Every year, one quiet question returns to me:

“How did I really do this year?”

Not only financially or professionally,
but personally… emotionally… humanly.

To answer it honestly, I built a small ritual:
On the first day of every new year, I sit down and review the one that just ended.
— No noise.
— No celebration.
— Just a reflection.

And every single time, that moment becomes a strange mix of emotions:

• Happiness for the people I met
• Sadness for the mistakes I made
• Gratitude for what I managed to build
• Excitement for everything still waiting ahead

But most importantly, it’s the moment where I write down what the year tried to teach me.

Because maybe… if lessons are shared, someone else won’t need to lose a full year to learn them.

So this is my list. The things 2025 quietly taught me — and the ideas I’m carrying into 2026:

1. Time is priceless. Track it like money.

In 2025, I understood something simple but uncomfortable:

Time is the only resource you can’t earn back.

We protect our money.
We track our expenses.
We think before we spend.

But with time… we often let it disappear without noticing.

Planning my months, weeks, and even ordinary workdays changed that, then 2 things becomes clear:

• I could see my real habits, not the ones I imagined.
• I discovered what was secretly consuming most of my time.

For me, the biggest surprise was transportation and YouTube. Hours lost every week without creating anything meaningful.
That awareness alone was powerful. Because once you truly see where your time goes, you have only two choices:

• Optimize it
• Or prioritize better

Both move you closer to your goals. And that’s the real point of planning, not to control every minute, but to make sure your life is moving in the right direction, even if the progress is slow.

2. Invest your money — all the time

Since I first understood capitalism, one idea stayed with me:

Money itself isn’t a real value.

It’s only a representation, a reflection of the value you create through your work, your skills, and your time.
The real power isn’t in holding money. It’s in the process that generates it.

But in 2025, I realized something uncomfortable:
I had missed opportunities to grow my money simply because I wasn’t investing or diversifying enough.
Stagnation is expensive in the long run. Because money that sleeps… slowly disappears.

Just silent (9AS7A A M3ALEM 😑)

3. If you don’t track your money, you will lose it

For a long time, I tracked my expenses in a simple Excel file.

Nothing fancy. Just numbers, categories, and regular reviews.

That habit gave me a sense of control, until the months when I stopped reviewing.

And when I finally looked again, the surprise was painful:

Small, ordinary expenses were quietly destroying my budget.

In my case, the biggest hidden leak was coffee. Nothing dramatic per purchase… but repeated every single day, it became significant.

That’s the danger of untracked money: Not big mistakes. Just small bad decisions repeated too often.

Tracking your expenses does more than control spending.
It helps you:

• Understand your real financial behavior
• Make intentional choices instead of automatic ones
• Create space to save, invest, and grow

Because clarity is the first step toward freedom, financial or otherwise.

4. Relationships are the real foundation of success — and happiness

In 2025, I understood something that no technical book had ever taught me:

Relationships are the core of everything.

Business. Work. Life. And most importantly… happiness.

You can build products alone.
You can write code alone.
You can even make money alone.

But you cannot build a meaningful life alone.

4.1. Understanding people is a superpower

Learning how people think, react, and communicate solves more problems than any technical skill ever could.

Good communication doesn’t just make conversations smoother, it opens doors:

• Opportunities appear
• Conflicts disappear faster
• Trust grows naturally
• Collaboration becomes easier

And over time, these invisible advantages become real success. That’s why understanding:

• yourself
• others
• and a bit of human psychology

is one of the highest-return investments you can make.

4.2. Everyone lives inside a cognitive distortion

One of the strangest lessons I learned this year is that almost everyone carries some form of cognitive distortion (تشوه معرفي).

We build simplified stories about people based on limited experiences.

For example:

• Some marketing teams meet a few engineers and conclude that all engineers are cold, geeky, and unemotional.
• Someone from one country has a bad experience and suddenly believes everyone from that culture is the same.

These shortcuts feel true… but they quietly create misunderstanding and conflict.

Not because people are bad, but because our minds try to simplify a complex world.

4.3. The listener controls every conversation

Another subtle truth surprised me:

In any conversation, the real control belongs not to the speaker, but to the listener.

Because meaning is not created when words are spoken. It is created when they are interpreted.

So if you are speaking, remember:

The person who listens is shaping what your message becomes.

And if you learn to listen deeply, you gain a rare kind of influence, one built on understanding, not force.

5. Your future self is shaped by your present thoughts

One quiet realization followed me throughout 2025:

Your future is not something you discover. It’s something you slowly build.

And it begins in the most invisible place of all, your thoughts.

Because thoughts become:

• Values that guide what matters
• Goals that give direction
• Plans that organize action
• Habits that repeat daily
• And finally… a life that reflects all of them

Step by step, the invisible becomes visible.

Your future self is simply
The long-term result of what you think, believe, and repeat today.

You will suffer and laugh anyway — choose where

One sentence stayed in my mind this year.

I once asked my dentist:

“Do you advise students to become dentists?”

He answered:

“In this life, you will suffer and laugh anyway.
At least choose where you want to suffer… and where you want to laugh.”

That sentence contains a deep truth.

Every path has:

• Risks and rewards
• Effort and relief
• Difficult days and meaningful moments

There is no painless road. Only different kinds of pain, and different kinds of joy.

And no one truly knows what a path feels like until someone walks it.

Don’t fear decisions — movement creates clarity

Because of that, 2025 taught me something freeing:

Indecision doesn’t protect you from suffering. It only delays growth.

Whether you choose one road or another, you will still face challenges…and still find moments of happiness.

So the real mistake is not choosing the wrong path.
The real mistake is not choosing at all.

Move. Decide. Learn while walking.

Clarity rarely appears before action, it usually comes after.

Closing thoughts for this chapter

Looking back at these lessons, I realize that 2025 wasn’t about big victories or visible success.

It was about clarity.
Learning to respect time.
Understanding money instead of just earning it.
Valuing relationships more than achievements.
And realizing that the person I become tomorrow is already being shaped by the thoughts I choose today.

None of these lessons are dramatic. They don’t look impressive from the outside. But they quietly change the direction of a life.

And maybe that’s what real progress is:

Not a sudden transformation, but a slow alignment between:
- who you are,
- what you believe,
- and the life you are building.

So if this year felt confusing, slow, or uncertain for you, you might still be moving forward in ways you cannot yet see.

Keep learning.
Keep choosing intentionally.
Keep building — even when the results are invisible.

Because one day, you will look back and realize that these quiet years were the ones that shaped everything.

THANKS.