Week 11 Retrospective

The mythical sweet spot between things that are fun and good business ideas.

I’ve been trying to figure out why it’s so hard for me to make progress on a proper B2B project/idea and I came up with the following diagram that I think explains it pretty well.

Mythical Sweet Spot

So if I can’t find anything in that mythical sweet spot, I’ll need to choose between something I enjoy and something that is more likely to make money.

I’ve been ruminating over this for the better part of a week, though don’t yet have a conclusive decision or plan.

Goal Report Card

# Goal Grade
1 Ship idea validation II, next blog drafted or shipped A
2 Chrome extension v1 launch A
3 Monetization test actually up and running A
4 Freelancing blast out A
5 Really explore B2B ideas F
6 Don’t email the wrong blog link to my entire newsletter F

Comments

  1. Writing continues to go well. Idea validation II went out, as did a rumination on yak shaving.
  2. Posted the Photos New Tab Extension in a number of places, including Show HN where it has been on the front page for about 5 days (about to fall off at the time of this writing). As best I can tell I have somewhere between 50-100 users and have gotten a lot of positive feedback—as well as some critiques.
  3. Ran a pricing test for place cards last week and will have more to report on as soon as I get a chance to review the data and write it up.
  4. Started very selectively emailing my network for possible short-term freelance work. If you’re reading this and want to work together, get in touch!
  5. I really can’t seem to motivate myself to seriously pursue a B2B project. See above.
  6. Sigh.

Time

Week 11 time breakdown

Week 11 time breakdown

This looks better than last week. Place cards is back on top and writing and the chrome extension are coming in closely behind.

Writing and personal admin are both a bit higher than I’d like. That said, I spent a good amount of time this week trying to figure out what to do next, and writing was one of the ways I explored that, which felt valuable. Personal admin is mostly email, and probably includes a bunch of relevant stuff around place cards or freelancing that just didn’t get captured.

Life

The waves were perfect for me on Sunday. Calm, clear and smooth, and not too big to get out (or scare the crap out of me), but big enough to catch and ride. Probably my best day of surfing to date.

Also managed to get another Hout Bay hike in—actually the one we attempted last week, but this time we found the path we intended to take. A few shots from that below (mostly featuring Ro).

A post shared by Cory Zue (@czue13) on

—Cory