Last message from me this year
No wrap-ups, just thanks
This is it, last message this year from me. This one is more personal and also short(ish).
This year in terms of experimentation was different. I had some pause, needed some time to take a break from creating new stuff. I just can’t say when enough is enough, until it is. But when I came back and started writing again, I realized something wild (for me at least) - it’s really hard to create, build, experiment AND write about it in reasonable detail at the same time.
What I like is trying new stuff in the digital space (which nowadays translates to AI in most things). But here’s the problem - I have to constantly recall what I’ve done, and I always lose some details here and there. I don’t want to slow down just to document everything perfectly. That doesn’t fit my style at all.
So I don’t have a perfect solution, but I have something that’s working to some extent. I’m using AI to record what I do, transcribe it, and create better structure for my flow so I can share it more easily. It’s not perfect though. When I’m building a new app or tweaking something or trying a new LLM, I’m doing many, many things where around 80% are not productive or don’t have any effect - it’s just part of the process. And I’m more than OK sharing that 80% too, but then it gets chaotic... maybe too chaotic for my usual reader.
The growth question
The other thing is about growth of this little space on the internet. This is a small community of 400 people, and as a micro-creator I’m looking for these numbers to grow. And they are growing, but as always with me - it’s not about how much, it’s about the speed of things. This year was slower, which made me think - what should I do with this? Or maybe just leave it be?
When I restarted writing over a year ago, I was very invested in growing. X, LinkedIn, and of course Substack - I was super-active everywhere. Not only posting, but reading, commenting, reacting. It was effective, but it cost me too much of my personal time. I was always online, sparing any minute to do something around that... and I just didn’t want to. So I stopped.
And with it, my Substack growth also stopped. Not entirely, but it slowed down a lot.
I’m trying to find balance here. I know social media is an accelerator for newsletter growth, but on the other hand - I’m almost social media OFF. I don’t even have social apps on my iPhone anymore. And without social media I feel... good. Really good. I have better control over what I read, watch, and do. Sure, sometimes I go down the rabbit hole of some stupid (or not) reels that eat up way too much time, but these are islands on my timeline now, not the norm.
So you see the tension - I know social platforms are effective, but my personal philosophy is on the other side of using them. If anyone has some smart ideas on how to navigate this, I’m all ears.
Tool choices that stuck
As you might have read earlier this year, I experimented with vibe coding services like Lovable and Replit. I started with Cursor to re-learn coding, then drifted away to those services... and now I’m back to Cursor again.
I can’t fully describe the difference in feeling - maybe it’s very personal to me - but when I use Cursor I feel I own the creation more than I did in Replit. This will be my main setup for the next months for sure. Cursor is getting better and better, and Claude Opus 4.5 for coding plus Cursor as IDE... I mean, it’s really a different world. This model is a killer. Oh, I’m also using Claude Code, but that’s obvious.
I’m also very much in love with Notion. With Notion AI being able to help organize Notion itself, I found it to be a really good tool. It’s the ultimate tool for gathering context for AI - a smart database with nice-looking UI plus a lot of integrations. I created 2-3 integrations myself and it’s dead-easy. That’s why there are so many Notion integrations out there - it just works.
Thanks
So these are the things I wanted to share this time. No specific theme here, more like closing out the year and touching on some things that are going on. I hope you enjoy my messages now and then. From some of you I get DMs on LinkedIn, Substack, and email with kind words, which I’m really grateful for.
Have a great year ahead and stay curious.
PS. How do you rate today’s email? Leave a comment or “❤️” if you liked the article - I always value your comments and insights, and it also gives me a better position in the Substack network.