I can't believe that it's the end of the year already! Once again I am finding myself sitting down on the 31st of December, unsure which direction to take with this blog post. But in the spirit of my yearly tradition of doing these yearly reviews, here we go.
It's so hard to somehow summarize how an entire year went, because there are so many different perspectives that one can take. I feel like for me, this year went both amazingly and at the same time there was definitely a lot of room for improvement, depending on which area of life you look at. Let's start with the positive and then elaborate on some of the lessons I am trying to take from the not so great aspects of this year.
Growing and improving Timelines
I am delighted to be able to say that Timelines (my time tracking app) grew quite a lot this year. It's been on the App Store for 8 years already and this year I feel like the revenue from it got to a comfortable level. I feel really blessed. In no exaggeration, this is a dream come true for me, and I couldn't be happier about it.
Earlier in the year I have overhauled the initial onboarding sequence and, more importantly, added a 7-day free trial for the PRO version. This helped a lot because it allows people to fully try everything that the app has to offer before they commit to paying for it. This is one of those things that I probably should've done years ago, but that doesn't matter - it is there now and that's what counts.
Seeing the positive results of this is encouraging me to look at other opportunities to grow - what are some of the things that could potentially bring great results and which I've procrastinated on for a long time? It's so much easier for me to just work on improving the app as a whole, because that's where I feel comfortable and decently confident. With the growth and marketing tasks, it feels much less certain. But seeing how some of these did bring significant results in the last couple of years is helping me shift my mindset about it and give it a higher priority.
In terms of development, in February I released Timelines for Apple Vision Pro. Overall I've released three major updates during the year. I built support for Control Center widgets on iOS 18, and then later in the year, I started working on combined goals, which are still in progress.
Other things that contributed to the growth in a big way were creators talking about how and why they use Timelines. The biggest being CGP Grey on this episode of the Cortex podcast, and also Reysu talking about it in several videos on his YouTube channel (he has many great videos on productivity in general, you should take a look!)
Trips
While I feel like I've traveled less than in previous years, I'm happy for the trips that I did take. Back in February I went to Munich for a developer lab with Vision Pro. In March I spent a week cycling in Mallorca. Then in early summer, I went to Bosnia (Sarajevo and a road trip throughout the country) to visit a friend, which was an interesting but intense experience.
Upon coming back I had some sort of food poisoning / stomach flu, and still now thinking back to it, I am just so grateful that my digestion works fine most of the time. You don't appreciate these things until you are in grueling pain for several days, unable to consume any food or even water. But I digress.
In September I went to Spain for NSSpain (a developer conference in Logroño). It was super inspiring to meet many new people there and catch up with old friends. The last time I was in Logroño before that was in 2016, so it was interesting to reflect on what changed since then, and where had life taken me, and perhaps how I want to change the course.
In October I went to Croatia for 10 days with my dad, enjoying the remaining sun and warm weather, dividing my time between working and cycling.
And in December I went to Berlin for a couple of days for a developer event, also meeting several indies and getting inspired.
Struggling with productivity
This was definitely the biggest challenge for me this year. Throughout large parts of the year I found myself being really dissatisfied with how much (or rather how little) I am able to get done in any given week. The more encouraging friends would tell me that I'm too hard on myself, which is maybe a bit true, but at the same time I know that I could be getting more done if only I was more disciplined.
I found myself missing the times when I was more immersed in building some major new features in the previous years. It's definitely harder for me to keep the focus when it's smaller programming tasks combined together. And especially so when I am fighting the tools, which was the case with the Control Center widgets during the iOS 18 beta period.
Somehow this keeps being a recurring challenge of mine, and I fully recognize that I most likely don't see it completely objectively. It's just that the gap between my expectations of what I'd like to be getting done, and what actually ends up getting done, was too wide at times. I probably need to reduce my expectations and increase my work output, to make this gap narrower and therefore reducing the frustration.
Another part of this conundrum (and what actually gives me a lot of optimism for addressing this more in 2025), is that I'd never been more optimistic about where this project and this career can go. The growth this year has shown me that it's possible. And also I still love working on the app. So I am eager to work more, to truly seize this opportunity. I feel like by "phoning it in" and being sloppy about my routine and about how I organize my time - it's just unnecessarily reducing the potential of where this thing could go. But all that being said, in some ways, I also feel like I need to do more stuff outside of work. So in a way, I work both too much and too little. If all this is too confusing, I'm sorry. This is just what happens in my head, and this is what happens when I am just winging it with this blog post as I go, haha.
As I was reflecting on this, here are some of the things that I'd like to prioritize in 2025 in terms of productivity:
- staying more on top of customer support
- keeping both my physical and digital spaces clean. Browser tabs, files on the desktop, etc.
- reducing the small day-to-day friction that accumulates over time
- doing a better job of allowing myself to rest, to take a break when I feel overwhelmed, instead of trying to 'push through it'
- do a better job of reducing distractions throughout the day
- having long stretches of uninterrupted & focused working time
Update on physical and mental well-being
I always try to have a section about this in my yearly reviews. I'd say overall things were good-ish. I feel like this year, especially in the first half, I struggled with getting sick quite often, which was tough.
On the positive side of things, I continued exercising with a personal trainer + by myself, and whenever I got to a routine where I was doing it consistently, I noticed how I just felt better, both physically and mentally. This is definitely something I want to make a priority in 2025.
On the mental health side of things, I definitely still struggled with anxiety throughout various parts of the year, but I feel like less so than before. A major family-related drama towards the end of the year certainly didn't help. I still have a lot of work to do in this area, and I am warming up to the idea of trying therapy again, after having had a break from it for the last two years. Plus I want to read more books about the related topics in 2025, such as No Bad Parts by Richard Schwartz. It's about healing trauma with the internal family systems model, and it was recommended to me by several friends.
One thing that was quite rough this year is that many of the people from my core friends group at the international coworking space where I work left the country. I know that that's part of the deal when hanging out with expats and I sort of accepted that over the years, but it was definitely worse this year. This made me realize that I want to try to be a better friend to those who are still here. And a better friend in general.
The world shifting
I am both fascinated and worried about the major advancements in generative AI that we've seen this year. I am trying to be conscious about using it, and it has been very helpful for me especially when solving some obscure technical problems. But in terms of how this will change the world in the long term: I worry about the repercussions. Any picture or text or video you see online, you will have to always question whether it's real or not. Many jobs will disappear. I think that in the long term, the 'human touch' on digital products will be the biggest differentiating factor because that's what will be the hardest for the AI to replicate and imitate.
This really feels like the beginning of a major transition, the world literally shifting underneath our feet. And while I have my reservations about it, I want to try to be using it as much as I can where it makes, and I'd recommend you do the same. The train is leaving the station, and if you don't jump in now you just might get left behind.
To wrap up, while this year had its ups and downs, I am very grateful for it overall and I can't wait to see what 2025 will bring. If you've made it all the way to the end of this blog post, thank you for reading! I wish you all the best in the upcoming year! 🙌