Forem: Joan Boixadós

Everyday.app Year 6: Every day, for a very long time

Joan Boixadós — Sun, 01 Jan 2023 11:15:11 +0000

Happy new 2023!! :)

I've had a dejavú. It's not the first time that I start the year by posting a small update/reflection on dev.to.

It's been 6 years since I started working on everyday.app as a side-project and it has now been my full time indie business for over 4 years. In this period, more than one million habits 🤯 have been tracked. Besides reaching my original goal of financial independence while working on a product I care about, the journey has brought me many happy experiences and takeaways. If I had to pick, I'd say it has helped me grow a lot as a person and has helped me connect with a bunch of awesome people I admire.

I generally see myself as an imposter (who do I want to lie? I am an imposter!!), but in case this helps anyone starting their indie journey, I'm just an idiot who has worked on it every day, for a very long time.

You can find some of my previous updates here:
2017 IH interview: https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/the-productivity-app-that-helped-to-build-and-grow-itself-b4d7afdf11
Year 1: https://www.indiehackers.com/forum/everyday-one-year-later-1609ae3575
Year 3: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/everyday-app-year-3-approaching-5k-mrr-cb5916f0fe
Year 4: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/everyday-year-4-approaching-10k-mrr-9e3c4041bd

2022 has been the first year in a while where I took things easy. It's funny how the work and the return don't correlate at all. When you put in the hard early work, hardly anything happens, but as time goes by, your work starts compounding and you become complacent. That's why I love having ended the year with a big push, breaking things again and getting back some of the thrill of the early days!

Oh, Everyday 3.0 got hunted on ProductHunt today! What a coincidence ;D Yes, the beginning of a new year is always a good time to reset and iterate on our habits and goals :)

Some of my 2022 habits:
📕 Read 21 books. Read on 86% of the days!
💪 Did 9440 push-ups. Did push-ups on 100% of days.
👥 Met 476 people. Met new ppl on 37% of the days! (I really need to change this)
🍺 I'm on a 112 no (or very little) alcohol streak!
🚀 Worked on everyday.app every day! and broke my previous plateau. It was becoming a glass ceiling so that's something!

I am on a 1584 day streak of working on everyday :)

The biggest changes this year have been to refactor most of the main UI elements on the iOS, Android, macOS that I had originally developed while learning React-Native. These allowed not only the app to be more performant, but to massively improve the UX and to add some animations :) I also added a controlpanel that makes it much easier to experiment with habits, schedules and triggers. Polished the onboarding, I really want people who check the app out to at least learn something useful for their lives even if they immediately leave the app after wards. It's like a very overengineered tweet haha.

However, one can't stop thinking about all the things that are not getting done. All the original ideas that never saw the light. All the expected iterations that never seem to come. There is a lot of room for improvement, this journey has just begun.

I think we are very lucky that we have the opportunity to create something. It's a beautiful skill. All we need, is to work on it a little bit, every day, for a very long time! ;D

PS: I'm always happy to help fellow indie hackers, so feel free to shoot me an email or get in touch on twitter.

PS2: As someone who enjoys product, code and business in equal proportions I struggled to find my path until I came across the idea of indie hackers. It's been a very enriching adventure so far and it's got me to meet a lot of awesome people. I like to feel I contributed to the movement with my awesome-indie 8k stars github repo (https://github.com/mezod/awesome...). Feel free to contribute to keep it updated! Keep building every day! 🚀🚀🚀

Everyday Year 4: Approaching $10k MRR

Joan Boixadós — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 21:10:28 +0000

Hello and happy new 2021 devs!!

2020 has certainly affected our habits and routines.

Fortunately, I approached 2020 with the right mindset and even though I couldn't enjoy life as much as I'd have liked, I made the best out of it by 🚀 growing everyday.app, studying economics, 📕 reading a lot on neuroscience and hiking the ⛰️Pyrenees!

Here's a little summary of my 2020's resolutions:
📖 Watched at least 1 MOOC on Economics video on 97% of the days and hold a streak of 🔥322!
📕 Read 38/40 books. Read on 95% of the days! Best read? Probably The Black Swan.
👥 Met 112/1000 people. That's a 86% less people than last year... we all know why.
🚀 Grew my indie biz everyday.app from $4.8k/mo to $9.7k/mo. Worked on it 100% of the days!
💪 Did 16140 push-ups. Did push-ups on 100% of days.
🍏 Ate fruits/vegs on 90% of the days. I'm 20 days away from beating my own longest streak of 🔥144!

I also and most importantly managed to work on everyday.app every day! Of course some of the days weren't really moving the needle forward but I like to remember answering support emails from a mountain hut 2000m high!

When it comes to everyday.app, 2020 was definitely a good year. The year couldn't have started better, not only because of January being the best year of the month for habit trackers (New Year Resolutions hint hint ;D), but also because Apple got interested in helping grow the app. Everyday.app was App Of The Day on June 4th, 2020! Since then, I have added iOS14 Widgets, the macOS Desktop version of the app and just recently released the first version of the watchOS app! What a beauty! :P

My job to be done in 2021? Definitely focus more on growth than product. Change my identity enough so that marketing doesn't feel against my nature. Shoot me any ideas!

It will soon be 4 years since I wrote the first line of code of the then called everydayCheck and many times I still feel like I haven't done much of what I set out to do in 2017. Ideas move much faster than we can make them a reality! Even now that the app is generating way beyond I could have ever dreamt of, I still self-doubt about if I am investing my time and efforts on 'the right thing', or if I could be working on some other cooler thing. But then I understand that's in our nature, to want to try new things all the time, that's why we start side-projects in the first place!

Everyday.app has grown a lot in 4 years and I have grown a lot thanks to it. It is this growth in mindset that is key. To look into the past and think, how could I even worry about such a petty thing? I keep worrying about petty things now, the difference is that there's something at the end of my thought process that ends up with a "well, yeah you also worried about that other thing, so stop thinking and start executing because you are gonna get there". You just need to keep burning phases (first payment, first renewal, first angry customer, first viral exposure, first server down, first hire...) and enjoy it all the way. My point? Growing your mindset is what you have to work on, your business will follow.

Similar to how the benefit of habits only starts to be seen in the long term, so does working on a long term vision project. Every bit of effort compounds into making your product better, which turns into better convertion and retention. It's amazing to get emails commenting on posts I didn't remember having written or asking to fix details I had long forgotten about, due to the 'done is better than perfect' approach. It means people are seeing it and going through those, all the time, and getting value out of it!

I still think people give up on ideas too early. And in a way, I see that as people giving up on themselves and how much they can grow. Of course, you need to keep an open mind and be open to change your approach or reject bad ideas. In fact, you must. But there has to be a long term direction that leads and focuses your efforts!

My point here is, unless you are really sure you are going nowhere, work on your project everyday a little bit, for a very long time.

PS: By the way, I decided to start the year launching Everyday 2.021 on ProductHunt so make sure to check it out :)

PS2: As someone who enjoys product, code and business in equal proportions I struggled to find my path until I came across the idea of indie hackers. It's been a very enriching adventure so far and it's got me to meet a lot of awesome people. I like to feel I contributed to the movement with my awesome-indie github repo (https://github.com/mezod/awesome...). Feel free to contribute to keep it updated! Keep building every day! 🚀🚀🚀

everyday is App Of The Day on the AppStore! (1200 days later ;D)

Joan Boixadós — Thu, 04 Jun 2020 14:52:48 +0000

Hello IndieHackers!

If you are looking for a story of instant success, then move onto the next tab. Nothing to see here!

If otherwise you are in for the long term, then you might want to read on.

The TLDR is simply that finally, everyday.app has been featured as App Of The Day on the AppStore for several countries!! 🔥🎉🎉

It's been:

1172 days since I made public the first version of the web app.
965 days since my IndieHackers interview
666 days since I released the first version of the mobile apps. (Lol, the number of the beast!)
562 days since reaching #2 on ProductHunt
155 days since, wait deja vú, reaching #2 on ProductHunt again! 😄

The point being... that I didn't start yesterday. I just did a little bit every day, for a very long time.

This is my current streak!

Of course not every day has been equally productive (especially when you have a lot of support emails piling up 😄) but that doesn't matter. Compounding progress and keeping the momentum is what matters in the long term. And I'm happy to start feeling like I've arrived to that long term when things start to happen without me pushing for them alone. Today, work that felt meaningless before is adding up to something beautiful to experience. Today, everyday.app is the App Of The Day! 🎉🎉

Every little piece of work and effort, builds up, and sometimes, the return dowsn't show immediately. So keep shipping, 'do the ting' and also.. 'do the marketing', EVERY DAY!!

PS: It is always a good opportunity to share` awesome-indie, the awesome repository of resources for indie hackers to make money off their sideprojects](https://github.com/mezod/awesome-indie) :)
PS2: If you are in Barcelona, make sure to join us at the next IndieHackers Barcelona meetup and say hi!
PS3: You think you can help me grow faster? Reach out at joan at everyday.app and let's talk about it :)

Everyday.app Year 3: Approaching $5k MRR

Joan Boixadós — Wed, 01 Jan 2020 23:05:12 +0000

Hello and happy new 2020!!

I'm not gonna lie, 2019 was a tough year for me, quite a few things didn't work out as I expected while I wasn't brave enough to face others.

However, there are definitely some positive takeaways. Here's a little summary of my 2019's resolutions:

📕 Read 28/40 books. Read on 95% of the days!
👥 Met 846/1000 people. Met new ppl on 61% of the days!
🚀 Grew my indie biz everyday.app from $1.2k/mo to $4.8k/mo. Worked on it 100% of the days!
💪 Did 14840 push-ups. Did push-ups on 100% of days.

I also and most importantly managed to work on everyday.app every day! Some of the days, the workload was almost irrelevant but still worth it enough for me to feel like I had moved a little bit forward!

When it comes to everyday.app, 2019 was definitely a good year. The mobile apps got super polished which earned the iOS app a feature on the AppStore's frontpage of the iOS13 release 12x-ing the traffic for a full month... ah... if only you could just be featured all year long ;D

Now that I'm just a few days away from the third anniversary of me writing the first line of the back then called everydayCheck, I've put things in perspective to realize how important the long term game is. It feels like my little daily efforts have kept on compounding to get the app to where it is now. Now, don't get me wrong, I've still got a loooooong way to go, but when I think about how unattainable this situation felt back then, I'm still amazed. My mindset has changed so much with each burnt phase (initial idea, first payment, first renewal, getting featured, experimenting with prices, storytelling...) it's even hard to recognize some of my old journaling writings... ah... that 2017 IndieHackers interview looks from another decade now ;D

I think a lot of people give up on ideas too early. Even here on IndieHackers we can see repetitive patterns of ideas (what the hell, for the sake of an example, I'm working on a habit tracker!) and I think in most cases the main differentiator between an idea, a nice side-project and a real business is the amount of long-term invested time. I now realize I could have made solid businesses out of most of my previous sideprojects...

My point here is, unless you are really sure you are going nowhere, work on your project everyday a little bit, for a very long time.

PS: By the way, I decided to start the year launching Everyday 2.0 on ProductHunt so make sure to check it out :)

PS2: IndieHackers has definitely played an important role for inspiration and learning to avoid some of our major pitfalls (If you haven't read Rob's post, please stop reading this right now and do it). Organizing the IH Barcelona Meetup with Tair and Domingo has brought a new dimension into indiehackerism for me. It's like satiating the necessity of finding your identity and your bunch all at once! Make sure to join us when you are in town!