Build log - 3

[Emotional State]

Today, I'm in a much better place. As I work on this, I gain more clarity. The clarity is less around the specific features that I'm building or the marketing I'm doing but more on the way to integrate it all. More than mental clarity, it feels like emotional clarity. There's an unblocking happening. I'm not sure what's doing more "unblocking" the act of building PresentSelf or the act of being a PresentSelf user. I think they're one and the same.

I feel like I'm constantly thinking about this quote from Eckhart Tolle (also what inspired my post on presence)

“All negativity is caused by an accumulation of psychological time and denial of the present. Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry - all forms of fear - are caused by too much future, and not enough presence. Guilt, regret, resentment, grievances, sadness, bitterness, and all forms of nonforgiveness are caused by too much past, and not enough presence.”
― Eckhart Tolle, The Power of Now: A Guide to Spiritual Enlightenment

The act of building pulls me into the present. Being present makes me momentarily unaware of the regret of the past and the unease of the future.

This is probably unhealthy and counterintuitive, but experiencing presence in this way underscores how miserable I used to be. Most of my days really were brainrot spiritrot – bookmarking Twitter threads, listening to podcasts about other people's success, dreaming about my "future." That shit fucks you up.

[Technical State]

I've gotten both morning and evening automation to work correctly. It seems so simple on the surface, but actually, getting data to map correctly is difficult.

I've also reconfigured the weekly analysis so that it's much simpler.

I think this week will be a good indicator of how everything is running.

There's a bit of a lag because I'm dogfooding my app. Every time I "refactor," it causes a delay on the actual user end, so things are a bit backed up. That's ok.

Insight.

I've been chewing on whether or not to make this an actual native app. I think I need to do a quick analysis of the MVP version to determine if it's working or not (maybe one more week of use), but then weigh the pros and cons of building an app.

The insight that's tipping me more into app territory is that I'm seeing more and more that the real power of PresentSelf is less the insights or AI portion and more the act/art of checking in.

In some ways, I feel like checking in is a portal into the present. That's the real magic. The problem is that it can be difficult to mentally/spiritually shift to get into a state of mind to check in.

Many people (including myself) do things like closing their eyes, breathing exercises, and other centering activities.

I think the next version of PresentSelf (especially if in an app form) will combine a pre-check-in activity (like a short breath exercise) with the check-in itself.

[Growth State]

I put out a TikTok yesterday. It didn't do any numbers, but it did help me to warm up.

I found this thread about Tiktok growth and am following the steps.

I created a new TikTok account and I'm warming it up over the next day or so.

I get confused as to whether I should be building a "founder-led" account or a "product-led" account. I think there are pros and cons to both. Maybe in the spirit of integration, I should go "founder-led".

I'm also working on a landing page via Framer. It's been an interesting learning curve. I like the out-of-the-box designs.

I've also been looking to acquire domain names. The ".ai" domains are insanely expensive. Thankfully presentself.ai is reasonable. I can't tell if that's a good sign or not 😂