This year so far has been utterly random. So random that I have exceptionally exceeded some promises and broke many of them. Promises I made to myself, as well as you all. But having said that, I think I have some clarity of what the rest of the year (and the years to follow) looks like for now. Although I am quite determined this time, but so was I all throughout, so no promises this time.
What was going on till now
I sent the last newsletter back on Feb 7th, 2024, and I have come a long way since then. Things were shaky on the personal front and I tried really hard to get back on track. I am not a fan of inconsistency, so I decided to stop for good and rethink what I was doing.
Looking back at that last issue, now I think I can do 20x better. I spent the rest of that February thinking about what I really want to do with things in hands. I made a list of things I am good at. The list was quite long. I also realised that I was missing mental peace. I also realised that everything was a mess. The more I learnt and understood about doing a solo-tech business, the more miseries I found cluttering my life.
All of this self-reflection helped in so many ways. It helped in decluttering my goals, put sensible limits on my ambitions so that it matches with the means I had, and planning the future path. Again, planning is a tricky thing. On one side it provides you with a feeling of organization – but on the other side it is the first thing thats vulnerable to human-ness. The bouts of procrastination, laziness, etc. Even I was able to overachieve in a certain week, I would then become complacent in the next week. So the plan was never consistently green.
I was yet to find my rhythm. But in all of this, I did find some solid islands in the sea of uncertainty. Those were good starting points. All in all, this entire journey was quite interesting and long with many pivots, and I do wish to write it down in details eventually on this blog as and when I get time amongst the other important things.
The islands
Besides the stories of struggle, in this post let me focus on the important things – the islands. I have been working on many things with respect to building my brand – Let’s Do Tech. It is by no means profitable yet, but with all the lessons I am learning, it gets more promising. So here are the islands (initiatives) I am working on primarily.
I broadly categorise these items into 2 – tech work & writing. If you ask me which one’s priority? – then its the tech work. That is where I find my thrill. Building products, automating tasks, solving problems for others – is a very exhilarating feeling – as good as driving a fast car. While writing is like meditation to me and I enjoy that aspect as well. Over the years, my guest posts have brought in words of appreciation around my tech writings – so that is something I do not want to part ways with.
Tech work
- Products – I have been building micro-SaaS and now taking this journey in public. Currently working on Budge, it is supposed to help global travellers by cutting down on the destination research time by providing them with all the main things to do in any given destination for the duration of their time. There are more features planned, but I will soon make this application public on mobile app platforms. This decision is based on the feedback from the Beta users, and I think it is better to improve the app over iterations. Of course, there are other products on my road map, but one thing I learnt during this phase is that I am bad at concluding things. So I will work on Budge till I am able to put it on auto-pilot.
- Consulting – I have had the fortune to work with large teams and startups on a fractional basis. I mainly helped them save potential costs in millions, if not thousands, using my DevOps and automation skills. I have also used the development skills to build custom microservices, and Terraform modules, amongst other things. I plan to do more engagements, but this is on demand basis i.e. if I get asked.
Writing
- Blog – This is obvious. I mean when you know someone writes, they have to have a blog. It’s a good old plan but with a twist. I plan to explore more technologies and write about them with 2 intensions – giving them (learning process and blogs) some structure, and covering them from practical and business perspective – something that the readers can use in their day to day work and excel at what they do. I want these writings to strengthen everybody’s understanding of various concepts. Of course, last few months – especially the product experience have also taught me a few things about marketing.
- Books – You can also call them compilations. Talking about structure, I thought since I am exploring one technology at a time, it would make sense to build public compilations to let people find it easy to search for a topic. These are those work-in-progress books with knowledge I wish I had access to before. I am revisiting Kubernetes, but I am also excited to go to Machine learning next. Of course, these are free, and I am open to any comments, contributions, feedback, etc.
- News – Finally, to keep you all updated about all of the activities above, I will resume sending out weekly updates on – chapters published in the books, new blogs written in that week – including guest posts on other websites, consulting use cases I recently worked with, and of course product updates. The Newsletter is going to be much better as compared to what it has been till now. There are certain advantages for the newsletter subscribers:
- Newsletter only writeups – which are not published elsewhere
- Updates on how Let’s Do Tech as a brand is evolving – be the first to know any new initiatives
- Early or timely announcements – if you like my writings, then you deserve to know about fresh pieces I write
- Discount codes – Most of the things are free, but if in case of paid services (products, published books, private content in the future, etc.)
Rest of the 2024
As mentioned earlier, the above islands have been quite consistent in the last few months. I am doing all of this single-handedly and have learnt many tricks to multi-task. Tricks like how to use AI as your co-worker, which subscriptions are worth buying, how to optimize your work-flow, and so on. I will be sharing insights about all of this in the future posts.
I will continue to work on above initiatives for the rest of 2024, and keep sharing my progress here on my blog. Honestly, it has been a very lonely and at the same time exciting journey. I would really appreciate your company if you resonate with it and will be more than happy to share it with you. Use the box below to subscribe to Let’s Do Tech News. See you on the other side!
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