标签：#motivation

What are your goals for the week? What are you building this week? What do you want to...

One of my favorite words in the startup and product-building world is pivot. For a long time, I thought a failed project meant wasted time. Today, I see it differently. Every project I worked on—even the ones that never gained users or reached the finish line—taught me something I couldn't have learned from books alone. They taught me how to validate ideas, communicate with users, make technical decisions, prioritize features, and, most importantly, when to change direction. I've come to believe that many successful founders didn't succeed because they had the perfect first idea. They succeeded because their previous attempts gave them the experience to recognize a better opportunity. In fact, I think that if many of them had started directly with the project that eventually made them successful, they might have failed. They first needed the lessons, the mistakes, and the discipline that came from building things that didn't work. I'm still on that journey. Some of my own projects didn't succeed the way I had hoped, but I don't consider them failures. They were investments in experience. Every project made me a better builder and helped me better understand what I want to create and how I should create it. One principle that keeps me moving comes from the Quran: «"Indeed, Allah will not change the condition of a people until they change what is within themselves." (Quran 13:11)» And another verse that reminds me to stay patient during difficult times: «"Allah does not burden a soul beyond what it can bear." (Quran 2:286)» If you're building something today and it isn't working, don't be afraid to pivot. Sometimes changing direction isn't giving up—it's applying everything you've learned so far. I'm curious: Have you ever pivoted a project? What did it teach you?

After stumbling by on an old machine for too long I finally got a new Macbook. I am now on current...

There's a phase almost every developer gets stuck in. You're consuming tutorials, bookmarking articles, finishing courses, and buying books you'll read "eventually." You're learning constantly — but you're not producing anything. You're just... absorbing. That's the learning vacuum. And if you've been there, you know how easy it is to confuse staying busy with making progress. At some point, the shift has to happen. You stop being a sponge and start being a signal. Here's how I started making that turn. Start a Daily or Weekly Code Journal You don't need a blog, a brand, or an audience for this. Just a file. A note. Anything. Write down what you built, what broke, and what you figured out. Even one sentence counts. I like to write a quick sentence and how many hours, just like if you were filling in an invoice for contract work. The act of putting it into words forces you to actually process what you learned instead of letting it blur into the background noise of your brain. Over time, those entries start to look like a roadmap — and you realize you've come further than you thought. Code Something You Actually Want to Build Pick something dumb. Pick something fun. A browser game, a weird UI experiment, a tool that solves exactly one tiny problem in your life. I signed up for DEV Challenges , Summer Bug Challenge and upcoming Weekend Challenge to get my ball rolling. The best projects I've ever worked on had no real-world utility. They were just interesting to me. And that interest kept me showing up even when things got hard. A tutorial can't give you that. Only a project you actually care about can. Find Your People Whether it's here or a Discord server, a local meetup, a dev community on Farcaster or Lens, or just a forum thread you keep coming back to — find somewhere to show up regularly. Lurking is fine at first. But eventually, drop a comment. Answer a question you know the answer to. Share something you built. Community is where isolated learning becomes shar

My hackathon journey didn't start with winning. It started with losing. My first hackathon was BlueHacks 2025 . We spent almost all of our time building and very little time understanding the business side of our project. When it came time to pitch, we struggled to explain why our solution mattered. That experience taught me an important lesson: A great product means nothing if people don't understand its value. Next came GCash's invite-only hackathon . We didn't win, but I walked away with something more valuable than a trophy. I learned more about product thinking, working with data, and met someone named Neo, who would later become a key part of my hackathon journey. Then came the YSES Hackathon . Once again, we fell short. We believed we had built a strong solution, but we made the same mistake. We focused too much on the technology and too little on market validation, business models, and the value our product created. Everything changed during Based Space Batch 002 . It was my first international blockchain hackathon, and it completely changed how I approached building products. During the program, Sir Eli Becislao, then Country Lead of Base Philippines, emphasized the importance of storytelling, pitching, and business strategy. That was when I realized hackathons aren't just coding competitions. They're startup simulations. Our team eventually pivoted our idea and built NameThat , a Web3 platform on Base where users could earn rewards for creative names and ideas. Although we didn't win, we received the Most Pivoting Project Award , recognizing how much we improved our solution throughout the competition. That experience became a turning point. Next was the Philippine Blockchain Week ICP Hackathon . Simply being selected as one of the Top 50 teams in the Philippines already felt like an achievement. Then we were invited to present FarmChain on the Philippine Blockchain Week stage. When the results came out, we finished Top 6 out of 50 teams . To some, sixth p

Ready for a new week. All that's left from ren faire is packing down some tent walls and floor one...