Working differently in 2025

I have made a few resolutions going into the new year. Two of them have to do with All About Berlin.

The first resolution is to work less. I am not a workaholic by any stretch of the imagination, but I struggle to fully disconnect. I got better at it in 2024 - you can tell by my commit history - and I want to keep working in that direction.

The second is to maintain the same income as last year. This is a lofty goal given that the German economy is shrinking, immigration is down, and tech giants are slowly strangling the independent web. Last fall, year-on-year traffic was down for the first time ever, by about 15%. It’s not devastating, but it’s concerning.

Given that, I must do more with less in 2025. If I am to work less while keeping the website afloat, I must be more effective. This means making a few major changes to how I work.

First, I will focus on what matters: giving useful advice. Some sections of All About Berlin are in dire need of maintenance, and I will prioritise that maintenance over passion projects. There will be a lot less pottering around.

Second, I will no longer advise everyone individually. For years, I have answered every question that came my way. I took “do things that don’t scale” to heart, not because it made business sense, but because I love helping people out. This is not sustainable, so I have to outsource this work to people who are paid with your taxes to help.

Third, I will cut down on policy work. Unbeknownst to most, I have been trying really hard to collaborate with the government to improve the lives of immigrants. I gave talks at CityLab, Digital Service and the Robert Bosch Stiftung, gave input to the immigration office, signed up for user testing, built a community of practice and a lot more. These things took a lot of time and effort, and had little tangible impact so far.

Fourth, I will network a lot more selectively. In 2024, I have met a lot of people for coffee chats. I have also been on a podcast and got interviewed by Berliner Zeitung. If you emailed me on a sunny day, I’d bike across Berlin to meet you. This year, there will be less of that. I have made many good friends through All About Berlin, but I would rather meet people outside of work and talk about other things.

There is one last change in policy, although this one is not related to my resolutions: there will be less aggregation, and more curation.

For years, I prided myself in giving you the same advice I would give my best friend. This was a lie I told myself. If my friend needed an immigration lawyer I would recommend Fiona Macdonald, because that’s who I work with. On All About Berlin, you just get an unsorted list of lawyers. I aim to be more helpful.

Sometimes, the best advice I can give is “try this one; it’s good enough”. This means being partial and picking winners, something I have been avoiding for years. I can’t name the best bank or the best liability insurance, but the difference between best and good enough is too small to matter.

My only concern is that genuine advice is often indistinguishable from a sales pitch. On the internet, you mostly get sales pitches, so people are suspicious of recommendations. I worry about coming off as a just another snake oil salesman on the internet.

Let’s see how these changes go. I hope that they will yield to more focused, higher quality work. If I’m wrong, I will correct course.