I Was Trying to Sprint in a Marathon.

How I am learning to pause and pace myself for the miles to go.

At the start of my journey with Gexpr, I thought I knew what it takes to talk about your product, and your journey, share learnings, find customers everywhere, and nowhere, make mistakes, and learn as you go. But, a part of me was always “playing it safe” so as to not sound self-loathing and only share big wins and big announcements whenever the “right” spotlight is on me.

That often meant I was hesitating to write content like “How can bootstrapped founders reach PMF” for example or threads like “How to stop overthinking and start doing”. That also meant I was hiding in the deep trenches of Twitter and lurking on LinkedIn from the sidelines. I was mindlessly scrolling on all kinds of platforms — even Indie Hackers, Kernal, and Product Hunt. That often translated into a feeling of not doing enough!

Stop Chasing

I kept getting caught in this constant loop of “When GEXPR gets X, it will be okay”, “When Y signs up as a PRO, it will be okay”, or “When we win Z pitch competition, it will be okay”. It took a lot of self-reflection after my initial learnings from “chasing the prize” and seeking that end goal of XYZ outcomes, that I realized I was doing it slightly wrong, i.e., “constantly chasing”! I felt as though I was wasting time if I wasn’t reading a productive post, journaling my learnings, building customer profiles, or brainstorming on our whiteboard (yes, we have one)!