tabacitu
Joined 9 years ago
Karma
94
Submissions
9
Member since
Oct 18
Recent submissions
Comment · 10 months ago
Tried it for a real estate search, and to my surprise - it’s better than the “alerts” at major real estate marketplaces. It was particularly useful to me since I don’t speak the language in the area I’m trying to buy.
Just wondering what other use cases there are…
Comment · 2 years ago
I am going through the same thing myself right now. After eight years of running this small product, I’ve gotten to the point where the revenue hasn’t increased significantly, but the complexity of Admin work has increased exponentially.
I plan to make it this year’s theme to simplify. For me that means:
- automating or delegating all recurring tasks;
- eliminating all processes that have become complex but are not worth it;
Eg:
- I plan to move from Stripe to Paddle (MoR) because I don’t want to deal with EU taxes anymore; we’ve save me a few hours every month + A few hundred dollars on accounting;
- we gave an affiliate program that isn’t working out great; i plan to cut it;
- we have a referral program… same, cut it;
- we have a public email address, cut it;
- etc.
In addition, what’s worked for me so far is day-theming. Mon & Tue are for admin and management. Wed-Fri are creative - I don’t even open my inbox some days. I checked recently, the world is not on fire.
P.S. One of the automation tools I use it https://recurrr.com - saves me a few hours every month. Not a lot. But enough to have kept it alive for the past 7 years (under a different name).
Comment · 3 years ago
I read it the same way, yes. Good point with the cleanup:
- it’s one thing to need to run build for it to work;
- it’s another thing to run build to make it smaller;
Comment · 3 years ago
Why? Why does it need to be good for big projects in order to be good practice?
I’m genuinely asking. I never understood this argument that people bring.
In my view, the web is 95% small to medium projects. Most technologies should be focused on that - simple solutions for simple projectS. Add complexity later.
Comment · 8 years ago
Love personal automation.
- found a service where in the morning they bring 3 meals + 2 snacks, everything you should eat for the day; especially during stressful times, it's so so good not have to think about food; you just eat what you've been given; - I no longer trade cryptos myself, I have Shrimpy, HodlBot and Iconomi to do that for me; this may not be "personal" but it saves me at least 10 hours every week, and the performance is a little better than my dumb self; - I found a shirt I adored, so I bought a bunch of identical ones; this in addition to having identical socks and identical underwear makes it that I only have to choose&match my pants and shoes; and mine kind of all match; saves headspace; - I never read or watch news; only read headlines in newsletters I trust; saves time and headspace; - I used Github Probots to automate A LOT of replies issues/PRs; I consider this "personal" because it's tied to my hobby;
In addition, for the past 6 months I've turned a bunch of things I was doing / wanted to do into emails. I've built https://schedulethatemail.com/ for that sole purpose, help me do the stuff I wasn't doing, or that was repetitive (shameless self-promotion, I know). Here are some of the personal things I've automated through email, though some are now canceled:
- I used to forget/postpone seeing some friends I really care about, now I automatically email them to catch up (different intervals 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months); some have no idea it's automated :-) - I always wanted to write a journal, but never stuck to it; now I receive an email from myself each day with a few questions, 8/10 times I answer; works because I use my email as my todo list; push notifications don't work for me; - I have this poem, this mantra, this whatchamacallit that I like to read every day, to remind myself of who I am, my values and principles; especially when I interact with people I don't like, every day, it helps me stay myself, and not change in a bad way; works because I use my email as my todo list; - I automatically email my landlord, accountant, etc to tell them I've done something, or I'll do something within 24 hours, before they even ask; self-applied peer pressure - I'm on time most months now;
I had more, but I forget...
Comment · 8 years ago
"_Start with what you know_" - amin to that. I also found this is the most important consideration for this decision. I've made the mistake of applying the "_if it fails, at least I used and learnt a new system_" logic, but every time I did that, I still preferred my old stack. So I ended up taking 2x as much time to build, to re-use nothing of the learning (on the development front). I'm now a big believer in the "_build fast, fail fast_" mantra.
My favorite stack: nginx, PostgreSQL/MySQL, PHP 7.1/7.2, Laravel, BackpackForLaravel for admin panels, jQuery/Vue.js
That being said, I'm the creator of BackpackForLaravel. So my productivity is off-the-charts with it, and I'm probably biased towards PHP. I think PHP is underrated, especially in the US & Silicon Valley. It's "cool" to hate on PHP for its past mistakes, and I agreed on many of them, but nowadays, with Laravel... - it's a joy to work in it (I now like it better than Ruby) - you get _so much_ done, so fast - I've been able to easily scale it for millions of users (I've built a social network, a video-on-demand app, an e-learning app - for clients, not myself) - PHP/Laravel developers are easy to find, all across the world, when you need it - there's a plethora of good agencies that use it, if you ever want to outsource the entire development team
IMHO, Laravel is here to stay. And with BackpackForLaravel for admin apnels, I hope it'll soon be on par with Django.
Comment · 9 years ago
Hi guys,
Long time reader, but first time poster on Hacker News, so please be gentle :-)
I've built this tool for myself a few months back and it has been so useful to me that I decided to turn it into a product. I would definitely pay for it, so naturally I'm wondering if others might too.
The idea is simple - everything in my life that happens every day/week/month/etc and I can turn into an email, I do it. Meetings, follow-ups, catch-ups, weekly tasks, monthly reminders, etc. Usually I procrastinate this kind of stuff, but I discovered once I send an email to someone, that's basically a promise, so I don't back down. It's replaced a lot of things I kept in Google Calendar, Asana and Todoist and kept postponing, and it makes me look like a productivity machine :-) I've also managed to turn 5-6 short meetings every week into status emails, so I personally save >10 hours/month thanks to my own service :-) Not bad, right?
I run an open-source project and a small web dev company, so the most helpful thing I use it for is to send an email to each client, every 6 months, to ask what's up and "_who do you know who can use my services?_". I knew I was supposed to do that, but I never did. Now I do do it, because it's automated. And the first time the emails got sent, I got 2 new leads. So yeah :-)
Eager to see what you guys like, what you don't, and what emails you decide to automate. Always looking to automate more of my professional life, so looking to you for inspiration.
Thanks, cheers!
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