Reflecting on the 2025

#reflection

Planning First: How I Finally Finished What I Started in 2025

For a long time, my default workflow for personal projects went like this:
Get an idea → Open my editor → Start coding.

No outline. No spec. Just… go.

At the time, it felt like momentum. In hindsight, it was just motion without direction. I’d spend hours or days writing logic, only to realize I’d drifted far from the original intent. Worse, I often didn’t even know what the original intent was anymore. I wasn’t building; I was wandering.

Projects didn’t stall because the code was hard. They stalled because I lost the objective. Midway through, I’d forget what problem I was solving or why a certain piece mattered. Without a clear target, every decision felt arbitrary, and progress became aimless.

The Shift

Sometime this year, I asked myself: How do actual teams ship products?

When a company launches a new product or feature, they start with planning: defining the problem, clarifying the goal, and mapping out what needs to be built before a single line of code is written.

Only then do they write code.

That felt obvious but I’d never applied it to my own work.

So I decided to try it. On my next project, I made a rule: no coding until there’s a plan.

What “Planning First” Actually Looked Like

It wasn’t elaborate. I opened a plain text file and wrote:

  • What problem am I solving?
  • Who is this for? (Even if it’s just me.)
  • What does “done” look like for v1?
  • What data do I need to store?
  • What are the key components or modules?

I used an AI assistant not to build the app, but to help organize my scattered thoughts into a coherent outline. Then I reviewed it critically. Did this actually solve the problem? Was anything missing?

This step simple as it sounds made all the difference. When I thought through the data model before coding, I could envision the fields and relationships I’d need, not just guess while debugging later. I avoided building entire features that didn’t align with the core goal.oal.

The Result

Yes, I still discovered gaps during implementation. That’s normal. But because I had a clear baseline, those adjustments were minor course corrections, not total derailments.

Most importantly: I shipped. Not in months. Not after endless tweaks. But in a focused burst, because I knew exactly what I was building and why.

One Takeaway

Planning first isn’t about bureaucracy. It’s about intentionality. It’s the difference between typing code and building something that matters even if it’s just a small tool for yourself.

In 2025, this small shift helped me stop starting and finally start finishing. Here’s to clearer builds in 2026.

Thank you

Big thanks for reading! You’re awesome, and I hope this post helped. Until next time!