Hey, this is Kimsia. Yesterday, I talked about me doing this video logging, documenting my journey of running a business as an independent software developer. So, today I would go through the things I'm actually trying out and the considerations I have of how I devote my time, my resources towards each individual project.
Solar System Analogy
Okay, as you can see on my screen over here.
I have listed four things on this screen. Kind of like a solar system. With the sun in the middle. And the smaller planets orbiting around it. The idea is the same.
My paid work for my customer. It's a MNC whom I developed customized software to process their quotations, their purchase orders, which are typically in Excel or PDF files.
I'm using the revenue from that paid work to fund my other projects and the ideas that I have. So one of them is this GreenDeploy, SaaS idea I have.
Right now, I'm trying to be more of an engineer-influencer, trying out various platforms like Twitter, Substack, YouTube, Medium.
I'm also writing this book. I titled it as "Django for Excel". It takes my experience in terms of doing this paid work for customer and see if I can translate it into a book that I can put it up on Amazon Kindle.
And that is my current layout for now.
Considerations
The considerations I have is are these side projects, are they going to pay off? Are they interesting in and of itself?
If all I think about is optimizing for generating revenue, I should just go back and become an employee. Where there's far more certainty and I have a higher rooms in terms of growth for my income level.
So this is also partly self-actualizing in terms of pursuing my independent software developer career as a business.
Other considerations include whether I'll actually be good at it because if a side project doesn't really pay that well, but I'm good at it, the motivation to continue is there.
These are the considerations. Typical cookie cutter style advice on the internet doesn't really delve deep into.
Because everybody's journey is a little bit different. It's hard to find a one size fits all advice. So, this is what I'm currently working on. And thanks for listening in today.
AutonomyFirst: Projects