Sprint downhill, not grind uphill

jasonleow  •  9 Dec 2022   •    
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A gem from one of my favourite email newsletters of all time – the 3-2-1 newsletter from James Clear:

“Look for situations where the energy is already flowing downhill. Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect. Create products that tap into a desire people already have. Work on projects that play to your strengths. And then, once the potential of the situation is already working for you, add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft. Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back. The idea is to sprint downhill, not grind uphill.”

“Sprint downhill, not grind uphill” is such a great and better way to describe this definition of product-market fit that I like to use – being pulled forward by a product.

Because that’s how it feels like physically. With Lifelog and Sheet2Bio, I feel like I’m grinding uphill. With Carrd plugins, I feel like I’m sprint downhill. There’s a significant and remarkable difference to how either feels.

In fact, let’s run down the list of attributes that Mr Clear provided and compare that to how it feels for Carrd plugins:

  • “Invest in relationships where there is already mutual respect.” – I help people with their Carrd issues, and they are thankful or reciprocate. And so far, customers are reasonable and respectful of what they seek support for.
  • “Create products that tap into a desire people already have.” – Carrd has some feature gaps which plugins plug well. Beyond gaps, I made plugins that’s considered nice-to-have but people desire, e.g. the confetti plugin.
  • “Work on projects that play to your strengths.” – It plays to my strengths because I know how to code, but not that good a coder to be a professional enterprise one. Helping folks with code snippets with limited scope and minimal functionality works to my favour. I also love using Carrd, and that adds to my strengths too.
  • “…Add fuel to the fire. Pour yourself into the craft.” – I find myself willingly pulled forward by the work. Someone asks a question in a community forum, and I dive straight into it. Even though I have other work to do. There’s something about helping others solve a painful problem that I’m fueled by.
  • “Act as if you have to outwork everyone else—even though the wind is at your back.” – I’m not sure I’m outworking everyone in the Carrd ecosystem but I certainly not wanting to take this “wind on my back” for granted. I still want to work on it and improve things. But even while this project is pulling me forward, I’m not making it as my main project but keeping it in side project status. That way I stay on my toes while not putting too much expectations on it.

What a great analogy. So much to fit in there.

Product-market fit is sprinting downhill, not grinding uphill.

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