52 launches for 2025

Why 52 launches?

The idea of doing 52 launches in a year comes from a few inspirations:

• Outperform perfection. The book Art & Fear has an anecdote about students who focused on making a pot each day, outperforming those trying to craft a single “perfect pot.” Repetition and practice trumped perfection. I’m trying to recreate the same effect: more launches produce better output quality.
• Full-mind workout. I’ll exercise different maker muscles with each launch — code, marketing, design, and strategy.
• Increase surface area for luck. Every launch is a new opportunity for outsized success. Rather than trying to predict what will work, frequent launches increase my chances of stumbling upon an Outlier.
• Focus on controllable inputs. Success in any single launch involves many factors outside my control. By focusing on launching — something entirely within my control — I shift from anxiety about outcomes to confidence in consistent action.
• Build meaningful connections. Consistent launches create opportunities to connect with like-minded users, creators, and collaborators.
• Recalibrate my create-to-consume ratio. I’ve been consuming way more than I create. While consumption feeds learning, I want to tip the balance toward putting more work into the world.
• Seize the moment. We’re living through a once-in-a-generation technological shift. Each launch forces me to stay hands-on with the latest tools and capabilities, turning overwhelming change into concrete opportunities.

What are the rules?

1. 52 Launches in 12 months.
2. Maintain a four-launch monthly average. To build momentum and avoid procrastination, I must maintain an average of four launches per month (e.g., eight launches in month one would cover me for months one and two, and I’d need to do at least four launches in month three).
3. Maximum of eight launches per Type. No more than eight launches can fall into the same Type to ensure variety and avoid copouts.
4. An Outlier launch can successfully end the effort. Focusing all bandwidth on one specific launch might make sense if it becomes a breakout success.

What qualifies as a Launch?

A launch is loosely defined as delivering a meaningful unit of work into the world. The threshold for what counts should capture:

• High enough to represent real progress and effort
• Low enough to maintain weekly momentum
• Clear enough to know when I’ve crossed the finish line

Launches can exist independently (e.g., a new Chrome Extension) or be significant upgrades to previously existing efforts (e.g., launching a major feature for said Chrome Extension).

I’m deliberately:

1. Not calling launches “projects”, since a launch can be a smaller unit of work than many people would consider a project to be.
2. Not getting too prescriptive on the criteria until I get some reps in.

What qualifies as an Outlier?

An Outlier is a launch that significantly takes off. Ultimately, the goal of 52 Launches is to find one (or more) of these. If that happens, I’ll likely pivot into scaling that effort. At that point, I’d consider this whole initiative complete, regardless of how many launches I could get through.

Outliers should be identified through metrics rather than gut feel. As I go, I’ll figure out a framework for determining what makes an Outlier. It’s hard to predetermine this since some launches will generate revenue, some will generate traffic, some will build a community — and success is defined differently for each.

How will progress be tracked and shared? I’m not sure yet. Doing 52 launches is ambitious enough, and I’m trying to keep overhead to a minimum. I’ll likely share what’s working/not working, time invested, and visitor/user/revenue metrics.

The goal isn’t perfect documentation; it’s creating a reference for myself and others who might be following along on my journey.