When progress hides behind the scenes.

Week 17 (Oct 20-26, 2025)

Oct 28, 2025

This week, I didn’t meet any of my goals. No projects finished. No milestones hit. But when I looked under the surface, this might’ve been one of my best weeks yet.

Hey, Zoli here! I’m 17, working on a tech business from scratch, documenting everything I learn and experience along the way so that you can learn from my story.

The bigger picture: Season 2

We’re about two-thirds through Season 21 now. Since September (running until the end of November), I’ve been balancing 4 areas from week to week, connected to my goal of launching a business at 182:

Substack: reaching 100 subscribers, building a real community.
Coding: developing app MVPs to build my skills.
Growth: learning about productivity, marketing, sales, and SaaS.
Business: setting up frameworks to prepare for what’s next.

All four are essential parts of my plans, but Substack and coding got priority, they’re the main focus right now. (This is why I have to sometimes delay tasks from growth and business.)

The invisible wins

Substack: the reminder I needed.

This week, growth slowed down. We barely moved past 50 subs, even though I expected the usual +10. At first, it was discouraging. But then I found the reason:

I got comfortable. I stopped posting and engaging as much.

I also asked a few big creators for tips on how to improve my long-form content.

I received a bunch of advice, so while increasing engagement, I’ll also improve my content in the following weeks.

Coding: the Daily Learner AI.

Last week, I wrapped up my previous project, and now I’ve begun something brand new: the Daily Learner AI. Think Duolingo with AI, but not just for languages.

You choose a topic, set a timeframe (like 30 days), and AI will send you short daily lessons and quizzes to test your knowledge.

This week I finished:

The initial idea
The UI prototype in Figma (even started frontend development)
The MVP roadmap (every feature I’ll build in the first version)

I skipped validation, and for a good reason.

Right now, my goal isn’t making money with this project. I aim to improve my coding experience, because I’m far from being as skilled as I want to be.

I don’t plan on releasing it, but curious: would you use an app like the Daily Learner AI?

An early design made by me in Figma (with placeholder text and unfinished design).

Growth: finally starts to accelerate.

My new reading method helps me fly through the chapters of Atomic Habits (while having everything important noted down), and the productivity course guided me through energy management (turns out there are different types of energy).

This week was the first test of my new productivity system: time-blocking, a digital vision board, and much more.

The results aren’t here yet, but they’re definitely getting closer.

Business: the highlight of the week.

I finally started a project I was really excited about, yet delayed for weeks: building a business-building framework that’s actually fun to use.

Why will this be useful?

It’s full of creative approaches, like writing a Wikipedia article for your product, or placing your competitors on a map. This can spark ideas a dry document couldn’t.

And since putting the foundations down is essential, why not have fun doing so?

I’m really excited to share this once finished!

Progress doesn’t always come with a finish line

If there’s one thing you take from this week, let it be this one:

Progress isn’t just the steps that make you hit the milestone. It’s also the invisible building blocks (a system refined, mindset fixed) that bring you closer to them.

These wins don’t make headlines. They make momentum.

Really important, however: invisible progress ≠ zero tangible progress.

Before you call the past 3 months of your life “invisible progress“ just so you can stay inside your comfort zone, here’s how to check if you actually progressed:

Connect your initial state (eg, start of the week) and your end goal state (eg, end of the month) with a mental line.
Now place your current state on this mental line. Are you closer? If yes, you made invisible progress. If not, you should probably start doing something real.

Doing this with my past week, here is the result:

I made a near-perfect week of coding progression (this never happened before). I read 100+ pages from Atomic Habits, and have 4 pages of pure value out of it. I’ve done most of the business model canvas, which I’ll use and revisit regularly.

On the other hand, Substack wasn't invisible progress, I simply didn’t progress.