Closing my open questions of 2024

At the start of 2024, I had questions, concerns, doubts. How did I fare?

A yearly tradition since 2021. I start the year with some questions and concerns I have no answers to, uncertainties and self-doubts I hold about the year ahead. Keep them open in my mind, consciously and subconsciously. Then look back at the end of the year to see how it panned out.

For 2024, these were my open questions:

• Survive: Will I get to continue indie hacking, or will I be forced to get a job? This is probably the most nagging worry at this point. Every time I think do an writing exercise about the year—my word for the year, 8 forms of capital, and now this open questions—I’m confronted by the blaring alarm of survival. This will be the keystone to how my 2024 pans out.

• Products: Will I ship new products? Will I commit to my 365 days of code commits? How many will actually make money?

• Revenue: Will I ever hit $10k ramen profitability? When will that happen?

• Stress: Can I keep stress and anxiety in check enough for me to continue hustling, instead of being debilitated by it?

• Family: How do I be more present as son, husband, father?

• Travel: When will I travel again?

And here are the answers:

• Survive: Will I get to continue indie hacking, or will I be forced to get a job?
  – ✅ I fking survived!!! Actually I was forced to find a 9-to-5 job, I hustled hard for one in the government, but no job wanted me. So I had to let go of finding one, give up my old vocation, and pivoted to being a frontend dev. Now I do 3 jobs (indie hacker, frontend dev, social media manager, and soon to be 4 jobs, plus customer support manager) and it got us past survival stage. Grateful grateful grateful.
  

• Products: Will I ship new products? Will I commit to my 365 days of code commits? How many will actually make money?
  – ✅ ✅ ⚠️ Yes I shipped a few new products, on course to complete 365 days of commits, and made some money. New products – Lists Kit, ProfilePicture.app, and 12 new Carrd plugins! Also shipped a few hobby projects for fun, laughs or social good like ICQ button, Blue Screen of Death, Github Chart Remixer and UVIndex.sg. All in all, 19 new projects! Okay but here’s the slightly sombre part – only Lists Kit made some money (other than some referral commission from Carrd plugins). Not much, just few hundred I think, but it paid for a few nice dinners. ProfilePicture.app went super viral but made no money. Overall, consistency made it all happen. Right effort, but not so right product-market fit. Will need to fix that in 2025!
  

• Revenue: Will I ever hit $10k ramen profitability? When will that happen?
  – ❌ ⚠️ Nope, didn’t hit $10k ramen profitability from my indie products. FAR from it. I’m probably just slightly over 10% of that $10k goal. But that’s in US dollars. If I see it in Singapore dollars, and combined with my freelance earnings, I’ve hit S$9k+ last month, and with a new gig coming in for 2025, I’m on track to earn $10k in Sing dollars next year. So that’s something to celebrate! Selling my time isn’t ideal but I’d take what I got. This keeps me in the game at least…
  

• Stress: Can I keep stress and anxiety in check enough for me to continue hustling, instead of being debilitated by it?
  – ✅ I think I did! And now that I am past survival stage, the stress and anxiety levels had come way down. Huge relief. I was in scarcity/survival mode for so long I think I’m stuck in it and find it hard now to move into abundance/thriving mode. Happy problems…
  

• Family: How do I be more present as son, husband, father?
  – ✅ I stuck to this as much as I can. Not sure I’ll get awards for best dad of the year, but I stayed home as much as I can, be present, dropped off/picked up my kid from school, hung out at bedtime, spent weekends as a fam. I truly tried. I hope that is enough for them.
  

• Travel: When will I travel again?
  – ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️ Five star report card here – yes we travelled again this year. And not just once but thrice - our first overseas trip to Melaka, a weekend staycation in Johor Bahru, and then a year-end week-long trip to our beloved Bali. We took the kiddo on his first ever flight, at four years old. So happy with this, and we’re already planning for next year – Malaysia, Bali, Japan/Taiwan!
  

It’s been another haaard year, but I ended up achieving and answering many of the 2024 open questions. Compared to last year’s open questions review post, I had so many more green ticks. Very satisfied and happy with that.

Onwards to 2025!

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