Welcome to this week’s Side Quest. In this issue:
Leif takes a break and conquers his burnout.
Cathy starts afresh and ended up completing 3 projects!
Jo shares a nifty Notion database view tip.
Farez uses this newsletter to help him write.
Read more below!
From Leif
I know I talked a lot about burnouts, but it seemed to happen again.
Started off with a flu, and that triggered my body alarm. “Leif, you need a break!”
I was half-way through my #5Weeks challenge, prepping for my 4th story and product, so I can’t stop now. But somehow, I did.
I thought I would be taking advantage of my trip to Jakarta, but everything slowed down. Few weeks in and I’m now at my hometown in Miri, Sarawak (the Borneo side) for a small family gathering.
Tomorrow is Independence Day for Malaysia, my home country. Going to climb the popular Niah cave with my family. So, another off day for me.
Hoping to get something done the next day. So do follow me on Twitter: leifjerami.
#5Weeks will be back next week, for sure!
Already figuring out the next “tiny” products, I can’t wait to start working!
Cheers,
Leif-FG
From Cathy
Sometimes a blank slate (and a side quest) can make all the difference. I started last week stuck and ended it with three projects built and progress on my next.
My first side quest was Notion Genius - a mini site dedicated to Notion resources. I’ve still got to fill in content (currently using placeholder content) but it’s got all the starting functionality I want.
This gave me the confidence and skills refresher to do a redesign on my main quest BrillUp to reflect a major pivot in the startup.
Then I was writing up my learning for this newsletter when it got too long and I realised it was more of a blog post, but I didn’t have a personal blog. So I started one, You can read the post here (and find out how a blank slate helped).
Lastly, all that momentum pushed me to start my next project - the Notion Genius bundle. Here’s some info if you’re curious - and do reach out if you’d like to be involved!
A few tools that helped me get all that done were Llama Life, Lofi and my absolute favourite project manager Linear. And writing them down, I see they all start with the letter L… 😮
From Jo
Hello,
My side-quest has gone full circle and led to me getting paid contract work setting up a Notion solution for a film production company!
So for the last few weeks, I've been working on understanding all the film production terminology and figuring out how Notion can be used to help run the business.
One Notion trick I'm using for this project is embedding a view of a database inside a page in a related database. So in the film production database page, I want to see a database view of only the invoices related to that film. It took me a while to figure out but I have finally got it working.
If you want to know to do this in Notion, I've written a step-by-step guide that walks you through the process.
Jo
From Farez
I love writing. It’s also not my favourite thing to do.
If you’ve looked into starting a business, these popular advice will sound familiar: “start a blog!”, “start a newsletter!”, or “build in public!”.
The problem is that writing is not something that comes naturally to everyone. Or for me, it’s not something that starts naturally.
But, doing something as a group does motivate me. So I was stoked when Leif, Cathy and Jo agreed to join me in creating this newsletter. We are at various stages of making writing a habit, so running a newsletter together will (hopefully!) help.
In addition, our readers will also get to look behind the scenes of not just one, but four makers and founders trying to build sustainable and profitable businesses.
I hope you enjoy the issues to come.