When doing personal development, there are moments when I suddenly think, "Why am I making this?" The euphoria right after release settles down, the growth in downloads stops, and reactions on social media fade. It's precisely during these periods that all I receive are bug reports. Lily has gone through such times many times over. But today, I want to talk about something a little different from that. About a single message that arrived one day out of the blue. I want to talk about why the words "it really helped" from a complete stranger have become the biggest reason I keep creating to this day. I'm not trying to brag about being thanked, and I'm not trying to turn this into an emotional episode. I'm not sure if I can articulate this well, but I'm writing this hoping it might reach even a few people who are similarly continuing to create something.
About half a year after release, my app was being used by an average of a dozen or so people per day. Monthly active users were around three hundred.
When I first saw those numbers, I thought, "That's not bad." But a week later, I had shifted to thinking, "This should grow more," and a month later, I was gripped by the anxiety of "Is it already stalling?" Numbers are strange things—while they're increasing, no amount of growth feels like enough, and the moment they plateau, a feeling of "Is this the end?" creeps in.
Before I knew it, I was spending more time thinking about the dashboard than about the app itself. I'd check the numbers first thing in the morning, then at noon, then at night. If they hadn't changed from the day before, I'd sigh. If they'd increased slightly, I'd hypothesize, "Did this strategy work?" and then check again the next morning. I kept repeating that loop endlessly.
I was seeing users as "numbers"
Looking back now, I think I wasn't seeing users as human beings back then. I was converting them into words like "MAU," "DAU," and "retention rate," and perceiving them as movements on a line graph.
The fact that there were three hundred active users should have meant that my app existed in the lives of three hundred people. Each of them had mornings, work, worries, and reasons to open the app. Each of them had their own nights and their own exhaustion. It's obvious when you think about it, but when you're looking at numbers, all of that disappears. Without realizing it, it had vanished.
It was a weekday afternoon in March. A notification came from the app's contact form, and at first I thought it was probably another bug report as I opened it.
What was there was a three-line message.
"Hello. Since I started using this app, my days have become a little easier. Thank you so much for creating an app like this. It really helped."
At first, I couldn't grasp the meaning. It wasn't a complaint. It wasn't a bug report or a feature request. It was just "thank you."
I stared at the screen for a while, unable to do anything. I tried to write a reply, but the first sentence wouldn't come out. I wrote and deleted several times, then wrote again. In the end, I sent something like, "Thank you for using it. Hearing you say that made me feel like it was worth creating." I remember not being able to leave the screen for a while after hitting send.
"It really helped" is an amazing phrase. It means someone was struggling with something, and it was at least partially resolved. It's different from just "it was convenient." It means something that was troubling them became easier.
After receiving those words, I kept thinking, "In what situation are they using this app?" A person whose name and face I don't know. I don't know where they live, what they do, or what they were struggling with.
But I started to feel like I didn't need to know all that. This person's life contained something I had created. Just that one point was enough to convey something immensely powerful.
It's completely different from a five-star review
I've received five-star reviews on the App Store a few times. I'm happy and grateful. But to be honest, it felt completely different.
Writing text directly in a contact form and sending it requires a little effort. Finding the form, composing the text, hitting send. There's something special about the weight of words that someone took the trouble to deliver. The fact that "this person went out of their way to tell me" rides along with the words.
There was something that couldn't be converted into numbers. Not something that becomes a download count, not something that becomes a review rating, not something that's just counted as one of the MAU. It was words from a person with a name, with a life, with feelings.
I started creating the app that was called "helpful" because a previous app had failed.
The first app was something I created purely because I thought "this is convenient." But no one used it. It got downloaded, but was deleted within a week. The review said "I don't understand how to use it," and I felt down thinking "I thought I made it easy to understand." I analyzed what went wrong, fixed the UI, re-released it, and got the same result. Back then, I always felt like I was talking to a wall.
"Something I want to use" and "something that helps someone" are different
What I learned from that failure was that "something I find convenient" and "something that helps someone" don't necessarily overlap.
Something I make for myself resonates with me. But something that resonates with me only reaches people who have the same challenges as me. And I can't create solutions for problems I'm not even aware I have. I finally realized the limits of "creating with myself at the center" through that failure.
After that, I changed direction slightly and wrote down some things that people close to me were actually struggling with. It didn't have to be something technically impressive. I didn't have to do anything difficult. I just wanted to create something that could resolve someone's "this is inconvenient" just a little bit. The second app started from that feeling. Without that failure, that app wouldn't exist. And that message wouldn't have arrived.
After receiving that message, I changed several things. Not dramatic changes, but I felt my awareness shift gradually.
One was to start writing proper replies to the form submissions. Before that, I was just sending short template messages like "Thank you for reporting. We will confirm." Now I try to choose my words a bit more carefully. I try to include something that responds to what the other person wrote. To consciously and carefully remember that the other person is human.
Another was changing the update release notes. Instead of just "Bug fixes" and "Performance improvements," I started trying to add a line about "whose, what, and how it changes." I had thought release notes weren't being read, but when I realized someone might be reading them, I became able to write them more carefully.
And I intentionally reduced how often I checked the dashboard. What I used to open multiple times a day, I changed to once a week. Numbers aren't unimportant, but if you look at numbers too much, you end up chasing only the numbers. I understood that well after receiving that message. With the time I used to spend looking at numbers, I now spend more time thinking about the app itself.
The words "it really helped" remain in me. When I feel down, or when that feeling of "why am I making this?" comes again, it's something I quietly remember.
Personal development is solitary work. No one asked me to do it, there's no deadline, and no one would be angry if I stopped. To keep creating in such an environment, I think you need something inside you that serves as fuel.
For me, that fuel was partly that one phrase. Not download numbers, not monetization results, not social media followers. Just a three-line message from someone whose name I don't know, who took the trouble to send it.
Maybe there's someone like that using your app right now as you read this article. They just haven't sent a message yet, but they're quietly using it every day. Something that doesn't show up in the numbers, but genuinely exists in someone's life.
When I think about it that way, I feel like I can continue just a little bit longer. Those "little bits" accumulate, and today too I'm writing code. I think that's enough now.
Lily (@bokuwalily) — Independent developer. Creating iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI.
