Each and Every Day

I’m writing the beginning of this post in my head as I’m falling asleep. It’s just before midnight in early July.

I’m exhausted. It’s wonderful. I should write about this process.

387 days of daily code commits.

198 days of daily design posts.

Why am I doing this? What have I learned? How long can I keep this pace?

I’ll answer these questions. But, first, let’s rewind a little back to the end of 2024.

I’ve never been a new year’s resolution guy. I’ve long felt that if you want to change your behavior, you should just do it. What’s the point of either waiting until January 1st or deciding that this will be the year unique enough to make you finally change/establish your habits?

Going into 2025, I’ve softened my criticism of resolutions. No matter what, each day this year, I’m going to do several things:

• Design
• Code
• Post

Design.

This one is easy. It’s been a while since I went a day without designing something. Whether it’s creating a new design completely from scratch, or continuing work on various projects. Whether it’s UI work or visual design, client projects or personal, I love designing. Not doing it everyday would be more of a challenge. But you need to have easy daily habits, too.

Code.

I’ve dabbled in coding for 15 years or so, but have been much more deliberate about it in the past few years. Sometimes it’s working on updating my personal site, other times Preview SMS, Home Plate Deals, Subtle UI, or other side projects. I love creating the product I’m designing. It’s never been easier to bring software ideas to life and I enjoy the challenge of finding a way to fully build out the concepts I originally started in Figma or Sketch.

Post.

This is the most public and, candidly, nearly always the worst part of the daily habits. I loathe social media. However, it’s a necessary evil that must be dealt with in order to get my work in front of a larger audience. It’s the part of the job that feels the second most transactional outside of, you know, the actual financial transactions. But, it’s important. As much as I detest putting together the content to post, only for some content to receive next-to-no viewership, it’s just another part of the process. I can’t discount the chance that any given post could be seen by a potential client, employer, or designer, and either result in a project or inspire someone.

So, who cares?

Valid question. I probably won't ever know the full answer to that question. Until now, it’s felt premature to write about this process. But as we’ve just crossed the halfway point of the year (and my 1 year anniversary of daily code commits), I figured I’d write about what I’ve learned.

I’ve held myself accountable to all of them. Each and every day so far.

Contrary to convention, quality and quantity don’t have to be mutually exclusive.

Is every post my best work? Absolutely not. But I have learned more about decisiveness, speed of thought, and creative process in the last 6 months than I had in the previous several years.

In a way, it’s been an easier way to operate. Each day, I know there are things that I need to accomplish. There is no room to make excuses or to not create. Even if it’s something small, or relatively inconsequential. Just the process of selecting and posting a piece of work is enough to know that I’m on the path to something great.

I’ve gotten faster at identifying problems of products/apps/websites and conceptualizing solutions. I’ve long had a knack for spotting errors in UI/UX, but prior to this year would only occasionally bother creating solutions. Now, I have a vehicle for putting these ideas out. It’s part of a series, which means I don’t need to think of a way to phrase a feature suggestion, product concept, UI correction or UX critique. If I have a post planned but it’s not time-sensitive, if another idea comes up, I’ll usually make it and post it the same day. I love the immediacy. Every day, I have the same deadline and objective. And so far, no matter what has been occurring in life, I’ve been able to fall asleep knowing that I’ve accomplished several goals.

I’m going to keep this streak going as long as I can. At minimum, I’ll post each day this year. Like many things, the more you do it, the easier it becomes (to a degree in this case). For instance, if I just want to check the box of posting an example of my design work, I have over 15 years of work I can pull from. But, I don’t just want to post previous work. I don’t have a set limit, but I try to only post 1 maybe 2 “old” designs each week. Sometimes, these “old” designs have never seen the light of day, so it’s nice to finally showcase past work. Other times, it’s a part of a project that might have gotten highlighted in a case study, but was never given a specific highlight or the full explanation of why it was created.

Lately, I’ve been posting much more upcoming and in-progress work. “Teasers” if you’d like to call them that, are a way for me to publicize my process. I know that what I’m posting is far from the final design, but it’s nice to memorialize a specific point in a product’s life cycle.

Regardless of engagement (or lack thereof in many instances) I’m proud of the work so far this year. And I’m even prouder when I look back at a post from several days, weeks, or months ago, and see exactly how I’d improve it. That’s growth, and that’s what I’m looking to do.

What's my "why"?

I've been thinking of legacy lately. What I make is so temporary. It's nice to be able to instantly update an app or website. But it can feel so fleeting. I've set these daily habits as not only a challenge to prove to myself that I can do more. I've begun to really embrace the idea that I want to become prolific. I'm certain that reads as conceded. I don't mean to present myself this way, but if you read it as so, I'm okay with that. I feel like I have a few gifts. One of those gifts is creativity. And for as long as I'm able to be creative, and make things I believe are worth sharing, I'll be doing it. At the end of this life, I want to be able to say I did as much as I possibly could. Work is one piece of my life. But it's my way of attempting to leave behind a bit of a legacy. I'm sure this paragraph feels out of place amongst the rest of this writing. So be it. One of the best things about getting back into writing on my personal site is not worrying so much. If the audience agrees with me, that's fine. But if they disagree, that's fine, too.

On the writing front, I wrote this post "freehand" in Apple Notes and Sublime Text. For the last few posts, I've written there and then edited using Grammarly. I love the product, but didn't feel like running this post through any editing software. It's just me writing and re-writing the words you see. So, if there are more errors than usual, that's likely why. It's not an excuse, by the way, just a notice. I did use Grammarly to measure reading length times. I want that to be an accurate metric, otherwise it's pointless to display.

Now in the back half of 2025, let’s keep going. Here’s to (at least) the next 167 days of daily posting.