Now that I’ve gone independent after a 6+ year hiatus in the full-time world, I’m now freelancing again, which also means I’m actively using Cushion again. At first, I only needed to track time and invoice for a friend project, but now that I’m 100% on my own, I need to make sure I’m on track financially for the year—that’s where Cushion really clicks.

As soon as I started using Cushion again as a full-time freelancer, I fell in love with it all over again. I also realized that it still holds up after all these years! As a returning user, however, I immediately noticed a few rough spots since I last freelanced. These are the kind of rough spots that I’d otherwise miss if I weren’t a user of my own app—and I did miss them. After reminding myself that I can actually fix the rough spots that I come across, I spent an evening smoothing them out.

The next day, I used Cushion as I normally would, but with the usual pain points no longer there. I felt an instant jolt of delight when an especially cumbersome flow in my daily routine had been reduced to a single click. If I were a regular user, I would’ve never bothered to reach out to support to mention the extra clicks in this flow, but I’d still feel them chipping away at me. Rough spots like this might’ve worn me down enough that I could eventually fall out of love with an app. But because I work on Cushion—and now use it regularly—as soon as I feel a rough spot myself, I want to fix it immediately because I know other users feel it, too, …but not enough to report it. This prompted me to send a message to my users, giving them the chance to share any rough spots they experience in their day-to-day use of Cushion, but haven’t bothered to mention.

Unsurprisingly, I heard back from a handful of users with plenty of rough spots to keep me busy for a while. The biggest surprise, however, was the number of users who replied that they couldn’t think of any. (Some Cushion users are too nice to give it to me straight!) While I appreciate the kindness, I’m craving feedback right now. I spent the next few days recording all the rough spots into a to-do list. Now I have the low-hanging fruit I need to build some momentum as I get back in the saddle.

I’m not a “Let’s fucking go!” guy, but now would be the time to say it.