Little King

Prompt

Build a daily writing habit. Create your prompts ahead of time so you can just sit down and start writing.

Status

Unlaunched and development stopped. 😢 Might pick it up again at a later time, but moving on for now.

Background

I attended seanwes conference in November and had the privilege of hearing Shawn Blanc speak. He mentioned how important building a daily writing habit has been for him. He writes first thing in the morning every day. One tip that he offered was to choose the next day's topic the night before, so you can sit down and start writing without having to come up with a topic. Seemed like a good idea for my first project.

Plan

Allow members to create a simple list of writing topics. Deliver them at a set time each morning. Add more options if time allows.

Result

I didn't keep the holidays in mind when I planned this project and I struggled to make progress with many other things going on. I also spent too much time on the signup process without first building out the functionality of the application. I hope to come back and finish it up at a later time.

It's pretty disappointing not to launch my first project, but I don't want to fall into the trap of developing for too long on an idea that isn't coming together. The big lessons I learned:

Plan ahead for things like holidays. You're not just going to do things as usual.
Pick ideas that seem too simple. They're always more complex than you think.
Focus on the core functionality. I really wanted to do phone-first signup, but I wasted a lot of time with that. Probably should have started with email.

Journal

Notes from the journey