Hello and happy new 2021 devs!!
2020 has certainly affected our habits and routines.
Fortunately, I approached 2020 with the right mindset and even though I couldn't enjoy life as much as I'd have liked, I made the best out of it by 🚀 growing everyday.app, studying economics, 📕 reading a lot on neuroscience and hiking the ⛰️Pyrenees!
Here's a little summary of my 2020's resolutions:
📖 Watched at least 1 MOOC on Economics video on 97% of the days and hold a streak of 🔥322!
📕 Read 38/40 books. Read on 95% of the days! Best read? Probably The Black Swan.
👥 Met 112/1000 people. That's a 86% less people than last year... we all know why.
🚀 Grew my indie biz everyday.app from $4.8k/mo to $9.7k/mo. Worked on it 100% of the days!
💪 Did 16140 push-ups. Did push-ups on 100% of days.
🍏 Ate fruits/vegs on 90% of the days. I'm 20 days away from beating my own longest streak of 🔥144!
I also and most importantly managed to work on everyday.app every day! Of course some of the days weren't really moving the needle forward but I like to remember answering support emails from a mountain hut 2000m high!
When it comes to everyday.app, 2020 was definitely a good year. The year couldn't have started better, not only because of January being the best year of the month for habit trackers (New Year Resolutions hint hint ;D), but also because Apple got interested in helping grow the app. Everyday.app was App Of The Day on June 4th, 2020! Since then, I have added iOS14 Widgets, the macOS Desktop version of the app and just recently released the first version of the watchOS app! What a beauty! :P
My job to be done in 2021? Definitely focus more on growth than product. Change my identity enough so that marketing doesn't feel against my nature. Shoot me any ideas!
It will soon be 4 years since I wrote the first line of code of the then called everydayCheck and many times I still feel like I haven't done much of what I set out to do in 2017. Ideas move much faster than we can make them a reality! Even now that the app is generating way beyond I could have ever dreamt of, I still self-doubt about if I am investing my time and efforts on 'the right thing', or if I could be working on some other cooler thing. But then I understand that's in our nature, to want to try new things all the time, that's why we start side-projects in the first place!
Everyday.app has grown a lot in 4 years and I have grown a lot thanks to it. It is this growth in mindset that is key. To look into the past and think, how could I even worry about such a petty thing? I keep worrying about petty things now, the difference is that there's something at the end of my thought process that ends up with a "well, yeah you also worried about that other thing, so stop thinking and start executing because you are gonna get there". You just need to keep burning phases (first payment, first renewal, first angry customer, first viral exposure, first server down, first hire...) and enjoy it all the way. My point? Growing your mindset is what you have to work on, your business will follow.
Similar to how the benefit of habits only starts to be seen in the long term, so does working on a long term vision project. Every bit of effort compounds into making your product better, which turns into better convertion and retention. It's amazing to get emails commenting on posts I didn't remember having written or asking to fix details I had long forgotten about, due to the 'done is better than perfect' approach. It means people are seeing it and going through those, all the time, and getting value out of it!
I still think people give up on ideas too early. And in a way, I see that as people giving up on themselves and how much they can grow. Of course, you need to keep an open mind and be open to change your approach or reject bad ideas. In fact, you must. But there has to be a long term direction that leads and focuses your efforts!
My point here is, unless you are really sure you are going nowhere, work on your project everyday a little bit, for a very long time.
PS: By the way, I decided to start the year launching Everyday 2.021 on ProductHunt so make sure to check it out :)
PS2: As someone who enjoys product, code and business in equal proportions I struggled to find my path until I came across the idea of indie hackers. It's been a very enriching adventure so far and it's got me to meet a lot of awesome people. I like to feel I contributed to the movement with my awesome-indie github repo (https://github.com/mezod/awesome...). Feel free to contribute to keep it updated! Keep building every day! 🚀🚀🚀
Top comments (2)
great progress! keep up with the great work :)
Thanks George! :)