Rounding up my #Commit365 challenge 2024

It was 31 December 2024. Day 366. It’s done. At least one commit a day, for one (leap) year.

Some reflections about consistency (and it’s not all good):

Some numbers first:

Shipped 19 projects in 2024 –

• 3 new projects
• 12 Carrd plugins
• 4 hobby projects, for social good, for laughs

Made a few hundred dollars on the new products. It paid for a few dinners. But no PMF for the new products. Consistency on Carrd paid off though. So consistency ensured shipping volume and efficiency, and steady growth for existing with PMF products, but not effectiveness towards the goal of finding a product with PMF.

Some thoughts:

1. Consistency is overhyped.

• Just consistency alone is not enough. I had right effort, but my products didn’t have product-market fit. So effort had limited ROI. Need to fix PMF next year!
• When pre-PMF, be consistent in experiments. When post-PMF, be consistent at growth.

2. Consistency is underrated.

• It’s easy to think work smart, not work hard. But the easiest, most accessible way for everyone to increase your luck surface area is through consistency. Do both!

3. Sometimes you just want to give up.

• I did, as you can see the chart in April-June. I was literally just making 1 single commit a day. This is coming from a guy with a 1400 day streak on Lifelog. I’m no stranger to consistency, but in a new arena, it’s like starting over from zero.
• But that’s the benefit of making a promise to yourself to keep a streak. It comes through on your low days to help you grit through it.

4. The journey would have been a lot less richer, if not for the Commit365 crew.

• ~80 fellows committed to the core, making it a lot less lonely. The #dadjokes help too!
• Many of the #commit365 folks didn’t do all 366 days. That’s fine too. It’s the trying that’s the important part. You know what they say about shooting for the moon:

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.”

What’s next, in 2025?

Start over from zero! Man, restarting from zero felt harder than I thought. To be honest, I struggled to get through the whole year. Thought I could use a break. But then, those felt like excuses excuses excuses. I still need to get to my goal of $10k/m revenue, and I can’t get there without consistency for sure! It’s necessary, even if not sufficient.

But things might start getting fun. We’re starting a new project for the Commit365 community - a leaderboard. It could be a home for the community, and to pull the C365 directory and my GitChart tool together.

I believe that’s a great way to start. Just mess around, tinker and think, to explore and experiment. Keep following my curiosity, keep building, and maybe an idea might come along.

In a way, what I wrote when rounding my Github streak challenge in 2023 still rings true:

Which bring me back to one of the biggest lessons I learned this year, about accepting my season. I think with my household situation, family commitments, daily schedules, lifestyle rhythms, new roles as husband, dad and son, being sole provider, doing consulting and all, I’m in a season of life where I can’t bank on old habits and measure myself on past benchmarks. I can’t ship fast, but I can ship smooth and slow. I can’t leverage on short bursts of intensity, but I can do sure and steady releases of consistency. I can’t launch a project over a weekend, but I can fill an ocean a pebble a day, over days and weeks of embarrassingly small effort.

Both work. Both gets results. It’s not that intensity is better than consistency, nor vice versa.

But now I see for myself how my season had shifted to the latter. And I should just accept that, embrace that.

Only this time, it’s a season of experimenting and exploration.

Grand adventures incoming!