Do not index
Do not index
I’m not sleeping well since the past few days.
You know what keeps me up at night?
Not AI.
Not competition.
Not the economy.
It's watching founders spend weeks on things that don't matter.
So instead of writing a customary “predictions for 2025” newsletter, I’m writing this.
Here’s what you shouldn't be doing and what you should be doing instead
The "Busy Work" Trap
You are probably working 8+ hours a day right now. And you feel pretty productive.
You're also probably doing these right now:
- Building dark mode
- Perfecting your logo
- Writing business plans
- Designing business cards
- Setting up affiliate programs
- Starting a blog (with no audience)
- Adding power-user features (with no users)
- Writing email sequences (for zero subscribers)
Here's the painful truth: None of this matters.
A Hard Truth
“Being busy is a form of laziness—lazy thinking and indiscriminate action” — Tim Ferris
Ouch, right?
But he's right. All these tasks feel productive.
They feel like progress.
But that’s just about it. It just feels that way. But they're just expensive procrastination.
What Actually Moves the Needle:
The real work is uncomfortable.
It's manual. It's scary.
Here's what you should be doing, in order:
1. Find 10 Users. Manually.
- No automation
- No fancy systems
- Just you, reaching out, one by one
Do things that don’t scale.
2. Push an MVP
Not perfect. Not pretty. Just working.
Always remember, speed always beats perfection.
3. Talk to your users
- Schedule calls
- Send personal messages
- Listen to complaints
- Take detailed notes
- Eventually pivot, if you realize people want something eles
And implement those changes as fast as you can. Be a customer retention machine.
4. Change Until It's Useful
Not until it's perfect.
Until it actually helps someone.
Your product should drive a transformation.
5. Then (and Only Then) Think About building a dark mode (lol)
The Uncomfortable Truth
Yeah, I know. This is meant to be hard.
This means:
- No hiding behind design work
- No pretending email sequences matter
- No excuses about "building infrastructure"
Just raw, uncomfortable customer development.
"But What About..."
"But [successful company] has dark mode!"
Yeah, they added it after 100k users.
"But don't I need a professional image?"
Your first 100 users don't care about your logo.
"But shouldn't I prepare for scale?"
You don't need affiliate systems for 0 customers.
Focus on what's painful:
- Cold outreach
- Customer interviews
- Fixing bugs
- Making things work
Everything else is procrastination in disguise.
Even now, after arguably a fairly successful couple companies — I still have to think from ground up for most of my new products.
I did this process recently where I changed my products’ positioning.
Revid.ai was a “product video maker”, it’s now a “story video maker”, totally different angle and value prop.
Outrank.so was an “AI blog post writer”, it’s now an “AI Blog Manager”, which completely automates keyword management.
They solve a different problem, that I didn’t understand completely when I started working on them.
And that’s okay. As long as you are dedicated to figuring it out.
Your challenge this week:
If you’re reading this, I already know you are better than 93% hackers. If you want to jump to 95%, do this:
- List everything you're working on
- Be brutally honest - what's actually moving you forward?
- Cut everything else
- Do the uncomfortable work
Just one week, then come back and reply to this email telling me how your experience was.
Remember
Every minute spent on dark mode is a minute not spent talking to users.
Every hour perfecting your logo is an hour not improving your product.
Every day planning for scale is a day not finding product-market fit.
Hit reply with one thing you're stopping today. Hold yourself accountable. 👇🏻
Keep building (the right things) 💻
Tibo
P.S. About the title, no it didn’t.