I still think about that night sometimes. It was past 11 PM when I was sitting alone in front of my computer, having just finished implementing push notifications. After weeks of research, testing, and getting stuck countless times, the feature was finally working. When I pressed the test send button, the notification flew out from the server properly. The admin dashboard log displayed "Send Complete." Technically, it was working perfectly. But the number of people who received it was zero. Of course it was zero—there were no users yet. I understood that intellectually. Still, the silence of that moment pierced something inside me with precision. It was working correctly, but reaching no one. That fact felt far heavier than the "Delivery Count: 0" displayed on the screen. I started writing this piece to capture that moment. With a desire to speak a little to everyone doing personal development.
What I was building back then was an automation tool app that I operate. I wanted to deliver regular reminders to users, so I was trying to add push notification functionality.
The implementation itself was honestly quite challenging. Starting with certificate configuration, integrating with external services, managing device tokens for each platform... Each step required research time, and every time something didn't work, I felt a little discouraged, but I kept moving forward bit by bit. There were moments when I thought, "If it's going to be this much trouble, maybe I should have put it off." But the moment it actually worked, I was genuinely happy, and my energy went up despite the late hour. I drank coffee and pressed the button again just to see. There was that quiet sense of accomplishment from solo work—not something I'd tell anyone, but that feeling of "I did it."
After Pressing Send
After pressing the send button, the number displayed on the admin dashboard was "0."
Technically successful. Humanly speaking, there was no one. Have you ever experienced this—where these two things exist simultaneously? That night was the first time Lily experienced this sensation.
Nothing was wrong, and it was as expected. But I suddenly thought: "Who am I making this for?"
It was less sadness and more a strange sense of floating. It was working correctly, but no one received it. The system was complete, but the world didn't know about it yet. That gap felt oddly real in the quiet of the night.
Zero is a mysterious number.
If you stare at it for a while, you suddenly start seeing other things. "That service apparently has hundreds of users" or "That person got reactions right after going public." Without directly researching, information you've seen somewhere automatically lines up in your head, making your zero look bigger and bigger.
You borrow other people's numbers and measure yourself against them. You know it's strange, but you do it anyway.
The Period When I Was Comparing
To be honest, I spent a long time comparing.
Follower counts, user counts, likes on "I made this" posts. Every time I saw numbers higher than mine, the feeling "Does what I'm doing even matter?" would seep in. What I was doing started to look small, and I'd want to pause.
But at some point I realized: I knew nothing about the "context" of the people I was comparing myself to. How long they'd been at it, how many failures they'd had behind the scenes, what their actual situation was now. When you only look at numbers, it feels like you're the only one falling behind. But that's a pretty unfair way to compare.
Comparing itself isn't wrong, and there's a lot to learn from other people's efforts. But lining up "my zero" against "someone else's hundreds" and getting depressed about it wasn't very constructive. After realizing that, things got a little easier.
After settling down a bit, I looked at the logs again.
Above "Delivery Count: 0," it definitely said: "Send Complete."
The notification was sent properly. There was just no one to receive it. The system was working precisely. For Lily, this was an important confirmation. It wasn't that "no one received it"—it was that "the system was ready to deliver."
"Working" and "Reaching" Are Different Steps
When you're doing personal development, you tend to confuse these two.
Something you made "working" and it "reaching" someone. These are completely different things. "Working" is about technology. "Reaching" is about people. And people take time.
When you're building alone for a long time, you tend to assume "if it works, it will reach people." But reality is that after getting it to work, there are many more steps. Getting people to know about it, getting them to try it, getting them to keep using it. Each of these is a completely different undertaking.
Finishing the system means you've made it to the starting line. After understanding that, the way I saw "Delivery Count: 0" changed a little.
Strangely, I never thought "I should quit."
When I thought about why later, I think it's because Lily had something before "reaching someone"—"I'm making this because I want to make it." Of course I wanted people to use it, and I'd be happy if it helped someone. But the very first motivation came from my own sense that "it would be nice to have this."
That sense didn't change even with zero people. The system is complete. The delivery infrastructure is ready. In a sense, that's not zero.
What I Did That Night
There was only one thing I did that night.
I opened the notification test send screen and sent one message to myself. The notification arrived on my device that I'd registered for testing. A dummy message appeared on the screen: "Reminder. Keep going today."
It might seem a little silly, but Lily laughed when I saw it. The first user was me, I thought.
But I thought that was okay. At least for now.
I confirmed the reminder sent to myself and closed the computer. That was enough for that day.
When you release something you've made, most of the time it's quiet at first.
I think this is something many personal developers experience. After going public, nothing happens for a while. No notifications. No numbers moving. That silence might be a kind of test for whether you can keep creating, I feel now.
"How you spend the quiet times" seems deeply connected to whether you can keep going long-term. Do you give up when faced with the silence, or do you accept the silence as natural and keep moving? I can't say which is right, but Lily wants to choose the latter.
What I'm Doing Now
What I'm trying recently is "deciding how often to check the numbers."
Opening the dashboard every day to confirm zero was harder work than I thought. Zero usually stays zero even if you check it every day. Confirming that every morning was like pressing on a wound you already know is there.
So now I only look once a week. On other days, I focus only on creating and taking small actions to get the word out (writing articles, posting a single comment). It's not a perfect method, but it feels like I'm making much more progress than "checking zero every day." Instead of being swayed by numbers, I'm moving at my own pace.
I still remember that "Delivery Count: 0" screen.
I don't want to erase it—I actually want to keep it as a precious memory. Because that silence of "no one received it" was Lily's very first real sense of what it means to keep making things to reach someone.
I think everyone doing personal development has their own "zero night." A night when things didn't work out. A night when no one came. A night when you sent a notification but it was silent.
While experiencing nights like that, Lily secretly considers the people who keep going anyway as companions.
The day zero becomes one will come slowly. Until then, keeping the system running properly is the most sincere thing I can do now.
Lily（@bokuwalily）― Personal developer. Building iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI.
🎁 A free bonus for reading all the way through: LINEで「自動化」と送って受け取る（実装テンプレ7本）
Lily（@bokuwalily）― Personal developer / AI adoption and business automation consultant. Building iOS apps and web services in tandem with AI while consulting on AI adoption and automation for companies.
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🐙 OSS → github.com/bokuwalily
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