Hello there 🙋‍♂️,

Warmly welcome 8 new subscribers to Ivan's Weekly Focus.

It is the newsletter where I share every week's focus for the current week. Here I do achievement analyses of my indie-making journey. Sometimes I try to share insights or impressions. Also, I mention tools or techniques for increasing productivity and post some useful links.

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➤ Weekly Focusing

During the whole of December, I tried to follow one approach. It bases on focusing on one specific action for a week. In theory, it should allow concentrating on one particular task. And you have to complete this task before starting something new. It is substantial to keep focus to do not lose track, especially if you generate ideas every day, like me. Or, you have limited time for your projects and need results. Again, like me.

Some time ago, I watched a pretty old interview with Jonny Ive about Steve Jobs. In the video, he spoke about one interesting peculiarity of Steve. He was able to be strictly focused on what needed to be done. Here is that video. Please, watch too.

What focus means? It's saying NO to something that you think is a phenomenal idea. And you wake up thinking about it, but you say NO to it because you focus on something else.

I like the process of creating, developing, building, and even some marketing movements, in which I understand nothing, but still… But results. It is something that I lack. I hope that focusing should help me with achieving beneficial results. That is the goal.

With such thoughts, I decided to rename this newsletter last time. Starting from the first week of 2023 (as of today), I will write my intentions for every week. In every next issue, I'll do a short analysis. Let’s see how it will be going.

🧘‍♂️ Next Week Focus

After publishing the previous issue, I started promoting it. I would like to have everything tuned and linked between each other, like one solid system. I do not hurry up, there is a lot of work in different areas, and it is impossible to do it all at once. Sure, I understand it. At the same time, I see how people check my profile, follow links from the issues or articles, and see the pretty ugly temporary website with two pages.

I don’t like how it now looks. In April, by circumstances on which I could not influence, I lost my old domain. I bought a new one and established a temporary solution, but it seems time to give some love to it and make it fancy.

The goal for next week is to recover a theme for the personal blog. Difficulties which I see that it contains only 4 working days because 2nd January is a holiday. It is not an issue, except that the kids will be at home on this day. You should probably know what it means 🤪.

👀 Ivan's Week Progress

There are updates for Week 52, the last in 2022.

If you would like to get full list of details, including real MRR and revenue numbers, feel free to join and subscribe to membership. Every Saturday at 12pm I post updates on BMC under the special plan “Build in Public. Special”.

The week was not as active as I expected. One of the reasons is because it is a festive time and bustle. It is difficult to be very productive at this time. Another issue may be even worse. Kids got sick, and it was difficult to think about something else except their health. However, some progress I did.

Newsletter launch & promotion

I finally launched my newsletter in the state in which I wanted to do it. I set a personal challenge to write 52 essays for my blog and to write 52 issues for the newsletter. It seems unachievable, but I guess if to build the system, and rules and set a habit, it is possible. If you read this issue, it means that I do progress, and it is the 3rd article, even if it has number one in the title.

Ivan Klimchuk @ivnklm

Is it possible to write 52 essays, publish 52 issues of the newsletter, and #buildinpublic other projects at the same time during 2023? It scares me. But only challenges allow growing. wdyt?

I still learn how to promote my content. There are many ways. Need to learn, which of them work well or not. But I would like to share one insight that I got during this week.

Promotion and content writing itself do not give subscribers or followers right after publication. It has a postponed effect and if do it constantly, after some time of activity you may get exponential growth in your audience. It is the main reason, why need to continue, even if you see, that only 5 people read your articles. Don't rush, keep going and success will come.

If you would like to read the past issue and essay, here are links:

— Indie-making Journey Begun

— Issue #2 — Journey Began

Growth Review

I started work on the assessment part. I did the first test assessment, and it works! There is still a lot of work in setting the whole schema and writing all formulas for the calculation of the scores and levels. Even more, there is a need to solve the issue of distillation scores between assessments somehow. It is required to get numbers in dynamic. It is exciting how no-code solutions may solve problems for solving which companies used to invite software developers.

At the same time, I revised the rubric block. It is almost finished. I decided to simplify it a bit. It should give the overview of the whole question, but the general part is still the assessments and people directory. So, no need to overthink and overcomplicate that part. I posted a small thread on Twitter with screenshots.

Ivan Klimchuk @ivnklm

Here is it small update about my #buildinpublic progress around #notion template — Growth Review. See the thread for more pictures. 1. Topic page and related tracks for assessment

Other achievements

— I was able to keep my inbox clean. Zero Inbox is the best habit I have been able to develop.

— I keep every day journaling, and in December I missed only 3 days. Good achievement, I guess.

Ivan Klimchuk @ivnklm

#journaling during December 98k characters written so far

#buildinpublic in numbers

Numbers show small but stable growth. I like it!

Twitter: 167 followers, +30 new
Medium: 121 followers, +2 new
Substack: 17 subscribers, +8 new
LinkedIn: 266 subscribers, +3 new
MRR — see Naked Report: Week 52 — 2022.

🌐 Weekly Reading

It seems I failed with this section this time. I wasn't collecting useful articles during the week to add to the newsletter. Memory also does not help to recall, what was interesting that I read. Next time I hope there will be more useful links.

— During the week, I was looking for a way to promote my newsletter in different places. Article How to use Medium to get newsletter subscribers. written by Dylan R. very helped me.

🥂 Happy New Year!

Yep, instead of insights or impressions. I want to congratulate you on starting a new year! For many, it was a pretty difficult year. Very sad, it was the last year for many.

I want to wish peace to everyone. I would like to see that every person on earth finds in himself the strength and ability to resolve the conflict with words and not with force.

Pay attention to your family, and find time for yourself. Grow professionally and personally. Happy New Year!

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Ivan's Indie Journey

#01 — Personal Website Recovering