Why I Struggle to Build My Own Products: From the Profit Trap Back to the Joy of Creation

The Problem I Ran Into

I’m a product manager, and ever since I got into the industry, I’ve wanted to build products as an indie dev. Late last year, Cursor gave me just enough coding ability to actually build things. All those ideas that had been sitting in my backlog for ages started turning into reality, one by one. I was having a blast.

Then ambition crept in: making money. Looking through my “product manager” lens, most of my ideas weren’t monetizable. So I turned my gaze toward App Store charts, SEO keywords, and Xiaohongshu (a Chinese lifestyle and recommendation platform). That threw me straight into a vicious loop:

• Most ideas felt boring or worthless.
• Hunting for ideas by scraping charts and chasing keywords felt inelegant.
• I’d scoff at other people’s terrible ideas, while secretly envying their good ones.
• Lacking taste and judgment, I became paralyzed by implementation costs and the fear of failure, never daring to commit.

It was a terrible headspace. The harder I hunted for “user needs,” the more anxious I became—endlessly scrolling social feeds, dissecting user behavior, doing competitor analysis and tech stack research, but never getting past that stage.

From a product standpoint, this is a textbook case of struggling to find direction. But I had no fertile soil for genuine ideas to sprout in the first place, and at the same time, I looked down on the playbook of keyword research and leaderboard scraping. I was completely trapped in my own awkward contradiction.

Do I Really Have to Build Products?

When I finally asked myself this, I was surprised to realize I’d never once questioned it. The belief had become almost like a mental seal. On one hand, it carried my longing to escape the 9-to-5 grind and work for myself; on the other hand, building products is genuinely alluring—it scratches the creative itch while creating value for others. But once the demand for income took over, the original intent began to warp.

To put it another way: Is building products really my calling?

Among the ideas of “freedom” I subscribe to, discovering one’s calling is the path that makes the most sense to me. A calling, by definition, should be work that brings lasting joy, provides a decent income, and is worth dedicating a significant chunk of your time to. When the answer isn’t clear yet, the best thing I can do is make exploring possibilities the main focus:

• Let curiosity lead the way.
• Keep income off the table, and explore everything as an amateur.

Building products, then, definitely isn’t a necessity, nor is making money through them. It’s just one candidate for what a calling might look like.

How to Find New Ideas

The boundaries of product insight mostly depend on the boundaries of the creator. A 30-something adult can hardly empathize with how a 12-year-old thinks; and how can a longtime Apple user design better experiences for Android and Windows users, who make up the majority of the market?

Sure, there are proven methodologies for bridging those gaps. But once I broke free from the obsession with making money and started seeing creation as a journey toward finding my calling, exploring the possibilities within my own world became far more important.

Build Only for Myself

In terms of shipped projects, I’ve launched two:

• Obsidian File Ignore: an Obsidian plugin built to hide unused files in an Obsidian vault and keep it from slowing down.
• Raycast Penflow: an English writing assistant that polishes English phrasing and translates-plus-polishes mixed Chinese-English input.

The ironic part was that even though I was the original user with the problem, I soon stopped using both. The need for the Obsidian plugin disappeared once I changed how I organize files. As for Penflow, the actual use cases turned out to be far rarer than I’d anticipated. When you don’t use your own tool, there are no new itches to scratch, and you simply stop maintaining it.

That made me realize: if this is what happens when building for my own needs, trying to build for strangers is even worse. Choosing to build only things I personally use has significant advantages:

1. No need to worry about financial returns.
2. The pain point is relatively clear, and so is the shape of the solution.
3. It cuts out the mental friction and endless back-and-forth of second-guessing other people’s needs (like the 12-year-old empathy gap mentioned earlier).

Live My Own Life, and Let Ideas Surface Naturally

Instead of daydreaming a problem into existence, it’s better to live life well right now and explore new boundaries.

First, step back from immediate survival pressure and take care of myself. By tuning my sleep and exercise habits, carve out two to three hours a day for quiet thinking. And as long as I don’t hate my day job, I should view it through a positive lens—after all, it’s the domain I’m most deeply engaged in, and it takes up the largest part of my day.

Second, protect and nurture curiosity. I once told Gemini, feeling genuinely down: “I can’t find my curiosity anymore.” But soon enough, once I dropped the obsessions and mental noise, journaled more, and gave myself room to unwind, things improved dramatically. It had only been clouded over; it never actually vanished.

Finally, with curiosity as the foundation, just go play and make creative things. Not only do these projects bring joy and relieve stress, but they also continually test the reach and strength of how curiosity connects you with the world.

So, learn to live, and explore where interests, hobbies, and happiness come from. As Paul Graham wrote on his blog:

When in doubt, optimize for interestingness.

The goal of building products isn’t making money; money is just a byproduct. And good ideas don’t come from racking your brain—they’re the unexpected surprises you bump into while living an interesting life.