mezod

Just sharing some thoughts on the slow but steady progress I've experienced during my indie maker journey. This is not a shiny story of overnight success, but an ode to the long term race.

YES. BEST THING EVER.

Thankfully you have learnt that when something doesn't make sense to you, you should investigate and read further. The fact that 2 of the examples you named are happening in the same country should give you a hint.

especially when Franco, unlike Hitler/Mussolini, never lost a war. He died of old age and appointed who was to succeed him, the King of Spain.

I use my own app to form new habits as the new tab... https://everyday.app :D

Definitely, the sole fact of reading every day what I want to do every single day already makes a huge difference!

Awesome, feel free to shoot me any feedback! ;)

Shameless plug - I work on https://everyday.app (simple and beautiful habit tracker for the web/ios/android) and seeing the colourful board filled with 2 years of data is hugely motivating to keep me going and stay on track with the SAME goals.

For example: https://app.everyday.app/2/5 :)

Thanks!

what would be the most reasonable way to "fill" these icons?

Do you have any experience monetizing open source projects? Like, server costs are definitely the most negligible of all costs of running a project!

See I might be wrong here, but I think the problem starts when you see yourself as a depressed person. Do you see yourself as someone who can wake up early and go to the gym? Do you see yourself as someone who could be disciplined?

Don't get me wrong, you might be a depressed person. I see depression as a water swirl that keeps dragging you down and doesn't let you look at yourself as what you could be. It's the typical comparison of "I am trying to quit smoking" and "I'm not a smoker".

You get to that point, mentally, by acting. Mentality affect behaviour, and behaviour affects mentality. If you see you can wake up, it's more easy that you'll see yourself as someone who can wake up and go to the gym.

I agree that discipline > motivation. And thus, habit formation becomes important. What I'd like to add here is what I call "learn to enjoy". I try to "learn to enjoy" waking up in the morning to go to the gym. I think it's just an euphemism to lowering the barrier between "what I want to do" and "what I have to do". What makes waking up early suck at times? How can I make it suck it less? How can I actually turn my mindset around so that I actually want to wake up early and go to the gym?

this might be the single most useful reply in the whole thread.

Specificitiy (paragraph 2) is crucial.

I'd add that goals (paragraph 3) are a result of identity (paragraph 5) so it's basically the same idea. How do you see your better self? Do these projects/tasks align with your vision of your better self?

If you feel you are X (paragraph 5) and you feel you can be superX (paragraph 4) you'll undoubtedly be able to carry on with your goals (paragraph 3). Breaking these down (paragraph 2) will help.

Not satisfied with the way I put it but that's the idea.

AS a matter of fact, I do something similar. I recommend you try dynalist.io out. Much more powerful than a textfile :P

Thanks for this David.

Funnily, 5 years ago I developed my own personal kanban tool. It's still running on http://multikanban.com Of course Trello is a thousand times more powerful and polished. I was just sharing to show that I had my "personal kanban" phase in the past. It worked for some time... but for some reason I stopped really benefiting from it. The idea was to have multiple kanban boards easily accessible, where each board would be a project. "Todos", "Money", "Family", "Refurbish motorcycle", "Code projext X", etc. Of course it worked nicely for specific projects since it helps you be very critical about what gets done and what doesn't. But I think the problem I experienced there is that basically I ended up working on a single project, two at best. Like they were top priority and they never got finished, so I missed on everything else. I still have this problem now, that's why I try something different like having specific times of the day/week allocated to "main project", "sideproject", "money", etc. I just feel that the more thought I put into it, the more complex the system becomes, the less likely is it for me to follow it through.

I did https://everyday.app to sort of define a schedule of habits I want to follow through every day, and so I feel progress in all directions I want to work on.

Thanks for the book recommendations :)

this is definitely the kind of things I'd love to teach them, and showing them is probably the best way to, but I keep wondering if there's something else I can actively do...

haha, loved the random-agent bit :) they are so cute.

Hey alienreborn,

sorry that I answer here, this is totally unrelated to the topic being discussed. I've just seen that you replied me on an old HN post of mine and cannot reply there nor can I find another way to contact you on your profile.

It's regarding the habit tracker https://everyday.app I'm working on. You wrote "Your web-app is the best habit tracker ever created and I used it for a while after I paid for it very early on. :) However, I left it because mobile app is not as smooth of an experience. Currently using habitify.me across my devices but will switch back once mobile app catches up with other apps." and I'd totally love to hear in more detail what was lacking or what do you think I should get fixed to help the app catch up. Feel free to answer here or send me an email at joan@everyday.app.

Sorry for reaching out this way and thank you! :)

There are many valuable answers here. I just wanted to say that you seem a humble guy and I'm happy that you are aware of it because that's what puts you in the right starting position. I think if you manage to keep your head there, you'll make the right decisions.

oh, you are right! Didn't keep that in mind when doing it, small details count! :P

oh? I found the vector branded as android :S And I thought it looked very similar but thought that the details in the button and camera were differentiators

Hey thanks for bringing the data privacy topic up. This is something that's going to be very important for me in the next months now that I turned the app into a business I can live off.

I'll be plain honest, the ToS are outdated and it's something I need to invest some money in the near future. It was just a bit too early for me to invest when I built the landing page. I want to follow the steps of Maciej from Pinboard and be privacy-first. I have absolutely no intention of allowing third-party apps to get access to the data. This is a bootstrapped business with no ambitions of glory, I'd just love to get it to a point where I can comfortably live from it and make people's lives a little bit better every day.

I know this might mean nothing to you right now and I'll totally understand if you don't want to start using it until the legal bits are fixed. In any case I appreciate that you brought the topic up since I have strong convictions on the matter and I realize I should communicate it better on the landing page. Point taken!

"an app that's going to largely stay the same feature-wise" that's an assumption I can understand but that's not entirely true :) There's a lot of room for improvement feature-wise and right now my roadmap has enough requests to fill the next decade hehehe :P

The main differentiation is that the app is multiplatform. That is, it works on the web + mobile apps while the majority of the $5 once apps are only in one platform. The other major point is that most of these apps get abandoned. Developers put it out there to try to fish some cash after the initial versions and never put more work into it afterwards. The idea of the app having a yearly subscription model is to sustain the development and get more features and value with time.

There's a big part of the audience that'll consider saving $6 for a one time payment, but thankfully there's another big part of the audience that understands that projects need to be sustainable in the long term in order to get constant improvements and are willing to pay for a yearly subscription model to make sure the app will still be out there in the mid-long term!

Also, there are many free habit trackers that are way better than those charging $5 imho! So price doesn't really define value :)

Great write-up, I remember you shared this with me before when I posted about my habit tracker :) https://everyday.app

Try https://everyday.app for an habit tracker and tell me what you think :p

first impression was epic but there's something wobbly with the interaction or is it just me? sometimes scrolling goes to hell and same for panning

I'm there, but it's tough :|

that's my point, in theory we do some quite complex stuff so why are we ok with being resources? we do have the opportunity to realize this and make a change, factory workers might not..

(not trying to go anywhere with this, just loud thinking)

nice! why 10 week sprints? :P