How do you score yourself as an indie hacker?

If I had to score myself I'd say a solid 7 and probably would stay there forever as I feel like there is always more to learn. Conditions change, so what I know today may not matter as much tomorrow.

In general, I know enough to THINK I know what I'm doing and most of the time know what I don't know.

My strengths are being a chameleon and being able to dig in and learn things. See the patterns and hit get to 80% competency pretty quick.

Weaknesses are at times difficult to focus, analysis paralysis, and trying to do too much at the same time. I try to compensate for the weaknesses by using process and routine.

To start, I love this question as a data experiment. “How do you score yourself as an indie hacker?” People are happy to throw numbers... without a scale. “I’m a 7!” Out of what? Five? Ten? A hundred?

Not to be overly pedantic. You go on and be the best seven you can be.

Me? I’d score myself four-out-of-ten as an Indie Hacker. I’m a designer. I lack a lot of back-end and marketing skills. And my business acumen is questionable. And I’m no accountant. And...

And, and, and, and...

Four-out-of-ten doesn’t really mean I doubt myself. I’d wager most people here are threes or fours. A standard human is unquestionably a zero. I do not say that perjoratively.

It’s a tough road, Indie Hacking. If you’re lucky, and tenacious, maybe you get to add +1 with a partner. And with that partner, eventually add +2 with some kind of staff. Maybe more.

Or maybe you just level up your skills. I don’t know.

Me? I’m a four. Out of... x.

I'd grade myself at about 15%.

In my first two businesses, sales was my main strength. I haven't done that much in ages and now I'd say I'm good at learning and I have endurance. I'm not capitalizing well on the learning, but maybe the endurance will pay off.

I need to improve at is focus. I have a terrible, terrible time deciding what matters to me and why in any given moment. Motivation can also be a problem if I don't believe what I'm doing matters. For some reason I find it much easier to stay motivated helping others than when working on my own project.

The only plan I have is experimentation. Maybe I can find something that aligns well with my strengths and minimizes or helps me avoid my weaknesses.

The good:
I have a software engineer background, so I'm good at building web and back-end apps.

How can I capitalize on it?
Given an idea, I am able to build something, integrate any third party api's and deploy it.
Hosting and the nitty gritty things like sorting out SSL and DNS, custom email setup etc. all I can do.

The bad:
Focusing on one idea and sticking to it. I have a tendency to work on something for a few months, then I may get bored and move onto something else. I have a tendency to have a fear of "the idea" may not be good enough or I lose interest in it.
Also, I tend to perhaps over analyse things. I end up building or thinking of scenarios of "what if's", "I need xyz"

How am I improving it?
I'm going to try and launch earlier to perhaps gauge an early audience. Maybe even start with a landing page and or keep MVP's to a minimum amount of building time such as X days. Or as Jason Cohen describes MVP's as SLCs! For those interested: https://blog.asmartbear.com/slc.html

What are you good at, and how are you capitalizing on it?
What do you need to improve at, and how are you going about improving?

Strength: making my son laugh. Capitalizing by taking it all in. Weakness: too many projects, not enough chops to execute one to profitability.

I'd give myself a 6.5

Strong points:

• Motivated
• Boatload of ideas
• Can implement/test ideas fast
• Out of the box thinker

Weak points:

• Sticking to one project
• Staying consistent without burning out
• Building my projects out enough to where I am able to monetize
• I hate Twitter - makes it harder to build an audience

Need to chew over this a bit more to come up with a plan of action 🤔

On a scale of 0-10 I might be 1 as I haven't done anything yet.

Good: I have my ideas, thoughts and understanding - not very mature but it gives me some confidence that i'll do great someday (hopefully good enough within a year). I let myself dwell and daydream about stuff so as expand on these.

Bad: I am not productive at all - tend to procrastinate most of the time. That's why i'm building a productivity app - hopefully it works and I skyrocket to success. This is difficult but i'm utilizing all short productivity bursts to move the needle forward.

Maybe a 6 but I skew low as I expect most of us imposter-syndrome types would do.

Could it be that actually pulling the trigger on some plans and actually building a thing sets us apart?

I generally try only to measure execution of plans, rather than completion of what is too often an over ambitious end game. I always need to improve at that, but I do think I do better in that regard than most. A dedication to always being 1% better than I used to be seems to have added up to some measure of success. I figure I should keep that much rolling at the very least.