I will not care about numbers for my indie dev in 2025
Hi, it's Takuya. I've been taking a year-end and New Year break until January 20th and have been reflecting on my personal goals for 2025. I'd like to share my thoughts in this post.
Have you ever run a profitable web service for more than 5 years? Or managed a channel with over 200k subscribers? I'm not saying this to brag, but I would genuinely love to connect with others who are in the same position. The challenge is that I no longer have anyone close to share my struggles with. If you've achieved living off of your own product and gained the recognition you once desired, what becomes the next goal? What drives you to keep going for the next five years? In the beginning, there was nothing to protect or safeguard. But now, with a profitable business, a sizable audience, and strong competitors, the stakes feel much higher. This is a significant, life-scale question. Let's think about it.
The video version is available on YouTube:
Being obsessed with numbers drains your happiness and tranquility
Last year, I was overly focused on numbers: pricing, the number of paying customers, churn rates, conversion rates, channel growth, view counts, and so on. While these metrics are important for running a business, they significantly impacted my happiness and enjoyment of working on my projects. It was difficult to fully immerse myself in the joy of creating. I learned how hard running a business over the years is.
For instance, when I worried about metrics like, "How much traction will this content get?" my focus shifted away from myself and toward external validation. My efforts became more about pleasing others than fulfilling my own creative desires on my YouTube channel. While this isn't entirely negative, it greatly influenced what I chose to create and how much I enjoyed the process. Even worse, YouTube Studio keeps pushing me to compare the performance with the past videos like so:
It makes sense because 'better content' means content that gains more views, more engagements, and more view duration for YouTube itself to sell more ads. On the other hand, I'm no longer able to genuinely enjoy people's reactions.
Regarding my indie app project Inkdrop, my anxiety and fear of not attracting new users or losing existing customers weighed heavily on my mind. These concerns influenced how I spent my time, even affecting my subconscious thoughts when I was with my family. Although, I managed to improve numbers a little, as I shared in this post last year.
This year, I would like to try a different approach to confronting these pressures so that I can maintain a healthy pace, avoid getting burned out again, and keep going. I decided to set my KPI (Key Performance Indicator) as my happiness because I don't have any VCs pushing me to pursue making my business bigger and bigger. I believe this will eventually yield great benefits for my customers and audience. Let me explain why.
Taking back my creativity by solely enjoying what I love
Interestingly, the more you work hard, the less your creativity sparks. Without pressure to work hard, you can find room to experiment with new ideas, embrace your mistakes, and are more likely to succeed in making unique and interesting things. Daniel H. Pink pointed out an interesting fact in his book:
"The commissioned works were rated as significantly less creative than the non-commissioned works, yet they were not rated as different in technical quality. Moreover, the artists reported feeling significantly more constrained when doing commissioned works than when doing non-commissioned works."
— Daniel H. Pink, "Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us"
It happens to me as well. When I was working as a freelancer, I was very conservative in choosing tech stacks and planning development roadmaps. I prioritized safely finishing the contract work within the required schedule.
As an artist creating software and content that no one told me to do in the first place, I should solely enjoy creating stuff, including its process. I sometimes felt stressed out and tired after trying to live up to the expectations of those who suggested feature ideas or video topics because my work now feels similar to commissioned works. Don't get me wrong, I don't mean feedback is useless, and I always appreciate it – but the downside is that it silently shifts my goals and motivation. Being obsessed with numbers also makes me constantly switch my work to 'commission mode,' where I feel obligated to do it.
Feedback is basically linear thoughts based on what people already know, like, "I want feature X because app B supports it," and "Please make more videos like this one." The feedback itself won't make your work stand out. It is like physical reflections against your move, in which you take the balance. To get interesting insights and ideas outside of local maximum thoughts, you have to embrace solitude – as if you are thirsty and seeking water. As Karl Lagerfeld, a German fashion designer known as the creative director of Chanel, said:
"People who do a job that claims to be creative have to be alone to recharge their batteries. You can’t live 24 hours a day in the spotlight and remain creative. For people like me, solitude is a victory."
— Karl Lagerfeld
Returning to the early days, I released Inkdrop not because anyone wanted it but because I wanted it. I published videos because I had interesting things worth sharing, not because they were requested. Let me say it again: no one told me to make them. That means my creativity sparks best when I try to fulfill my own creative needs without worrying about what others think. The meaning of the word "productivity" is completely different here – it is not the number of issues solved or videos published.
You can't completely escape from anxiety
Okay, then, let's make myself alone. It sounds so simple, but to be honest, I was scared to try it. It is not that easy when you have an audience and customer base. To this matter, I found this study encouraging, quoted in Daniel's book:
"Those artists who pursued their painting and sculpture more for the pleasure of the activity itself than for extrinsic rewards have produced art that has been socially recognized as superior," the study said. "It is those who are least motivated to pursue extrinsic rewards who eventually receive them."
— Jean Kathryn Carney, "Intrinsic Motivation and Artistic Success" (unpublished dissertation, 1986, University of Chicago); J. W. Getzels and Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, The Creative Vision: A Longitudinal Study of Problem-Finding in Art (New York: Wiley, 1976).
It's interesting because I've observed that amazing software developers seem to solely enjoy their work. So, I think I should try it no matter how much anxiety comes over me. It will always be there regardless of how many tasks you finish, and it seems to be not possible to completely escape from that uncomfortable feeling, as Oliver Burkeman points out:
"So a surprisingly effective antidote to anxiety can be to simply realize that this demand for reassurance from the future is one that will definitely never be satisfied – no matter how much you plan or fret, or how much extra time you leave to get to the airport."
— Oliver Burkeman, "Four Thousand Weeks"
So, whenever I feel anxiety, I consciously tell myself 'I feel anxiety. I'm nervous.' This way, you can accept your feelings. It magically works for me so far. This hack is from a book about Zen written by a Japanese Buddhist Ryushun Kusanagi (草薙龍瞬).
You have only one life
Pursuing numbers is like a future-chasing mindset, where you treat every moment of your experience as worthwhile only in terms of bringing you closer to the completion of a project, so you can move on to the next one. Anxiety-driven work doesn't make you happy and doesn't let you enjoy the moment 'here and now.'
So, I'd like to return to my original motivation. No worries, if my business gets scattered, I can just start over as a freelancer and find some clients. It won't be completely zero because I've made a lot of achievements. It doesn't also mean I will die because of it. Live as you want because you have only one life!
Thank you for reading. This would be a message to my future self, but I'm happy if it resonates with you as well. During the holiday, I've been working on organizing my home because it's been too busy after moving to a new apartment last year. I've put some plants in my workroom so I can feel cozy and relaxed on the desk. I'm planning to add more plants 🪴 I hope you have a great day. Okini!
See also
Takuya Matsuyama
