I have this mobile app I’ve been wanting to build. It’s a checklist app. Not a To-Do list app, but an app that allows you to manage your repeatable processes. As a pilot I rely on checklists, and the more I try it the more I love checklists in my personal and business life as well.
Here’s the problem: I don’t love mobile development. It is new and different from the web development I’m used to and it frustrates me. So I try to force myself to work on it and end up just staring at the screen for 20 minutes until I distract myself with something else like browsing the internet.
The other day I was talking to my brothers about hosting a new server for them. I made the comment that I really didn’t want to host yet another server that nobody would use, but would be happy to if they actually would use it. I realized that 1. that’s classic burnout — I’ve lost interest in something I enjoy because of lack of progress — and 2. I am primarily motivated by the impact my work has on others.
So taking that away, I realized that one of my main reasons to hate mobile development was also burnout from trying to write mobile apps on a tight deadline, as a side project, while also writing every other part of the bloated application, and with no users to give me a sense of accomplishment. So I asked my wife “would you use this app?” She struggles with ADHD, which thrives with routines and processes (due to lower demand on executive function) and said yes as long as it will work with her needs. So I asked if she would be willing to pester me about getting it done and also give feedback when she was using it.
Armed with a user who actually cared about it, I restarted writing the app and have it almost functional, for certain definitions of functional. I’m hoping to have a version that will work for us done today, and add features we really want/need like customizability of checklists and widgets (to put the checklists in my wife’s face so she remembers them).
So I need users and I need impact and then I can get work done. Who’d have thunk it?