Looking for Balance

Welcome to my monthly exploration of building products, learning in public, and finding my way as a generalist in tech. I share my pains, questions, insights hoping they will help someone on their quest.

❌ Pains

Notice how sometimes the pain comes right after victories? In the beginning of September, I closed a deal on an AI project I was super into. Instead of celebrating, I found myself sick, tired, and wondering "what's next?". ​Here is what was happening:

• Need to deliver on this newly closed deal

• A long term project needed attention but I lacked motivation

• My parents were visiting for 10 days and I needed to make time for them

• Another project was about to start

• On top of that my brain was wandering in questions about automation and scaling

❓Questions

I asked myself:

1. How do you maintain momentum after achieving a goal?

2. How do you stay motivated on projects you have worked on for a while?

3. What's the right balance between automation and personal touch?

💡 Insights

Here's what I came to, curious to hear if you have better answers!

1. I realised that I didn't have a specific goal apart from trying to make a living working for myself. By having a more precise plan I should be able to celebrate properly and enjoy the journey.
   

2. I have been working on this project for a long time. I get bored easily. I asked myself what was blocking me. At some point I realised that I wasn't proud of the work I had done. I built the app a while ago and every time I opened it I could see how much it could be improved. Additionally its design was outdated and I couldn't look at it anymore. ​ ​
   
   I started by restructuring the app to make it faster and easier to manage. It helped a lot. Then my client and I agreed on a redesign. I am now happy again to work on it!

3. I am someone who thinks a lot and when you think, you don't do. These days you see a lot of software poping about content creation. I fantasised of an automated setup that would get me leads on leading by putting some notes and send this through openAI. ​ ​

   The misconception I had about AI and automation is that I thought it would do the work for you. Spoiler alert: it won't. What I have found out is that you can't automate something you don't understand/have done properly manually before.
   —> I am going back to the basics and will do the hard work.

Analogy

This automation fantasy reminds me of the biggest trap when building a product. You fantasise about all the product could do and overthink it, adding loads of feature. Instead of that, just launch a simple version and learn from it.

🏆 Wins

• Got Bronze tier for my Bubble and Design agency Nolow!

• Started working on a cool AI coaching app built on Bubble in September and am really enjoying exploring that space :)

• My fiancée and I are going back to our side project Dowe.do, which will be an Accountability mobile app. Got some help from X on the landing page and am happy with the direction!

• Got more consistent with my morning routine, now doing some respiration/affirmations/visualisation and yoga when I wake up

• Launching this newsletter is a big step for me and I hope I can do it consistently. Thank you for being the first ones reading me 🙏

🗓️ Next month plan

• Keep making my clients happy

• Post more on X

• Make more progress on Dowe.do as I got access to Bubble’s mobile beta

• Post 2 videos on Youtube. Candidate topics are fine-tuning versus RAG, showcase of some clients work and presentation of Dowe. If you have a preference, please let me know! It will help me decide :)

Growth isn't linear - it's more like a dance between chaos and structure. What's your experience with finding this balance? Hit reply, I'd love to hear your story.

Get better everyday, Benoît