Everything is hard

Don’t let whimsical New Years resolutions fool you… Nothing worth doing is easy.

Welcome to 2024 🎉

I’m sure you spent some time during the last few weeks thinking about what you’ll change about yourself this year. You may have even put those wishes into written resolutions.

I used to have a whole Notion with goals and spreadsheets and trackers and blah blah blah. It got to the point where I was spending more time managing my Notion to keep it “aesthetic” than on making progress towards my goals.

Now I stick to Apple Notes and have ONE goal for the year, and I actually get stuff done.

The one goal method

People have written extensively about the power of focusing on one thing at a time, and for good reason.

It’s been the most effective self-management method I’ve personally used.

Why one goal? Because anything worth doing is hard, and it’s hard to be consistent.

It’s easy to tell yourself you’ll do something for an extended period of time. It’s another thing to actually go through with it. If I had 3, 4, or 5 resolutions I’d maybe actually go through with 1 or 2. And even then, it’d take me much longer to achieve them because of how fractured my attention would be.

Focusing on one thing makes it easier to stay committed.

My personal rule for this goal is:

1. It should significantly increase my quality of life, and

2. It should be just beyond the edge of my current capabilities, forcing me to grow

My one goal for 2024

Last year I wanted to learn iOS development. It’s something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time. I took a 100 Days of Code course that I had to restart a couple of times because I just wasn’t getting it.

Many times I felt like giving up thinking I’d just stick to web development because iOS was too hard. In fact, that’s just what most people do.

But I’m not most people. I NEEDED to figure this out.

In the end it took me ~200 days to finish. But I stuck with it because it was my #1 goal.

Even though it wasn’t enough to build production-ready apps (I’m now on Week 7/14 of an iOS bootcamp), I finally feel prepared enough to embark on my main goal for 2024…

Build. Obsessively.

I want to launch apps that strengthen your body, clear your mind, and nourish your soul. As the founding Designer at Superwall, I have designed more than 1,000 paywalls for the biggest apps in the world, and have seen all sorts of Growth and Monetization experiments.

I can’t wait to experiment with what I’ve learned on my own apps 🚀

I’ve been posting about my journey on X since it’s the best platform for quick updates. I disabled my Instagram and TikTok to focus more last quarter after a life-changing trip to Nepal, so you can mostly find me on there now.

Cheers to 2024. May it bring you happiness and prosperity.

- Jonathan

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P.S. Just like in 2022, I’ll be indie hacking around the world this year.

Some family member health problems really threw a wrench into my plans for the latter half of last year. Now that they’ve gotten treatment for their conditions, I feel more comfortable traveling again.

My first destination on the list will be watching the cherry blossoms bloom in Japan for a month. If you’re in Tokyo in March-April, let’s link up!

P.S.S. Please send me an email back with your main goal for 2024. I’d love to know what’s most important to you this year!