Wrapping up 2023, and Looking Towards 2024

// Written by Jordan Morgan // Dec 19th, 2023 // Read it in about 1 minutes // RE: The Indie Dev Diaries

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The end of 2023 is here, and that can only mean two things:

• I’m writing a blog post about how my year went, and
• A new episode of Launched, featuring Charlie and I’s annual Christmas Special, will land soon!

For now, though, I wanted to chat about the year. I never really know what to write in these kinds of posts, and at the expense of being too self-serving - I figured I’d try to lay out what I did, didn’t do and what’s next. The hope is that you can glean some lessons from all of it.

This year was fantastic to me professionally-speaking, even though I didn’t accomplish even a quarter of what I wanted to. But, all I’m saying is, if ya’ll truly could see the juxtaposition of what I wanted to do, versus what I did?

Well, the chasm would be as wide as the Grand Canyon. And yet, I am quite impressed with what I got off the ground:

I finished the book series 🎉!
Taking a work sabbatical to finish this thing up was key to my year. At the clip I was going, the original table of contents wouldn’t be finished until 2025. That’s…too long. However, being on the other side of it? It feels fantastic to see what I came up with. I’m truly proud of the book series.

To wit, I just referenced it yesterday to get UndoManager to play nice.

And, as promised, the book series is never truly finished. I liken it to my magnum opus, a critical reference guide of all that I have learned. While I’m taking some breathing room from it for now (since it’s been a marathon for the last two and a half years), there’s plenty more to come:

Each year during W.W.D.C., I plan to update the series over the summer. And, thankfully, it continues to sell well.

I shipped Elite Hoops 🎉!
Elite Hoops continues to grow each day! Getting another app out, and officially rejoining the ranks of indie developer, was cathartic. I love making apps and trying to grow them. My goal was to have 100 paying users before the year is up, and today I am at 327. So, it feels like I might have something.

2024 will have a lot of work on my end to grow things even more, and we’ll see how it goes.

What I Didn’t Do 😅!
Well, a lot, actually. Remember this little app I made?

Or the exquisite Freeform boards I made of my goals?

…all nicely split out into timelines?

Yeah, all of that came off the rails by February. So, for 2024, I’m trying to simplify and be much more realistic. Here’s what I came up with for 2024:

I kind of thought about it in a similar fashion to my goal framework of last year (daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly goals) but there were ways where that felt too rigid. So, this time - I’m simply trying to build some habits, do some useful things each month for Elite Hoops, and over the year - ship my next app, do Elite Hoop’s roadmap and maybe start on another app I’m excited about.

Will it work? Who knows, but here’s hoping!

From me to you, I wish you and your family and friends an amazing holiday, New Year and 2024 🥂!

Until next time ✌️.