--- title: "New Year 2026: Little by little" url: "https://sarthakmishra.com/blog/new-year-2026" description: "Little by little, a little becomes a lot. Reflecting on the small wins of 2025 and laying out the roadmap for 2026." image: "https://sarthakmishra.com/og-images/blog/new-year-2026.webp" --- [View HTML](https://sarthakmishra.com/blog/new-year-2026) · [Site index](https://sarthakmishra.com/llms.txt) January 2, 2026 # New Year 2026: Little by little Little by little, a little becomes a lot. Reflecting on the small wins of 2025 and laying out the roadmap for 2026. ![Pixelated figure stands on a rocky cliff beneath a huge moon and glowing orange clouds.](https://sarthakmishra.com/assets/new-year-2026-DaXA9iwX.jpeg) There is a Tanzanian proverb that stuck with me recently: > Little by little, a little becomes a lot. Looking back at 2025, that is exactly how the year felt. There wasn’t a single “ta-da” moment where everything fell into place. Instead, it was a collection of small wins that eventually compounded into something solid. I spent the year diving deep into the weeds of [self-hosting](https://sarthakmishra.com/blog/self-hosting-done-right) and infrastructure, obsessively optimizing workflows until they actually worked for me, not against me. I leveled up my React, TS, and Python skills. Experimented with AI and automation. And built a few side projects. But most importantly, I learned to take care of myself. Dealing with anxiety, breaking the cycle of procrastination-induced burnout, and actually maintaining a sleep schedule. Life happened, too. I watched one of my best friends from college get engaged, spent a week having fun with friends in Goa, took long solo bike rides to clear my head, and made time for daily hangouts. Professionally, the biggest lesson was simple: Ship smaller. Iterate faster. If it doesn’t have a direct impact on the user, it goes in the backlog. ## The roadmap for 2026 I am done with vague resolutions. This year is about building. I plan to deepen my infrastructure automation and expand the design-to-code tooling I’ve been hacking on. I’m also going to write more. But the main character for 2026 is the **Outreach Automation Platform**. I have written extensively about how I automate outreach - seeing what works and what fails in cold outreach. Now, I am turning those scripts and experiments into a proper product. ## Action plan: Q1 The goal for the next three months is clear: **Launch the MVP for the outreach platform.** To keep myself honest, I will be blogging weekly to document the build process. I have a few technical deep-dives already in the pipeline which includes continuing the [LinkedIn automation series](https://sarthakmishra.com/blog/linkedin-automation), expanding it to cover email integration and the full end-to-end outreach pipeline. You might have noticed the new aesthetic creeping in, inspired by sprite animations and 2D indie games. It is a [pixelated retro design](https://sarthakmishra.com/blog/building-animated-sprite-hero) that I am slowly rolling out. It is not fully adopted yet, but there are a lot more changes to come. I am also forcing myself to do the one thing engineers hate: talking to humans. Client communication is still not my strong suit, but I need to validate assumptions with potential customers. 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