100 Lessons from 2024

Every week, I collect everything I've learned over the past seven days in my weekly reflections. This is a condensed list of what I’ve learned in 2024.

I started with over 200 lessons, captured in over 44 individual weeklies. Then I condensed them down more and more, until I got to 90. Which is almost 100 – but better (because it's shorter). So my working title of "100 Lessons from 2024" remains the same. Please forgive me.

And I've learned a lot more than that of course, and some of the stuff in here is probably wrong. But I hope there are at least some useful bits.

Let’s go ✨

Personal Growth

I have learned that freedom is a great value in my life. It feels exhilarating and exciting to experience it after not feeling it for a very long time last year. Life seems to have gained a little more color and I'm wondering if this is temporary or permanent.
For a long period of time in 2024, I was under constant stress. And I could feel it in my body. During that time, I liked myself less, didn’t spend time with friends, didn’t feel like I had enough time to do things properly, my habits slipped, and the only thing I longed for was to read a book and take a break. Fortunately, I was able to change the situation and I’ve recovered from it. It’s interesting how many things I took for granted before (like seeing friends).
If I wait for "the right time" to talk about difficult topics, I often don't talk about them at all. To counteract this, a friend suggested that I ask something along the lines of, "I feel like now is not a good time, but there is something important I want to talk to you about. When do you think we could do that?" This also acts as a kind of commitment device - you've acknowledged there is something you want to talk about, so you have to talk about it eventually.
Psychotherapy isn't as scary as I thought. The first time I sat in a therapist's office, my thought was, "Why haven't I been here earlier?" I think a lot of stigma and the idea that it would be hard to organize kept me from doing something about it. Also, after having had trial sessions with several therapists, I understood that it matters who your therapist is. Feeling comfortable is important.
I love burners (=people who go to burns). So many free spirits, so many great conversations. It’s like you can skip multiple layers of superficiality and get directly to the core with them.
I like wearing beautiful clothes on special occasions. One night at a burn, I was given some clothes for an outfit, and I felt really handsome in it. This was a new experience for me. And then several people came up to me and said they really liked the outfit and the style. There's a part of me that loved hearing that.

I sometimes have trouble acknowledging that something isn't right in relationships (personal/romantic/professional) because part of me avoids confrontation. When 99% is fine, I tend to say "everything is fine" because the 1% doesn't feel important. But the 1% accumulates and then eventually too much is not fine. I know this and actively work against it - it's important for me to be aware of the 1% situations and resolve them quickly.
Long distance relationships are challenging. You can’t see each other most of the time, it’s expensive, it can be very intense when you finally do spend time together, and much more. Of course, not everything about it is bad, but it's a big strain on many aspects of normal life.
A friend of mine shared a guiding question with me that has been useful many times over the past year: "Am I doing this out of fear of loss or out of self-love?”
I have a strong circle of very close friends, and I’m extremely grateful for that.
In new places, my need to connect with other people is very strong.
You can feel lonely even if you have a large social circle or are in a relationship. The context determines how you feel, and when you're in new places, you don't have friends or relationships yet. Loneliness can be physically painful and extremely unpleasant.

Productivity & Habits

I enjoy my morning routine. Getting up at 7 a.m. and going for a walk with no other plans and then spending a long time stretching and meditating feels incredibly good. (It’s time well spent.) The way to integrate this into a long work day is to get up and go to bed early.
At the same time, I like to go to bed very, very late. It feels nice to be the only one up. But it also feels super shitty the next day.
Parkinson's Law is real.
Set appointments for the afternoon. Mornings are sacred for doing my routine or productive stuff.
Being exposed to bright light makes a huge difference on my energy levels. For example, working on the balcony or using extremely bright LEDs has improved my productivity tremendously.
If you don’t drink enough water you may get a headache.
Saying "I have self-control in context A but not in context B" is a lie I’m telling myself. Regarding food choices, I always told myself I'm good at not buying unhealthy food, but once unhealthy stuff is readily available I can't stop myself. It seems silly to me – it's just a choice I have to make.

Tech & Development

(There's some super technical stuff in here, so feel free to skip it if it's not relevant to you).

It might be a fascinating idea to feed my journals into an AI and to use it to uncover gaps in my thinking, or to remind me of insights I had, or to surface unconscious patterns. Or using AI as a kind of therapist. I’m not sure how to solve things like data privacy or how to fit it all in context (it’s more than 5 years of daily diaries). Still confused that something like this doesn’t already exist.
I’ve learned how to submit blobs to the Ethereum network (which only went live after last year’s Dencun upgrade) and then built a blob creator as a proof of concept.
I learned what Execution Tickets and Based Preconfs are. For most of 2024 I did not understand what they were, and I learned about them through a combination of reading stuff online, talking to people, and writing articles about it.
After reading Situational Awareness, I felt like I’ve understood the impact AI will have on our/my future. Again! This first happened after listening to a ton of AI podcasts around 2022. There's a tinge of sadness that these will be the last "normal" years before the world changes a lot. This sometimes kills my ambition and makes me see the kind of work I do differently. Should I optimize for other things now? Yet there is still time before that happens AND that future is still highly uncertain. I tend to forget this insight every now and then, and then I am confronted with it every few months.
Serverless functions can also have scaling issues. If a lot of unexpected concurrent requests come in, some of them will get dropped because the lambda can't scale up fast enough. I guess it takes some time to provision more resources as there are only 3 instances per default to handle all those requests, which then fails.
PayloadCMS is awesome. I’ve learned that the real effort in using a headless CMS is not the backend/CMS part, but consuming and displaying all the data on the frontend.
When I code new things, I usually start by testing things manually. Almost every time I have this "aha" moment where I think "dude, you should have just written tests". And once I do that, it's so easy to make progress. I kind of forget that testing isn't just "nice to have" but actually helps you develop faster.

Work & Career

Going from working for yourself to working full time with others really changes the structure of your days. My morning routine was kinda broken for a long time, and I had difficulties getting it back to its “ideal” state. I also had much less time than before for other things that were important to me.
Being paid by the hour puts you in this weird position where part of you wants to work "more" to get paid more. The incentives are kind of weird. I noticed that sometimes and then tried to ignore that desire. At the same time, the motivation for certain types of tasks is higher when you're on the clock.
How to win a hackathon: For the evaluation, it’s probably >80% presentation/demo and only 20% actual coding. This means that you should work on the presentation as early as possible (or have someone take care of it) instead of waiting until the last hour. Also, if you know who the judges are, tailor your presentation to them. It's also more important to have something with a "wow" factor and nice slides/frontend than nice/well-tested code.
On a related note, no one is going to read your code anyway. They may only glance at it for a few seconds. So it can be shitty, it just has to work or "look" like it might work. More importantly, no one will try to run it. So optimize for the right thing: a great demo.
Deadlines help you focus on what’s important. For example, when I was working on a hackathon project, I often thought, "This is not important to get this done, so let's move on.”
Organizing an event is a different experience than attending one. You don't do a lot of networking, you don't make new connections, you don't learn new things from the talks, you don't get to attend workshops and talks. At the same time, you're always a little stressed because your attention is scattered all over the place, making sure that everything is working properly. That doesn't mean it can't be a beautiful experience, but as I said, it's different.
VCs/investors are people too. I used to put them on a kind of pedestal. But depending on who you talk to, it can feel either super interesting (deep conversations, interesting new information, etc.) or extremely superficial ("how can you be useful to me").
I especially enjoy iterating on existing things rather than building something from scratch. I enjoy going from 80% to 100% more than going from 0 to 1. This seems only true in specific contexts, though.
"Networking" can also just mean making new friends. Optimizing for genuine human connections works really well for me, and much better than connecting with random but "useful" people.
How to find a job:
1. Go to a place where you can meet in-person with people in your industry
2. Be a nice person (you cannot skip this step)
3. Provide value without expecting anything in return (e.g., give feedback on something)
4. Propose working together with specific ideas of what that might look like.

Why this works: People want to work together with people they like.
If you applied online instead, you'd be filtered based on your skills. Your chances of success here are much lower if you don't have a killer resume. By the time you get to the interview stage, people want to know if you're "nice enough to work with.”
If you meet someone in person and you're nice, your resume won't matter as much. Instead, the person will try to rationalize why working with you would be a good idea. Instead of filtering for exceptional skills (as in an online application), your skills now have to be just good enough.
Some people with hiring power have confirmed this and said they try to counteract this bias, but it's hard.

If you're starting a new project or business with someone, be very clear about your expectations and intentions from the start. If you're not clear at the beginning, it's much harder to fix it later. It's also much harder to walk away once you're invested in it.

Money and Finances

It’s crazy what people put on Kleinanzeigen (the German Craigslist) for free! We got a whole kitchen that would have cost >500€ if you'd bought it at IKEA. The only thing we had to do was disassemble and transport it.
If you want to sell something used (on Kleinanzeigen/Craigslist), it pays not to be in a hurry. If you have a lot of time, you can even sell something for a relatively high price - people who need something badly will buy at that higher price.
If you are on vacation with a large group of people, splitting expenses evenly (like gas, food, etc.) leads to a kind of tragedy of the commons. It encourages buying and consuming a lot because it doesn't pay to be frugal. In a group of 8 people, buying something only costs you 1/8 of the original price, but you are still incentivized to consume 100% of it.
On a related note, this is maximally unfavorable if the spending habits of the group members are different. For example, I don't usually spend a lot of money on food, so I've been subsidizing everyone else's. (Someone had said: "Oh, it's so cheap here, I pay a lot less!", but this was only partially true because of our different spending habits).
I almost made a very silly financial mistake. I wanted to do lasik in a hospital in Bangkok, and almost chose one of the more expensive, highly advertised ones. There was another one that was more than 600€ cheaper with no apparent difference in quality. I almost stayed with the more expensive one because 600€ didn't feel like a lot of money – but only because I was anchored to a higher four-digit price in the first place.
I've been looking for a new roommate and have received over 100 applications in the past year. I've learned a lot about my preferences in roommates, and part of me assumes that these are at least partially universal (for example, having an organized/clean roommate). Here are my observations:
- What doesn’t work well:

Saying you’re “unorganized” or “often late” – it gives me the impression that you’re unreliable
Activities that imply you’re loud or messy
Spelling mistakes
Oversharing (personal situation, difficulties, etc.)
Mentioning anything negative, such as past bad experiences living with other people. Even though I know that this is about someone else, there seems to be some Anti-Halo Effect going on where I project this onto the person that is applying
Saying you need a place “urgently”
Saying something controversial. This might work, but controversial means “most people disagree”, so it probably won't
Smoking
Adding something that is quite obviously only there because it was mentioned in the ad ⇒ this seems insincere
Not providing contact info. This has actually happened a few times! I can't get in touch with you this way 🤦

Could work

Long texts – they are sometimes good, sometimes bad. If they’re too long I don’t want to read them because it feels daunting (esp. considering there are a hundred other messages). If they’re too short, it feels like too little effort.

What likely works

When people seem similar to me. I think this is hard to fake and also what the whole search is about – finding someone you’ll vibe with.
Standing out in a positive way. Most applications read pretty much the same. So something has to be interesting, different, or "polarizing". My personal strategy for finding a room in Berlin would be to make a custom(ish) video application, write a song, draw a picture, etc. The hardest part is getting to the interview stage, and standing out will help you get there more easily.

Life and Travel

Having a car while traveling doesn't seem worth it to me. Yes, you get to places much easier, but then you also go to places that are harder to get to and thus spend 2-3 hours a day in the car getting there. I'd rather do other things while traveling than sit in a car.
Last year I did a hike on my own where I just wanted to hike and didn't have a real destination. I just wanted to arrive "somewhere" with a train station. This led me to cancel the hike at some point, which is sad in retrospect. Next time I want to have an actual destination because it might help to get over the motivational hump.
Taking an early morning flight (like 6am) is probably not worth it. You have to get up many hours earlier (about 4 hours depending on how far away you are from the airport), drive to the airport and then wait. Next time I'd probably pay between 20-40€ more to be on a later flight, because flying that early kills the rest of the day.
Working on an airplane doesn't really work for me. There's not enough space and it's hard to work for more than an hour at a time.
I didn't experience this before, but Ryanair (European airline) actually enforces weight and size limits sometimes. For checked baggage (at Berlin airport) there seems to be a 1kg tolerance, so if you book 10kg you can get away with 11kg. For carry-on baggage, the size should fit in those measuring baskets, but I guess a little bigger is okay. They don't check the weight of carry-on luggage.
The experience on long-haul flights (or any flight that isn't Ryanair?) is much better than on short-haul flights.
It is possible to travel for extended periods of time (i.e., more than a few months) with only a small 20-liter backpack as luggage. Clothing seems to be the thing that takes up the most space, so reducing it to one set of clothes to wear and one set to take with you reduces most of it. Clothes made from merino wool don't smell as quickly, so you can wear them longer. You can wash them while you shower and let them dry overnight. Use a microfibre towel to wring the clothes. Traveling with such a small backpack is an extremely freeing experience that I highly recommend.
Thailand allows you to stay for 60 days, and then you can extend for another 30 days while you're there.
I’ve never been to Asia before. When I arrived in Thailand, I was surprised: it's just like any other place on earth! They have houses, roads, cars, people, ... just like home!
If you're booking separate tickets with different airlines, try to check in after you land (at least if you have a lot of time during your layover). One of my flights was delayed and I missed another that I had already checked in for, so I couldn't change the booking and had to buy a new one.
Taking long distance buses/coaches for more than 4 hours is extremely uncomfortable and something I would avoid in the future.
From the middle of September it gets much darker and grayer in Germany. This has strong effects on my mood and energy levels.
Medical tourism is amazing. I went to a hospital in Bangkok, and even though I haven't been to many hospitals in my life (thank God!), this definitely redefines what I would consider a "great" hospital.
When you have surgery or some kind of medical procedure – or anything, really – the diagnosis stage is the most important part. This is where they figure out what exactly they'll do. If they get it wrong, you get the wrong treatment. If they get it right, you'll get the right treatment. For example with Lasik, they need to exactly figure out your current eye sight to change them. You can apply this to almost everything.
Many backpackers who visit Thailand aren't really backpackers. They think they're backpacking, but sometimes it's so touristy that all they get is a packaged experience. The part of exploring the country, meeting locals, being challenged, etc. is missing. They're just hanging out in a beautiful place with other tourists from their home country. It was kind of painful to see. On the other hand, this is probably still a lot of fun, so there's nothing wrong with that.
Life in a Buddhist monastery is very different from what I expected. Part of me expected Buddhism to be frozen in time - like they're still living the same way they did 2500 years ago. But of course they've arrived in the present, because monks are just normal people who have chosen a different lifestyle: they also use smartphones, some are addicted to social media, some eat meat (although there is a "don't kill" precept). And for some, it seems that only the surface appearances of Buddhism have remained, but not so much the actual practice.

Writing, Communication and Learning

Writing clarifies your thinking. It’s damn hard, but that’s only because thinking is hard.
I enjoy writing, but sometimes only once I'm in a flow. I also enjoy exploring topics in writing that I've discussed earlier with friends, and I think I should do more of that (i.e. take notes in discussion and turn them into essays). Still, writing is sometimes extremely painful, especially when you’re not there yet. And most of the time, you aren't.
Two ways to improve your writing: (1) Move paragraphs and sentences around, and (2) remove as much as possible. The first fixes the order of your thoughts so they are easier to follow. The second removes distractions.
Writing a good tweetstorm takes longer than expected. Letting ChatGPT do it doesn't work well (yet), and if you do it from scratch, it's a similar to writing an article.
I feel honored that there are people who read my essays. But a part of me just forgets about it when I hit “publish.” So when someone in real life tells me they’ve read something of mine, it almost always feels like they’ve looked into my soul. Publishing something can be scary as it's very vulnerable.
Proofread your email before you send it. It sounds so obvious until you make a horrible mistake. I posted an email on my personal email list last year that was full of mistakes, and I'm so embarrassed about it.
Someone pitched me on learning Chinese as a great way to improve my career. I’m not really interested in improving my career this way, but somehow I now want to learn Chinese.
Chinese has more than 1 billion native speakers. ONE BILLION! I cannot wrap my head around that number. It’s more than English.

Practical Stuff

Don't give your address to random people on the Internet. I got pranked in an embarrassing and funny way, but worse things could have happened.
I lost a package I sent to Switzerland and it didn't arrive. There was no tracking link, so I also couldn't get support. So when you send packages, pay extra for a tracking link. That way you'll know what's going on if something goes wrong.
When shipping to Thailand, the person delivering the package will try to call you first before delivering. So if you are shipping to Thailand, use a Thai phone number. Don't use a German phone number.
"What's interesting in your life right now?" is a good way to make conversations go deeper.
The question "What is one thing you have learned about yourself this year?" is extremely difficult to answer. It would be easier to answer "How have you grown this year?" which asks for much the same thing.
Driving a scooter is fun and addictive. And so fast! As someone who has only ridden bikes or been a passenger in other's cars, this was a completely new experience for me.
Jacob Collier is awesome. Hands down the artist I’ve listened to the most last year (and the year before that. And the year before that, and… you get the idea). PS: One of my favorite songs of the year is his cover of Bridge Over Troubled Water.
I don't usually drink alcohol because it doesn't seem worth it. One day I had a little bit at dinner. The next day I felt like I didn't have any serotonin left in my body (i.e. I felt very bad). I definitely have a strong reaction to alcohol, but this experience tells me (again) that it really isn't worth it for me.
I've printed a few hundred t-shirts and other items in the last year, and I've found the whole clothing printing thing highly fascinating. One thing I find extremely interesting is that you have a lot more choices in what you can print. For example, there are many more colors in real life than there are in RGB, which makes sense if you think about it. You could have a red that is bright, one that is neon, or one that has a fascinating texture. It opens up a huge range of possibilities that you don't get when you're just working on your computer. Also, printing shirts isn't as expensive as I thought it would be. Depending on the quantity and quality, you can expect to pay 10€ +/-5€ per shirt.
You can get blisters on your palms from doing too many pushups. (This surprised me.)

Insights & Reflections

Things take longer than you think they will. I've been doing a lot of renovations around my apartment this year, and I've always been wrong about how far we'd get. We usually only finished 50% of what we had planned.
A prompt that I found very insightful: To start defining your problems, say (out loud) "everything in my life is completely fine." Notice what objections arise.
It takes about two weeks to settle back in at home after you've been away for a while. The environment, the projects, the routines, etc. – these take time to rebuild and make "yours".
A friend of mine observed that I have a strong motivation to improve and become a better person. She asked where this comes from. That's a great question, and I don't have a good answer yet.
The town I grew up in is such a beautiful, idyllic place. I didn't appreciate it as a child, and now I'm very grateful for that time. Being so much closer to nature does something for my mood and well-being.
Last year I did another Vipassana retreat. I had forgotten how much pain your body can feel during meditation 🫠
Like last time, I felt that 7-10 days of meditation isn't nearly enough. Every day I longed for the whole thing to be over, but when the last day came, I could feel deeply that it wasn't enough. Next time I want to try something longer, like a month.
In Vipassana I realized that everyone struggles with a certain amount of mind wandering and thinking. Older people tend to have more thoughts about the past, while younger people have more thoughts about the future.
Being lost in thought is a great way to waste time. When you notice it, it's like realizing that you've been asleep for too long, and you're only now experiencing reality again. So you could say that extending the periods of time when you're not lost in thought is like "extending" your life – it's a kind of mental longevity.
When you stand on the beach and look out at the horizon, and the water plays with your feet, you can realize something very beautiful and profound: waves are like the in- and out-breath of the ocean.
On the flight home I realized that I'd call the earth my home now. Yes, my home is still in Berlin, and it is also still with my parents. But there is a comfort in traveling to any other place and knowing that it will be interesting and beautiful, and that I can go there whenever I want. (Provided there's enough money and/or time).
I was once on a plane and it looked like it was going to crash, and my brain started to "roll the credits": how grateful I am for everything I've experienced so far, for my family, friends, and all the people I've met, and so on. At that moment it would have been okay to die because I could honestly say to myself: So far, your life has been great.
How did I know the plane was going to crash? There was extreme turbulence and the captain was making a long, agitated announcement in a foreign language. It was pitch black. Then, as we were landing, the exit signs suddenly came on. I thought, oh, we must be in a very bad situation right now. They're probably turning them on because they think there's a non-zero chance we're going to crash. The credits rolled. But we eventually landed with no apparent problems. (I learned the next day that the exit signs are on by default during takeoff and landing.)

And that concludes the list.

I wish you a great 2025 – to a new year of making mistakes, learning and reflecting! 🌱