Hello again Internet!
I am writing after a long while and this blog is a bit different from my engineering blogs. This is more of a practical blog of some goals I am going to set for myself, which I had previously done years ago for coding or learning to code & I guess and it has paid off and I wanted to do that again but with a different goal in mind.
I made this video back in 2023 probably and around the end of 2023 or 2022 I think where I kind of publicly posted that I'd code every day
which I mean I didn't code every single day but you know I'll share the GitHub repo or GitHub profile after I had posted that video,
and I actually committed to it, and I actually started doing some projects and contributing to some open source projects. And I did get to work with pretty amazing people. I did get to work on a project for AWS Open Source, which obviously none of them sprouted into success, or none of them sprouted into major things. But what happened was after that the following year I got my first job and then I have been working professionally with startups and agencies since then So yeah it didn't make sense at that moment when I actually posted the video that I code every day but it now makes sense that I did commit to something and then I started doing it. And I'd done that previously years ago as well when I first started to code. and when I first started I used to do digital art as well so when I first did digital art ,there's thing called Inktoberfest where you would like draw something for the entire month of October and I also did Hacktoberfest where you would code or contribute some code to some repositories (open source repositories) for the entire month of October and these things didn't mean that you would probably be successful at any specific coding area or any specific skilled area but the goal was to be consecutive and consecutively keep doing it without worrying about the results.
After I started working professionally as a developer since the last two years, the software industry as a whole has shifted drastically that I've experienced. I do three part-time jobs. One of them is an office job. And I think I'm doing more work than any developer would have done three or four years ago. that's mainly due to AI and AI has enabled people to do more but it has been demanding from people more as well. The one thing that I have looked and I have experienced is that the overall outlook of everyone and every industrial mechanism has changed from improving or focused on results to just making money So the key mechanism of the AI industry or the software industry as a whole has been to make money obviously. But there was a video from GitHub around 5 or 6 years ago, you can watch it on YouTube, it was basically an advertisement for GitHub, but not a typical advertisement. It wasn't advertised in a way like GitHub as a product, but rather it advertised code as a means to connect different parts of society. So, the video was mainly about a girl making a prosthetics arm for her brother, and in another part of the world, somebody else used that code to build something else that they needed.
With the current industrial standards, I feel like that wave has faded. Like actually developing something for betterment, actually trying to, I mean people are still developing things to help people, but most of those things are more focused on profitability. So, they're helping people, but they're also focused on actually making money. And even though I say that the outlook has changed, I don't mean that in a negative way, but moreover it has become much easier for a single person, like for example, Open Claw or Peter Steinberger, people like those to make money or make profitable businesses out of their skillsets. And obviously not everyone can do it, you need a lot of expertise and global experience, but there's also people who have been building, indie hackers who have been developing for years. And I wanna build shitty products that's also one goal is to build a lot of shitty products and have a lot of fucking fun doing it for people, for myself, but mostly to enjoy the process that I have enjoyed before just building things not just software but anything.
If money is the main goal or like the standards of the industry have changed to making money or making it easier for people to run businesses then let's do that. Let's just go for that and make as much as possible so that we can actually try it out. I've already said that I tried out everything. I tried out art, doing art and doing programming and going all in into it because it was so interesting. And right now this trend of building stuff is very intriguing. So that's why I feel like I should challenge myself, but this time with a specific number in mind to get to that goal.
This goal is much different from the previous goals I set for myself. The primary one was to just learn things. Learning to code, learning to draw, learning anything basically. And the secondary goal was to earn something, earn some money or some monetary means by doing what I love or doing what I'm good at, which was the skills I had previously learned from my first goal.
This time I am gonna set a specific amount or specific target in mind for the goal which is the 1k MRR which means that it's not just like a specific amount per month but more of it needs to be be set in some rules and those rules I do need to follow through. So the first and foremost would be that it obviously needs to be a MRR because it needs to be a monthly recurring review. It's not just I need to make that amount once and then the goal is set. It wouldn't work like that.It would need to be a sustainable MRR or a recurring revenue per month. That is why I set the goal with the $1000 in mind.
These are the rules I’m setting for myself. The product or the way I’m going to reach that monetary target, will be by my own means. So it cannot be any part-time job, any full-time job, or something I’m doing for my employer. I am going to be the owner of the product.
I’m also keeping the field a bit broad, and maybe I’ll broaden it later. Primarily because I don’t want to focus only on SaaS products. I can do more than SaaS, and I don’t have to confine myself to that. I could do research projects. I know how to program a microcontroller or a Raspberry Pi, I can figure it out. I’ve worked with Arduino and a bit of IoT. I’ve done basic UI/UX design and graphic design. So I can use any of those skills.
That’s one rule. I’d say that’s the second rule—the first is that it needs to be my own thing, not from an employer. The second is that I can utilize any of the skills I have to produce that amount. The third is using any tools at my disposal. That means not banning AI, but using it efficiently, not as much as possible, because that could ruin things. I try to avoid using AI for everything, and instead use it where it makes sense, where it’s better than doing it myself. For example, I do some QA tasks with AI using specific tools, cloud code, and other workflows.
Another rule is that working with clients is allowed, as long as I’m the one building the projects. I’ll still own them, even if I’m supplying a service. So it could be like a SaaS, but even if it’s not, there's IoT-based projects or other things I can produce.
The final step would be to broaden the horizon later on, maybe investing in something beyond software or hardware. I’m not sure yet, but it’s something I think I could explore.
That’s the primary direction I’m setting for myself, and that’s what I’m going to follow. I’m not sure how far I’ll get, but I’m going to keep going toward this goal.
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