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Comment by jamesisaac | Hacker News Reader

I'm working on a web-app which starts like a feature-rich to-do list app, but shifts the focus towards planning out larger life goals, and tracking progress:

http://imgur.com/a/tSPHP

In particular this week, I've been working on solidifying the quantification side of the app (see the first two screenshots) - i.e. making day-to-day productivity (and lack of productivity!) towards big goals something that's measurable and the user can be held accountable for as they look back over past performance.

I've added more of an explanation to the imgur captions.

The site's currently in a launched-but-heavy-iterating stage at https://nachapp.com

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That's a great idea though I worry that it would totally tickle my OCD productivity crazy side...

Thanks! Hmm, well, if you leverage that attribute in the right way, it could be a big asset. The thing which I'm trying to do differently from other habit-building apps is get users to put a real focus on making tangible progress towards goals. So instead of just ticking "go to the gym" of a to-do list every day for the sake of feeling productive, actually setting a target and monitoring progress towards it. If all your goals are set up in this way, then having an internal drive to come back and keep up the routine day-to-day, will mean you're consistently improving yourself, which surely can't be a bad thing!

Just wanted to say that the time, effort and thought you have put in this project is a very apparent once you spend a few minutes poking through the UI. Excellent execution.

I like how as a new user, you get to start 'simply' (no trackers or readings or due dates or targets) and the UI is not overwhelming and add those things as/when you need them.

The dexterity of the application is not obvious when you see /use it for the first time (I think this is a 'good' thing in that you have managed to successfully keep the UI 'simple' while providing all the bells and whistles for when needed)

Great job, keep it up, this looks helpful and I'll probably be using it.

This is very encouraging to hear, thanks for taking the time to share!

I've been playing around with this concept for a couple of years (never having executed) and was expecting to be disappointed but this is very thoughtfully executed. I only wish this was open source :)

I can imagine, my need for it as a personal tool was strong enough that I just couldn't resists building it haha, it evolved quite a bit further than I expected though.

Could I ask why you'd have hoped for open source? If it's any consolation, I'm making the API completely open, and I'd have no problem with custom clients. In fact, I may even consider open-sourcing the default web-app client. But as for running it as a SaaS rather than distributing the whole thing as open source, I feel like the whole project will have a brighter future if it's set up in a sustainable way like this, and subscription fees can be invested back into the product, towards marketing, development, scaling etc.

Single founders have a very high bus factor, and for any other reason that you decide not to continue supporting the product, there's some insurance for people who invest a lot of time and data in the product as early adopters if the source lives somewhere. I think you should make money for your work. I don't have time to research now, but I'd bet there's a boilerplate license that would protect your work while allowing other developers to contribute and install for personal use only.

In lieu of all of that, I'd like to be able to export my data at a minimum. It sounds like the API would let me do that though.

One small, unrelated suggestion: set up something like UserVoice to take bug reports and other feedback from users. I may have missed an existing feedback channel if it exists.

Thanks for all your hard work on this. It's one of the best products I've used in a while.

Ah right, yup fair enough. Data export is definitely on my radar, but it's a bit early at this stage. As you say, worst case, you'd be able to extract your data via the API.

Yes, good point - it's just a single contact form at the moment, probably time for an upgrade.

Re caring about making a great product, that's alright haha. I used to be a money chasing developer, but I had a bit of an epiphany, and realised that trying to help others improve their lives means a lot more to me than spending my life acquiring and hoarding possessions and wealth!

Also, thank you for caring about making a great product rather than caring about making money. There seem to be fewer of you around these days. ;)

I spotted this on Saturday and have been using it since. Honestly, excellent. To-do lists and productivity apps seem to be a dime a dozen, and I've tried them all. They're generally shit. Yours is the best I've seen, so I've converted to paying.

I filed a little bug report with a few issues I spotted, but nothing breaking. I hope you get enough traffic to make it worth more of your time. Thanks.

Just wanted to reply - I just signed up and started working with it ... this is the power / analytics of a todo app that I've been wanting, well done! I'll send some feedback through the contact form once I play with it a little more.

Awesome, thanks! I need to do a better job of getting that message across on the landing page. Looking forward to hearing your feedback!

That is awesome.

Does this support recurring tasks?

Yup, repeating every X days, or following a weekly schedule. Run-down of all the different types here: https://nachapp.com/help/guides/repeating - and you can access those options with the Edit button in the top corner of a step's page.

how long did it take you to make it? any customers yet? good luck

I started just over half a year ago. In terms of real customers (i.e. excluding friends), I've had over a hundred people start the trial, but the drop-off rate is very high at the moment, and only a small handful have converted to paying. I'm iterating the product based on user feedback at the moment, until I'm confident it's complete enough to really push more traffic to through a proper marketing effort.

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