2024 in review
How to write an intro for a blog post after 3 years of not publishing one? 🤔
I’ll just skip it and get started right away. I want to write a recap about 2024. Everything that happened, from why I didn’t achieve my goals, to what I’ve experienced, and where I am now.
At the end, I also want to give an overview about what’s on the plate for 2025 and my future plans in general. Let’s go 👇
How the year started
In January, the partnership between me and my friend Anki ended. We founded our company in 2021, and after three years, we decided to move on separately. I don’t want this blog post to explode, so I won’t go into detail. I just want to say that we’re still good friends. In fact, we still worked at the same client for the second half of the year, just as independent contractors.
But still, this event caused some changes in my mind. Now, I’m leading the company alone and making all the decisions on my own.
While it’s what I wanted, it’s a big change you have to get familiar with.
My plans to focus on my product
So I started to set my plans for 2024. I still had my running client contract until mid-February. Afterwards, I wanted to focus full-time on snappify and launching a new product. But then a friend reached out: one of his clients is looking for a senior developer to help restructure their frontend architecture and lead the juniors until they find a new employee internally.
The project sounded like a perfect fit, so I decided to go for it since 2023 was tough for finding clients. In hindsight, I still think it was the right decision. It was a nice working environment and I could work on a great product and do stuff I love, while extending my runway.
But of course, it kinda destroyed my goal to focus on my own products. While I was busy with this new client project from February until July, I became aware that I burned out from product development. I just tried to push through it and do both things at the same time, but I didn’t have enough energy and the motivation to work on my products got lower and lower.
I think the fact that I relentlessly worked on the company (freelancing + product development) for the past three years without a decent break also played a big role here.
I’ll become a second-time father
In May, quite some big news popped up: my wife got pregnant! 🥳
We always had the dream to have two kids. I don’t have siblings and I always wanted my child to grow up with one. We imagine it to be the perfect size for our little family.
In November, our son turned 4 years old, and now we’re awaiting a little daughter in early 2025 🥰. It’s hard to express in words how happy I am about this, and I’m sure that next year will be an awesome year - with its own little challenges.
Of course, that also has quite an impact on my goals and how I want to lay out my year. But more on that later.
I took a whole month off
After finishing my client work at the end of July, I was in talks with my previous client about continuing our contract. We agreed to continue our work in September, so I decided to take a whole month off in August. Something I haven’t done in about 10 years.
But as I felt the burnout getting more serious, it was the absolute right decision. I got myself a gaming laptop, bought Diablo 4 and just let go to play games, relax, and not think about work at all. My wife also had vacation during that time, so we did several day trips with our son. I had a great time, could reconnect with friends and family and just recharge my batteries.
At the end of August, I also felt the urge to work on my own products again and even managed to push some small features for my product snappify.
Nutrition & Workouts
During August, it also became clear to me that getting out of my burnout and fighting depressive thoughts won’t just work by playing video games and spending time on other things, hoping that things will get better on their own.
I had to actively work on it and, as I experienced in the past, nutrition & physical workouts can do wonders to increase your mental health. I also wasn’t very happy with my body shape and after eating chips & drinking beer en masse during the UEFA Euro 2024, I felt it was time for a change.
I started to set myself another goal: to be in the best shape of my life, physically, as well as mentally, until the summer of 2025. First, I only started to do intermittent fasting. As that became a habit, I also stepped into a gym to get my body used to lifting weights again.
In hindsight, I can say that this was one of the biggest factors to get out of my rut. It filled my mind with positive energy and got me motivated. Eating and living healthy has to be the first priority, no matter what your goals are. I feel like this is worth its own blog post.
Continuing at my previous client
In September, I continued at my previous client. I helped them to deliver features for their product on the frontend side.
We still had a contract running, so we agreed to keep working together until the end of the year. It’s also a very nice place to work at, I’m part of a scrum team and as for all of my freelancing work: it extends my runway to give me freedom for working on my own products in the future.
And as my workouts and healthier nutrition granted me more energy and better focus, I also started to work on my products on the side again.
My unpublished product
Since I launched snappify in early 2021, I didn’t work on any other products. New ideas popped up since then, but I always wanted to put my full focus on it and grow it bigger. But at some point, I just couldn’t resist, and in late 2023, I finally started implementing another idea that was in my head for quite some time.
Throughout 2024, I posted several teasers about it and that I plan to launch the first version soon. But it never happened and it’s actually a bit embarrassing for me.
The main reason why I still haven’t launched it is because I’m a perfectionist and I want to have all the answers ready when I’m launching. It’s not a groundbreaking idea, actually the opposite is the case: it’s a very well established market and competing with a lot of other products.
Actually, I’m already using it for snappify under the hood, and my goal for 2025 would be to either finally launch it (and then iterate + improve it over time), or ditch it completely and move on to another idea so it doesn’t hold me off anymore.
Reclaiming my motivation
I know by heart that working on my products is what I want to do in the long run. Working on someone else’s ideas doesn’t have to be bad and you can learn many things while doing so, but it’s not what I want to do for the rest of my life.
The different aspects of building a product and working tightly together with the users of my apps, are what bring me joy and feel wholesome. After recently reading the book “Good Work” by Paul Millerd, I can say that this is my Good Work, and I still want it to become my main income source that feeds me and my family.
I have to be more careful with my energy levels. Pushing through building products without a pause or recharging batteries is not going to work. But I want to reach my goal and the learnings I made this year took me a step closer.
Future plans
In early 2025, my main focus will definitely be on my family. I have the privilege to take some time off and I’m planning to take at least the whole of February for welcoming our little daughter. Of course, there are several things to take care of and we need to get used to our new family life 😄
In January, before the baby will be born, I will do some work on snappify and think about other product ideas I want to tackle (or already have started to tackle).
And now comes the big question: what am I going to do from March onwards? As I said, I have accumulated quite some runway due to a lot of freelancing work in the past years, and I also want to make use of it.
It doesn’t make sense that I always talk about building up runway to fully focus on my products, if I never do it in the end. I’m probably not going to concentrate on them full-time for the whole year, but I’m definitely planning on doing that for several months in 2025. I want to make a difference and get closer to my goal of making a living around my products.
YouTube, Social Media, Blogging
If you want to follow my journey, I’m currently active on these 4 platforms:
Feel free to follow me there as I share learnings and achievements almost on a daily basis.
For years, I was also thinking about starting a YouTube channel. I imagine that sharing my journey there would be a nice addition to the other text-based platforms mentioned above.
At the moment I’m feeling closer to starting one than ever before, but I can’t promise that I manage to do it with so many things going on next year.
Additionally, as writing this blog post was a lot of fun, you might also see me publishing a new article here and then 😄
Thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it. Wish you and your loved ones some nice holidays and a happy new year! 🥳