A year in review: 2025

2025 flew by, I don’t feel like it’s really over. There were not enough days. Luckily I do feel it was a successful year, a year in which I grew as a person and engaged in new habits.

Let’s get bragging!

From passive consumer to active reading and listening #

In 2025 I decided to get rid of my ‘mindless media consumption habits’.

From passive to active reading 🎉 #

One such habit was the pointless compulsory scrolling on sites like nu.nl, tweakers.net, linkedin.com in unguarded moments. Every 10s of unfilled time got me to whip out my phone. Getting rid of deeply-nested habits is difficult (especially for someone as easily addicted to distraction as me!), but I managed. Incredibly proud of that.

I created a small script on my phone that shows a black screen in front of the website with a count-down timer. This tiny blockade is enough to stop me from visiting said websites.

Instead, I got a subscription to the NRC newspaper and the VPRO-gids. Both give me more depth and quality, and (even though both leftist) engage me more with topics outside my normal comfort-zone. Quality above quantity.

I also enjoy reading from many RSS-feeds.

The scrolling is not gone completely. Getting rid of LinkedIn is not possible in my work, I’m stuck a bit longer with that one.

From passive binging to mindful watching 🍿 #

We used to watch what’s ‘available’ on Netflix, Apple TV, Disney+. We did not get happy anymore from watching, and it definitely didn’t live up to the ever-increasing pricing. More than once we decided to turn off the TV after 10 minutes of searching for ‘something good’.

In 2025 I decided to get rid of these streaming-services. It was an easy decision.

We kept NPO and discovered many fun things from the Dutch public services. In particular the kids-shows are more fun (Klokhuis!).

I also hunt for movies on Apple Movies (through Cheapcharts) based on tips from the VPRO-gids. And I bought a (gasp!) DVD-player for Disney movies.

All-in-all, I’m extremely happy with this move.

From a wallpaper sound to active listening 💿 #

I rediscovered Plex as a way of listening to music. Instead of turning on ‘infinite stream of music’ on Spotify I now again choose the albums from my own collection.

I used to love Spotify, I discovered new artists, and I was hooked on the weekly. I can honestly say I looked forward to the weekly even.

But lately I listen to the same music. Most recommendations feel stale, or are commercials in disguise. The music quality is inconsistent, the UI overcomplicated with podcasts and books, and the pricing is ever-increasing.

I buy music from Bandcamp, or (gasp again!) actual CDs.

Digital sovereignty 🇪🇺 #

Part of my digital passive consumerism was an over-reliance on USA-based cloud-companies. I picked these companies out of habit (Google, Microsoft, Apple), not because I thought of any consequences.

In light of the global shift (and especially due to Trump and his cronies’ middle-fingers to Europe), I decided to rethink my automatic allegiance to American cloud services.

I moved from Google to Fastmail, Whatsapp to Threema, ChatGPT to Mistral, and am experimenting with TomTom instead of Apple Maps. I got rid of Hubspot completely.

My blog and other websites are now hosted at the Dutch mijn.host

Physical health 💪 #

I started sporting at Muscleminded. Love it!

Working as a freelancer #

I took my freelance-company more seriously and experimented with different ways of ‘being a company’. Most of those experiments didn’t see the light-of-day, but they helped me think about myself as a business.

I joined a Business Open (a club of entrepreneurs who eat breakfast together every two weeks), and I enjoy sharing my business there. It also lead to my first Product-Management role at Fizyr, a robot-vision company.

I’m the co-applicant on a subsidy project for improving the sustainability in the sheep-sector through data-predictions.

I restarted the meetup-club of The Hague Lean UX. We organized 6 meetups, and the club grew with 313 people to 1576 members.

This year I hope to finally release a product of my own.

Vibe-coding #

I experimented a lot with different tools in AI this year. I find vibe-coding is especially useful for small prototypes, custom data-analysis tools and demos. Larger projects and functional programming have become possible near the end of 2025 as well.

Piano-lessons 🎹 #

Although I started in 2024 already, the piano-lessons were a big part of 2025. I even did a public performance of Yann Tiersen’s Comptine d’un Autre été from the movie Amelie.

Family and projects #

My family had some illness, but overall we created many beautiful memories.

• The kids-parties were crazy fun again (I hosted science-experiments for my daughter, which was hilarious).
• We visited loads of museums. We went indoor skydiving.
• I helped out a lot at my childrens’ school.
• They kids grew tremendously. I’m so proud of them.
• I turned 40. We went to a beautiful home in The Veluwe.
• We went tot Istanbul for holidays.
• We bought a great amplifier with speakers. Our music sounds awesome now.

I organized my traditional Easter puzzle. And I handwrote a physical newspaper (‘de opwelling’), which I sent out three times. I built a flow (with AI) that gives me all activities in Rijswijk, Rotterdam and The Hague each weekend.

There were not too many big maintenance-projects this year in our house.

Closing thoughts #

2025 was a year of changing allegiances. Connecting more with people, and severing unhealthy habits.