
In today’s newsletter, I’m going to share the art and science of not getting stuck while building your product.
Getting unstuck
One of the hardest things in building and launching a product in six days is not getting stuck.
There was a game plan for launching the product in six days, but the deadlines were super tight, so often I couldn’t afford to spend a day, or even an hour, on one singular task.
As a maker, and especially as a developer, it’s really easy to obsess over things that aren’t working.
Here are a few examples, just from the past week:
I wasn’t completely happy with the domain names I found, so I wanted to spend more time finding better domains. I had to snap out of it because, well… who has time.
I tried to integrate Mixpanel to collect analytics for the launch, and spent an hour trying to find documentation and tutorials on how to do this with my tech stack. After an hour, I had to snap out of it, and just go with the (horrible) Google Analytics 4. I had to defer this task and put it on the roadmap for later.
I found that the labels in the “Ratings Breakdown” aren’t always positioned in an ideal way. I tried to solve it using one strategy and it caused overlapping texts. I hit reset and tried a different strategy, which worked really well for low resolutions, but not so great for high resolutions. I started obsessing about this specific problem, and had to exert some willpower to snap out of it. In the grand scheme of things, it has very little impact on the launch.
Getting unstuck is not unique to indie hacking or software development. I found that it’s a useful skill in general, in my personal and professional life.
When you’re stuck, you’re obsessing over a single problem to the point where it doesn’t make sense anymore.
The right move could be giving it some rest and distance, then zooming out and looking at the big picture: is this something that you actually have to solve? and if you do, is this the right way to go about it?
Getting some distance often allows you to either reprioritize, think about the problem from first principles, or find a different angle for a solution.
I found that getting unstuck usually requires three things:
Clarity of context - the context and constraints under which you operate matter. It’s one thing if you’re working on a big project that spans months. It’s another thing if there’s an immediate business need and a deadline to meet. It’s important to be clear about what your deadlines are, and how long you can work on any individual tasks or project. As a teammate, you’d usually want to over-communicate and discuss this with your boss and coworkers. As an indie-hacker, you’d negotiate these constraints with yourself.
Awareness - the awareness of realizing when you’re stuck is critical. If you don’t know you’re stuck, you won’t try to dig yourself out. It’s easy to spend hours or even days on a problem, obsessing over it, with no resolution in sight. As time goes by, you become more agitated by the problem, then you get even more obsessed and start to develop tunnel vision. The solution is to build that habit of “checking in” with yourself frequently and asking yourself whether what you’re doing is still effective, or whether it’s time to take a break and zoom out.
Discipline - you might realize you’re stuck, but it’s really hard to let go of a problem that you’re busy solving. It’s hard intellectually, because you won’t get the answers you were pursuing. and it’s hard emotionally, because you’re already invested time and effort in this problem and you don’t want to lose that. It can also feel like defeat, and who likes to lose?
The thing to remember is that this particular task or problem often doesn’t really matter, what matters are your goals and objectives, so letting go of some problems (or solutions) in order to accomplish your goals is a good tradeoff, definitely not a defeat.
Also, using discipline and exerting willpower is difficult, but you can build up that muscle by doing that over and over again, it does get easier over time.
Have you been stuck trying to solve a particular problem? Let me know your thoughts.
Introducing… Wisely!
As I shared with you in the previous newsletter, I spent the past week racing to launch an AI shopping assistant and launch it by Prime Day (July 10-11)
I’m happy to say - mission accomplished - today I’m launching Wisely on Product Hunt!
As an indie maker, I don’t have the resources to pull off a huge launch event, so If you have a second, I’d really appreciate your support:
It has come a long way
I still can’t believe how far the extension has come within a week.
Honestly, this week feels like a blur in hindsight, so it’s good thing I took some screenshots along the way (before → after):
Back then, it was just code name “SmartBuy”, and it has since been rebranded to “Wisely”.
I spent a couple of hours defining the brand essence and identity, honing on a name, and of course, finding an available domain (shopwisely.ai is the best I could find).
The extension currently offers:
A concise summary of pros & cons based on customer reviews
Visual breakdown of user ratings
List of Notable product features
Things to look out for, such as product limitations and shortcomings
Unhealthy ingredients in any food or snack
If this proves to be successful, expect more goodies to come - I’m happy to hear your suggestions!
What’s next?
I hope the launch today on Product Hunt goes well - your support is appreciated!
Whether it goes well or not, this goal of trying to build and launch something in six days taught me a lot. It’s been challenging, but it’s been a lot of fun. Highly recommended!
Different products require different levels of effort, so I’ll probably still try to hit an average of one product per month, where some products will take more time to develop, and some products will take less.
I’m going to take next week to regroup, do much-needed maintenance to the rest of my apps so they are set up for success, and start thinking about the next product.
Please reply and let me know your thoughts!
- Lior
Great job! Huge inspiration for me