"Can I ask you something? Lily, could I get some advice?" When Lily read that single sentence, she froze for a moment while holding her smartphone. It was a message that had arrived via DM from an individual developer she'd known for just a few weeks. They were consulting about the direction of monetization for an app they'd just released. "Someone like me...?" That's what she honestly thought. Lily hadn't yet achieved any major results, wasn't famous, and didn't have many followers. Yet when the word "advice" was directed at her, she remembers feeling deeply uncomfortable. It felt rude to refuse, but honestly, she also wanted to give a proper answer somewhere. So she nervously wrote back. About half a year has passed since then, and Lily often reflects on that day. It felt like something changed in that moment. I thought I'd write about how, by stepping into the role of teacher for the first time, I began to see things that had been invisible to me all along.
When you continue with individual development, your SNS feed fills with posts like "Achieved ◯◯ thousand yen monthly revenue" or "Surpassed ◯◯ thousand users." At first, Lily genuinely thought these were amazing, but before long, they had become "her standard." When something she released got 1,000 downloads, she'd think, "That's still nothing." Even when revenue stopped being zero, she'd think, "That's not much money." Because she was always comparing herself to people ahead of her, her own position felt perpetually "nonexistent."
The Strange Way Accumulated Work Becomes Invisible
Lily thinks this is something common to many people doing individual development. You keep building a little bit every day, yet you don't feel like you've "accumulated" anything. The reason is that your own experience becomes "normal" to you.
Submitting to the app store stopped being scary. The cycle of facing errors became second nature. You learned how to take user feedback and iterate. But these are "things you couldn't do but now can," which end up looking like "things that are obvious now" to your current self. You don't stop seeing growth because you're not growing—you stop seeing it because your own standards have quietly risen without you noticing.
Going back to the story, Lily really struggled with that response. She'd write, delete, write again, delete again.
"What if this is off-base?" "Will my experience actually be helpful?" Those anxieties kept spinning in her head. But before she knew it—before she knew it—quite a lot of words had come out.
"This is how Lily thought about it." "I've had failures like this." "After I changed this, things shifted a little." Those words came naturally. Not as advice, but as if sharing her own experience—and once she started, she couldn't stop.
Shifting from "Teaching the Right Answer" to "Thinking Together"
Before sending it, she read through everything once. "Does this sound arrogant?"
There was one thing she rewrote. She changed the phrasing from "You should do ◯◯" to "This is what Lily tried." She also added the line, "Even though things didn't always work out, I'm glad I kept going." Somehow, she wanted the words to feel less like pushing her experience on someone and more like standing beside them and talking.
The person replied: "Thank you so much, this was really helpful. Hearing that you kept going even while uncertain made me feel a bit better." What surprised Lily most wasn't the technical advice—it was that the simple fact of "kept going while uncertain" had been useful to someone.
After sending that reply, Lily felt something indescribable. Not quite pride. More like a quiet discovery: "Oh, I do have things I can say."
Until then, Lily had thought, "Since I haven't succeeded yet, I have nothing to speak about." After results, after achievements, after becoming bigger. But that day, she realized: "Even without success, I have experience."
Even stories of failure become real information for someone. Knowing in advance "I might end up like this too" can reduce wasted time for someone coming after you. For the first time, she truly felt that the time she'd accumulated held value, separate from the scale of output.
Beginning to Question the Assumption That "Small Scale = Low Value"
There was one more thing Lily realized. She'd been unconsciously holding the belief that "small scale = low value."
When you're in a world where follower counts, download numbers, and revenue have a hierarchy, the smaller your numbers, the more you feel "I'm not in a position to speak yet." But is that really true? What individual developers want to hear isn't just polished success stories—it's also the real voices of people struggling and persisting just like them.
Lily herself had always thought she'd much rather read "In this situation I felt anxious, and I overcame it this way (or couldn't)" than someone's "Achieved ◯◯ thousand yen monthly revenue." Yet she hadn't applied that same measure to herself.
Triggered by that consultation, Lily gradually began practicing putting "what she'd done" into words.
She noticed that when you try to explain something to someone, vague experience gains definition. What she'd thought of as "somehow did this" became "I did this for this reason." What felt like "seemed to work out" became "When I changed this at this timing, I felt real progress."
The act of explaining is also an act of deepening your own understanding. By trying to convey something to someone else, you clarify how much you actually understood. The more you can talk about, the more you realize you've accumulated more experience than you thought.
A Small Habit: Once a Week, Write Down "What I've Learned to Do"
Since then, there's one thing Lily does. Once a week, she writes in a notebook: "What I learned to do this week" and "What I realized this week."
It doesn't have to be anything major. "I'm no longer scared to reply to app store reviews." "I can make design decisions quickly without second-guessing." "I can move forward the next day without dwelling on yesterday's failure." That sort of thing.
When she looks back each week, the things she's accumulated remain as text. Not as numbers, but as words. This is quietly valuable—even in low-output weeks, she can think, "I was actually moving forward." Even without major achievements, recording small changes becomes evidence for yourself. It feels like those small shifts accumulate into something real.
Individual development is basically solitary. No team, no boss, nowhere to report progress. While that freedom is nice, there's no opportunity to confirm "Is what I'm doing right?", and before you know it, anxiety has piled up.
But when you listen to someone else's concerns, you find yourself thinking, "Oh, I felt that way too" and "I solved it like this." While you're trying to help them, you're actually facing your past self. You think you're giving advice, but you're actually organizing your own thoughts. Listening to someone else's worries became an inventory of yourself.
"Teaching" Doesn't Have to Mean "Teaching"—Just "Being There" Is Enough
Even now, Lily gets a little nervous when asked for advice. The anxiety "Can I say something right?" hasn't disappeared. But she's developed a slightly different way of engaging with it.
You don't have to teach the right answer. Just talk honestly about your experience. Failures, things that didn't work out, things you're still uncertain about—you can share all of it. And sometimes, that's enough to give someone the feeling that "I'm not alone." She learned the value of simply "being there" only after stepping into the role of teacher.
Finally, can I speak directly to you, reading this?
"I don't have anything worth saying," you might think—you, the individual developer. Lily believes that's not true. The time you've spent so far has taught you more than you think.
When someone asks you something, you don't have to come up with a perfect answer. "This is how it was for me." "This is what I did in that situation." "Honestly, I still don't know." That's enough. Those words might be worth more to someone standing where you stand than you realize.
Lily is still in the middle of her journey too. But she wants to be someone who can honestly talk about being in the middle. Your experience will probably become someone's "that's enough for me."
Lily (@bokuwalily) — Individual developer. Making iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI.
