After some time had passed since starting personal development, one morning Lilly found herself casually gazing at her app's access logs. She didn't have any particular purpose. It was more like a habit, or perhaps a curse—a daily routine. If the numbers went up, she felt a little happy; if they went down, she felt a little down. Just that cycle repeating over and over.
Then she noticed something: one user's ID appeared in the logs at almost the same time every morning for 30 consecutive days.
She remembers clearly how two completely different emotions surged into her chest at that moment, simultaneously, as if they had coordinated with each other. This is that story.
In the first few seconds of seeing that pattern in the logs, there was pure joy. The fact that "someone is using this every day" felt like it proved something, and she found herself leaning back deeply into her chair.
Someone she didn't know had incorporated something she created into their daily life. It was a sensation she had been longing for in the weeks after release. The feeling of "being used" is something you can never get during development.
But less than three seconds after that joy, another emotion surfaced.
"What if this app suddenly broke tomorrow? That person's morning routine would fall apart."
That sentence generated itself automatically in her mind, and she felt her posture straighten slightly. It wasn't an exaggeration—it was genuinely that kind of sensation.
The weight of "being used by someone"
When you're doing personal development, there's always a desire to "be used by someone." But once you actually start being used, a very subtle kind of gravity is born.
Not quite dependence, but something like it—your creation has worked its way into that person's daily life. It's joyful, but it comes paired with a sense of responsibility: "if I abandon this, it's over."
If you're building as a team, that weight gets distributed. But when you're building alone, all of it falls on you. While gazing at the logs, Lilly understood this for the first time not in her head, but in her body.
People say personal development is free. And it is. You can make what you want, set your own schedule. You don't need anyone's permission.
But on the other side of that freedom lies a loneliness where everything rests on you alone.
The "zero people" period until release
It took Lilly about three months to release her first app. During those three months, she had zero users. With no one using it, she fixed bugs, adjusted the UI, and rewrote the app store description countless times.
There were many nights when she thought, "I don't even know who I'm making this for." When she wanted to confirm direction, there was no colleague to consult. No one to throw ideas at on Slack. Just her own judgment, creating continuously.
Even now, remembering that period of loneliness causes a slight ache in her chest.
If something fails, no one comes to help
After release, the app went down for a few hours once. The cause was exceeding API limits—something obvious in hindsight. But at the time, it took two hours to figure out what was wrong, and she spent that entire time alone, panicking.
If you have a team, you can ask, "Could you take a look at this?" But when you're building alone, there's no one to ask. Sitting alone in front of the computer, reading error logs, she carried the guilt of thinking, "Someone might be trying to use this right now and failing."
I think that experience is why, when she saw the logs of a user who was using the app every day, the feeling of "responsibility" surfaced immediately.
After noticing there was a user using the app every day, her behavior changed slightly.
It wasn't a dramatic change. But there was a concrete change, definitely.
"Maybe I'll do it tomorrow" disappeared
Before, even when she noticed bugs, she would put off fixing them—"I'll do it later." If no one was using it, next week was fine, she thought.
But after learning that someone was using it every day, she found a reason to resist the feeling of "I don't feel like it today." Just the thought that it might affect that person's tomorrow morning made her feel a bit more motivated.
It was less obligation and more like a sense of mission. Not imposed from outside, but something welling up from within.
A habit of checking, even small things
Another change was that her habit of "using the app myself before release" strengthened.
Previously, she would settle for "it should work, so it's fine." Now she actually touches it with her hands. She made time to open the app again from the perspective of someone using it every day.
It's just five minutes. But when you imagine "someone is opening this every morning," you can't skip those five minutes.
To be honest, Lilly doesn't particularly like the word "motivation."
Motivation fluctuates. It's high on good days, and drops sharply when you're physically tired or when you see a competitor's new feature. If your development pace is swayed by such things, personal development becomes very fragile.
But "that person's tomorrow, who uses it every day" doesn't waver that much.
Because it's not emotion—it's fact. The reality that that person logged in today exists regardless of mood. Without having to make an effort to maintain motivation, that fact naturally pushes you forward.
It's fine not to know their face or name
Of course, Lilly doesn't know who that user is. She can only imagine what kind of life they live and how they feel using the app.
But she thinks that's okay.
Without knowing their face or name, her creation exists somewhere in that person's morning. It's a strange relationship, but she feels it's one of the purest forms of personal development. She can't see the face of the person who reads her release notes, but the numbers tell her they keep using it.
When you look at the personal developer community, the question "why do you create?" comes up fairly often.
For money, to solve your own problems, to improve your skills, because you love creating. They're all honest answers. Lilly also started with "because I wanted to use it myself."
But after learning about the existence of a user who uses it every day, her answer gained an additional sentence.
"To fix things today, for that person's tomorrow."
This isn't grandiose mission-driven thinking. It's something smaller and quieter. It's closer to the feeling of making breakfast. Because you know someone will eat it, you make it today. That's all.
The loneliness doesn't disappear, but
The weight of bearing responsibility alone doesn't go away. When something goes down, there's still no one coming to help, and when you notice a design flaw, there's no one to discuss "what should we do?" with.
But the meaning of that loneliness changed slightly.
Bearing responsibility alone is both the hardship of "carrying everything by yourself" and the pride of "everything is being done by my own decisions." You can only feel that pride because someone is using it. Without someone depending on you, loneliness is just isolation. Only when someone depends on you does loneliness become "loneliness with meaning."
If you're doing personal development and feeling like it's tough right now, I'd like you to try asking yourself one thing.
"If someone was using this app every day, what would you do?"
If you haven't released yet, it's hypothetical. If you still have few users, it's a future question. But if you try to answer that question, the reason you continue might become a little clearer.
Lilly still thinks about that morning's log pattern sometimes. Not as a neat inspirational story, but that sensation where joy and responsibility mixed together.
That sensation is one of the reasons she keeps creating alone today.
Someone whose face and name she doesn't know has her creation in their morning. That alone is reason enough to open the editor today.
Lily (@bokuwalily) — Personal developer. Creating iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI.
