2025 / Year in Review

I love writing Year in Review posts. It feels valuable to me to summarize the year, save some memories, and highlight what mattered. Now, I’m writing it in English for the first time.

2025 was a year when I worked more, learned more, pushed more. I feel satisfied with my efforts, but at the same time it had its price — I spent less time on hobbies, non-work activities, and just had less rest.

2025 was the fourth year of the Russian full-scale invasion of Ukraine. It’s hard to find the appropriate words, but still I want to say that I miss Ukraine so much, and I want to thank everyone who has been supporting my homeland.

This year I was very fortunate to meet many of our friends whom we hadn’t seen for a long time. Some people came to Warsaw from Ukraine, some from abroad. Many of our friends made a huge effort to visit us for our birthdays and other occasions. I’m very grateful for this.

New connection of the year: Anton Iokov. I don’t remember a time when meeting someone new clicked so instantly — it was so nice to meet a person with so many common interests. Anton writes a newsletter that I highly recommend.

Colleague of the year: Remco Haszing. Working with Remco is a pleasure, and he’s very kind and proficient.

Reunion of the year: meeting our dear friends Alex and Nastya after three years of being unable to do that.

I’d also like to thank Kos Timoshenko and his wife Natalia for being with us this year (and for all the postcards!)

Marketing is a transfer of enthusiasm.

— Jason Fried

(Listen to a fragment of a podcast for more context.)

This one revealed something very useful to me.

When I’m asked about what I do, I say something about my work at Transloadit. But for some reason, I usually stay silent with strangers about my own projects. I often feel that’s enough when I already told them about my job. I don’t like talking too much.

This year I came across Omarchy Linux by DHH. I saw how passionate David is about it, tweeting about it regularly and talking about it with sincere excitement. And not the list of features, but his enthusiasm made me install that OS on an old MacBook, give it a try, and end up liking it. It still had plenty of bugs, a lot of things to do, but at the core, there was a novel OS that definitely offers a lot of amazing things compared to baseline.

And then Jason summarized it in that beautiful transfer of enthusiasm quote. It made me think, reflect, and realize that I don’t do anything like that. I usually keep my enthusiasm with me for some reason. I hesitate, I underrate, I overthink.

This March, I was a guest on a podcast where I was interviewed about design. I didn’t tell anything meaningful about my two main personal projects! 🤦‍♂️

I made a first step recently. In small talk with someone who asked what I do, I mentioned Transloadit, but then added, “I’m also a co-founder of a personal budgeting service that makes it easy to manage money. And I’m redesigning Ukrainian road signs because I know how to make them better and I want to contribute to my homeland.”

It felt incredibly good! It was a huge personal victory. I was so happy to break the pattern — and to see a surprisingly positive reaction.

So it’s not only the quality of my work. It’s how enthusiastic I am at telling the world about it.

It might sound obvious, but I haven’t felt it clearly. It feels a bit sad to realize it at 34. But it’s better late than never.

In 2025, I added 113 new signs to our Collection and wrote 7 blog posts (in Ukrainian).

I’ve been spending an enormous amount of my free time on this project. It won’t bring me any money, but it’s something I feel I cannot not do.

I’ve loved road signs since my childhood. I have enough expertise and energy to make them much better than they are now. So I keep working and bringing plenty of love to this project.

Pause animation Play animation

The personal budgeting service I’ve mentioned above is called Sintra.

I had the idea for it back in 2018, and one year later we launched a public beta together with Leonid Shevtsov, one of the best programmers I know.

We used to work on this project about once a week. We would meet at a coffee place, discuss a feature or improvement, and build it together. It was fun. But when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, we started living in different cities, and this flow was unfortunately broken. We did some updates, but it was hard to revive the full vibe.

I stayed mostly silent about Sintra in 2022–2025. I didn’t feel confident about telling the world about a product that we didn’t update frequently or that didn’t reach big commercial success.

However, I changed my mind a lot recently. I don’t care much about the update frequency or about our MRR (fortunately, we both have paid jobs and we aren’t in need), but I care about the value Sintra can provide. It’s a great tool for budgeting. It’s simple, fast, non-bloated, and made with love. And even without any marketing, Sintra has paid customers, and somehow complete strangers find our product and buy a subscription.

So this year, we translated Sintra into English. I did a little design facelift and ordered an illustration for the How it works page from one of my favorite illustrators, Yana Boyko. I’m really happy with these updates.

Surprisingly, when my enthusiasm returned, those collaboration vibes returned too! Leonid and I can work together productively again.

I recently recorded a 9-minute video about how budgeting works in Sintra. If you are interested, check it out on X.

Iceland 🇮🇸

This is where my introverted soul found home.

Visiting Iceland had been a long dream of mine. Seeing regular affordable flights from Warsaw was tempting, so I finally found time and managed to make it happen.

When it comes to traveling to Iceland, they usually recommend having a decent amount of time, a lot of money, and good company. I had only four days, a modest budget, and I traveled alone. But that was an incredibly great experience. I remember the feeling that even if I had to travel back on the first day, I would still count it as a successful trip.

It was one of the best journeys of my life. I’d love to come back again.

Most definitely, Sigur Rós — Takk…

Although I had known this album for a long time, I could fully appreciate it only in 2025. It started with a record in a public library that has a vinyl collection. A distraction-free environment and great sound quality did their thing, and I could enjoy this masterpiece deeply.

I listened to this album while walking the streets of Reykjavik and even bought a copy at a local record store. And finally, I saw them live with an orchestra, which was unforgettable. I’m very grateful for these experiences.

My favorite moment on the album is when you just don’t want Hoppípolla to end, and then the next track, Með Blóðnasir, comes in, continuing Hoppípolla beautifully.

Honorable mention: Trouble Will Find Me by The National. I listened to it a lot this year.

The <Comparison /> component for the Road Signs website.

This is just a little component I coded to compare current signs with the new ones, but man, I feel joy each time I use it.

I can just write <Comparison sign="1.17" /> in Markdown, the computer will do the computing, and I’ll see a styled block with the sign title, before/after images, captions and a theme switcher. If you’ve ever placed interactive content in blog posts, you may imagine how nice it is to have such a clean one-liner.

Timeline.

I remember the exact moment when I got the idea. I was about to leave an underground crossing while listening to Tropic Morning News by The National on my earphones. I enjoyed it so much that I wanted to share it somewhere, but realized that I didn’t have a good place for it. I remembered the LiveJournal times ~20 years ago when the new post form contained the “Current music” field… I loved it and missed it.

So I created a timeline where I could share moments I wanted to share, without much overthinking about whether they were appropriate for social media or not. That’s my personal little corner on the internet.

Teaching my son Peter to ride the bicycle.

• Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne. It was a special one because I read it aloud to my daughter in the late evenings. I loved the story and the experience.
• Feeling Great by David D. Burns. This book is pretty massive but very useful for those familiar with depression and anxiety. I read it after Feeling Good (it was one of the very best reads of 2024) and I’m glad to be familiar with both books.
• It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. Classic 37signals, with lots of common sense on every page.
• The Righteous Mind by Jonathan Haidt. This book had been on my list for a long time, and I’d been intrigued by its “Why good people are divided by politics and religion” tagline. It was a good read.
• The Courage to Be Happy by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga. It’s a sequel to The Courage to Be Disliked that I previously enjoyed.

I also wanted to revisit two books I had read before:

• The Courage to Be Disliked by Ichiro Kishimi and Fumitake Koga.
• Your Music and People by Derek Sivers — one of the best books on marketing I’ve ever read.

I remembered the topics discussed in these two books, but I felt the need to refresh my knowledge. Both rereads were really useful. It’s interesting how some parts that weren’t previously relevant can become very useful at another time.

I watched way too few movies in 2025. My top two this year are:

• Antarctica — a documentary about visiting the Vernadsky Research Base. The movie is in Ukrainian, but English subtitles are available.
• Zootopia 2. Zootopia is one of my favorite animated films ever, so I looked forward to the sequel. It didn’t disappoint!

Honorable mention: F1.

The most enjoyable watching experience this year wasn’t a new movie. It was Amelie at an old cinema with my wife.

The REWORK Podcast.

It’s a joy to listen to Kimberly, Jason and David and feel that many miles away there are people who share values similar to mine.

The ideas they discuss are inspiring and resonant, and it’s always a pleasant and entertaining listen.

I like how elegantly this picture summarizes my thoughts about AI taking over more and more areas of everyday life.

This year, I felt more clearly how I want to see real people behind what they share. I like to see those tiny imperfections, that unique tone of voice, those personal traits instead of the same patterns, same components, same colors.

Keeping your personality yours and not letting AI distort it feels very important these days.

Voice messages.

I used to dislike all voice messages in messengers. When someone recorded them, it took me an effort to listen, and I’d always prefer messages to be written instead.

A good friend of mine helped me change perspective. He usually records a 10–15 min voice message for me, but instead of being irritated, I now treat it as a personal podcast, recorded by my dear friend, just for me. Isn’t it beautiful? I don’t need to listen to it immediately. I find a convenient time, usually when I’m walking or commuting to work, and enjoy a fresh “episode”.

Thanks Artem.

Thinking that I’m not enough based on a lack of reactions on social media.

Typical scenario: I create something → I share it on Twitter and/or Bluesky → There’s a weak response (few likes and comments) → I think my work is not enough → I think I am not enough.

I used to have a different experience. For example, if I had written a blog post, I’d just share a link and I could expect that people who follow me would open that link, read what I shared, and interact one way or another. I didn’t need to think much about the tweet or do the “link below” dance.

This doesn’t seem to work anymore.

Algorithms make your content rather disposable — just refresh the algorithmic feed and your tweet is gone. Posts with links have less of a chance to appear in people’s feeds. Some keywords might not leave you any chance to be seen. And there’s much, much more entertaining content these days, and it’s gotten harder to compete for attention.

All of this is pretty frustrating, but here’s my antidote:

• Be specific. If my work didn’t have enough attention on social media, it doesn’t automatically mean my work is not enough, or even worse, I’m not enough. A more accurate conclusion would be something like “That tweet wasn’t successful,” which already frames it differently.
• Treat it as a lottery. As Aaron Francis put it in his newsletter, Twitter is mostly a Game of Luck. You may win, but by default you don’t. Posting is simply buying a ticket — it doesn’t guarantee anything, but without it, you have no chance at all.
• Think about how I can make my tweets different. Or ask myself if that’s really what I want. I often decide that I don’t want to do any tricks and just want to be authentic. I don’t really have any goals to become a social media star.
• Care about the people I follow. I still read RSS and only use the Following tab on Twitter instead of For You. I prefer to see “boring” content from people I care about over any other attractive (and addictive) algorithmic content.
• Remember that a non-hit tweet doesn’t cancel the work I’ve done. It stays with me, and nobody knows what can happen next.

That was me, and that was a screenshot of my website. You can’t imagine my surprise!

Launching that website a few months earlier was rather a failure. Sharing it on my social media didn’t produce any meaningful results. There was mostly silence, I felt pretty bad, and I had a lot of self-doubt.

But when this tweet happened, people were amazed! Even weeks later, some folks remembered that joke and asked Jason whether I was hired or not.

Once again I learned that whether you’re seen and appreciated is sometimes a matter of proper distribution.

In Ukraine, we say “Не боги горшки ліплять.”

It literally translates as “pots aren’t made by gods.” Extraordinary things are still made by fellow humans, not by some mythical superheroes. You can learn and take part too.

Configure Downtime on my phone so that most apps are blocked from 22:30 to 8:00, and no notifications can appear.

Previously, I could wake up in the morning, pick up the phone to check the weather or turn on music, but then see a notification that immediately took my attention. I hated it — instead of thinking my own thoughts after the night, I was processing that notification. With this change, things became much calmer. I see notifications when I’m already out, ready to work.

This serves as a great addition to last year’s decision not to take the phone to the bedroom.

Shaving with a good old double-edge razor.

I bought this razor in 2022, used it a little, but time pressure in the mornings won, and I switched back to Gillette Mach3 with their shaving gel for the sake of convenience.

When I started using the double-edge razor again, with proper shaving cream and a brush, I realized how much better the experience is. It takes 5–10 minutes more, but it’s a big quality-of-life improvement. It feels luxurious, yet it’s cheaper than Gillette in less than a year.

Shaving this way also reminds me that convenience sometimes isn’t worth it.

• Clues by Sam — an everyday detective game. My wife and I often compete to solve it faster. She always wins.
• Timeguessr — an everyday game where you see five photos and guess where and when they were taken.
• Balatro — a fun and thoughtful card game (warning: addictive).

Migraine.

I had more than fifteen migraine episodes this year that made me feel super bad. I finally confirmed that this terrible headache was a migraine. The doctor prescribed some medication that helps so I can struggle less — paracetamol and ibuprofen didn’t help at all. I still need to understand it better and find and fix the root cause.

In Ashgabat, the capital of Turkmenistan, the vast majority of cars are white. There was (is?) a law that says cars must not be black or brightly colored. They might not let you enter the city in a car that has a different color.

This looks weird:

(Photo via https://charisfar.com/overland-journal-day-53-56-turkmenistan/)

• Take care of that inner child. Remember what you (still) love. Take photos. Enjoy music. Play and sing.
• Don’t try too much to optimize time. Enjoy the slow experiences you like.