Towards the end of 2023, I found myself with a little more time and space to play with new ideas. I decided to build my first app around an idea that I had fallen in love with, inspired by Benjamin Franklin (read more about it here).

It was essentially a habit building app with a wrinkle – every week, there was a single habit (or Zero Habit) that was priority and that you needed to complete consistently. The idea was to provide some guardrails around trying to do too much all at once, by focusing your energy around a weekly changing task. This gave you the flexibility to try to do it all, but also some grace from falling flat on your face, as you only had one core habit to focus on each week.

This combined with the research around building streaks and the app was born. I didn’t end up publishing it to the app store, but I created the full working app and tested it on my device for several weeks. While I didn’t take it live (yet), I learned a few things:

1. I can code if I want to. The reality is, AI has made code much more accessible, and with some effort, you can become a decent coder faster than ever.

2. Planning is critical for any coding project. There are so many little considerations, edges cases, and challenges that dramatically impact the overall effort. Plan properly to have a more seamless development experience.

3. I may like coding? This was surprising to me as I often tried and failed to code over the years, but this time I made a simple change. I had a clear outcome I was trying to build, rather than just randomly trying to learn to code without any true purpose. That direction made the process much more effective.

Checkout the screenshots of the app below.

Tech React Native, Expo, Test Flight, Figma, Github Copilot

Date Nov 2023 to March 2024

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