Work Less, Communicate More

Work Less, Communicate More

A common mistake I see developers make is wasting hours, sometimes days, working on tasks that could be resolved in less than 15 minutes by talking to the right person on their team.

Working hard on a problem is good, but only when it’s good use of your time.

Communication is key. Don’t try to work your way through problems when they can be solved with better communication.

Also, overcommunicate with your manager. I’ve seen people spend 2-3 days on something only to find out it wasn’t needed. Heck, I’ve been there myself.

If you are worried about bothering your team members too much, just make sure to take good notes and respect their time. Never ask them the same question twice.

Buildspace.so Week 3

For my new subscribers—thanks for subscribing, btw—I’m working on Kal—an open-source self-hosted email newsletter app—as part of Buildspace Season 5.

Buildspace is a 6-week program where you take a project idea and bring it to completion. The first two weeks were easy, but week 3 is really picking up the pace.

By the end of this week, I aim to:

• Ship new features for Week 3

  • Email templates

  • Analytics: Link tracking and open rates

  • Support for multiple senders and authentication

  • config command, getting Kal ready for general use

• Write a tutorial post on my blog about getting started with Kal

• Create a landing page for Kal

• Make a launch video

• Post a launch update on X

• Create an updated demo video showcasing this week’s features

• Submit the Week 3 update for Buildspace

It’s going to be a crazy weekend.

Writing a Book

Last week, I talked about my Indie Hacker checklist and plans to write a book.

While I was focused on Kal this week, I’ve already outlined the book.

I’m also reading through Nathan Barry’s book: Authority. It’s the best resource I’ve found which walks through having a book idea to writing and self-publishing it. I highly recommend reading it if you are considering writing a book.

Reading the book made me realise there’s a lot more to writing a book than just writing. Marketing is tough.

Next week, I’ll—finally—unveil the book title and launch a pre-release landing page with an email opt-in.

This Week’s Recommendations

I spent 18 months rebuilding my algorithmic trading platform in Rust. I’m filled with regret. by Austin Starks

There’s a lot of pro-Rust sentiment out there, so it’s refreshing to see someone discuss its flaws.

I’m writing a CLI for Kal and was strongly considering implementing it in Rust but ended up picking Go. Rust sells itself well—and is kinda hot right now—but Go is the better choice for most use cases.

Microfeatures I Love in Blogs and Personal Websites by Daniel

This is a great list of microfeatures to consider for my blog. I also discovered Gwern.net through this blog post which is a great-looking, simple, readable blog.

---

Thanks for reading this issue! Please leave a comment or just say hi—I’d love to hear from you.

See you next Friday,
Tanay.