John Jago

March reflection

For most of March, I continued working at the startup I co-founded 4 years ago, with my last day being March 20th. My reasons for leaving are many, which I hope to share in a future blog post, but this work journal is not the place for it! Even with that time commitment, there’s been some good progress on my own projects.

Summary

Metrics

ProjectTime spent (hours)MetricResult
Dashify27.0active installs<10 (+0)
revenue$0 (+$0)
undo.studio6.8posts written6 (+2)
visitors537 (+454)
johnjago.com14.7*posts written1 (+1)
visitors38,298 (+37,771)
Growing an audience0.4Twitter followers61 (+8)

* Of course, I spent some of these hours redesigning things, and only about 8 of them writing. 😭

In total, I worked 48.9 “deep work” hours on these projects, which is 15 more hours than last month. I’m still a little short of the “regular work hours” comparison I made in my previous reflection, which I calculated allows for around 65 hours of deep work.

The spike in visitors to my website was the result an article I wrote and submitted to Hacker News about an unrelated topic. A few people visited Dashify’s website from that, but the chances of them being in market for something like Dashify were slim to none. 90% of those visits bounced, meaning they only viewed the one article and then exited. So, it goes to show that high numbers don’t really amount to anything if they’re not related to your actual goal. However, it also shows that putting in the hours is sometimes worth it. I think a post I put just 1 hour into wouldn’t have been received so well. I do also want to mention that it was immediately taken down in a subreddit I shared it in. You never know.

In April, I’m going full-time on these projects, hoping to find one that can have a few customers and eventually turn into a business. Maybe it’s Dashify, maybe something else. Let’s see!

Previous reflections


👋 This is my work journal, a series where I write daily about trying to make a living building a bootstrapped software product.