#5 — Mini Pomodoro Blocker
I’d say this week was important. Not because I made any money yet, per se, BUT because I finished my first-ever solo development project.
I created a mini Pomdoro blocker that blocks your distracting sites and runs your Pomodoro sessions. This way, your focus sessions are as uninterrupted as possible.
This week, I finally released my app to the Chrome Extension Web Store. Here’s how my journey went.
But first, new to this series? Welcome! As part of my 12-week goal, I’m on a mission to earn $100 online — either through digital or physical products. If you’re interested in reading more of the origin story, check it out here 👇
In November 2022, I set out on a plan. I had very very little experience in software development. But, I wanted to learn and I wanted to contribute to the Sidekick suite. I gave myself one month to build and launch a product.
And while it’s a little embarrassing that it’s February that I’m writing this, I’m still proud that I did it! The effect of this project boils down to 2 takeaways:
- I’m so appreciative of engineers and how much time and thought it takes to build things. As a designer, I was pretty unaware of how much work my design choices created for engineers. Now I know a snippet and it makes me mindful of user impact vs. engineering effort.
- It’s cheesy to say, but I feel like I’m the only one stopping myself from new opportunities. In college, I dropped out of my one and only CS course because I felt like my brain just couldn’t get it. A year ago, I put all the coding responsibilities for Sidekick on my partner because “I had other things to do” but that was really “I don’t know how.” This project showed me that I can and I’m excited about the future here.
Coming to week 6, I had pretty much built 95% of the product. I implemented the UX, hooked up local storage, connected the payment provider, etc.
If you’re interested in reading the project details, I posted daily updates on my Twitter. I shared the process from creating the designs to the frontend building blocks to the backend and more.
The only thing I had left was a few breaking bugs that I was stuck on. I took week 6 of my 12-week year to push myself to get my Mini Pomdoro Blocker to the finish line. I won’t bore you with the details but this is pretty much how my week went.
Monday, Feb 6 — Sunday, Feb 12 🐛🐛🐛 Bug Smashing
…and on Monday, Feb 13, 9:43 AM, I published my Mini Pomdoro Blocker to the Chrome Extension Web Store.
That’s a wrap! Since the app is under review, I won’t launch it publically just quite yet. Instead, I’ll prepare marketing materials for an eventual launch and start on my next idea.
Thanks for reading. If you’re interested in following along on my journey, please do! ❤️ I’ll be posting weekly updates and learnings every week.
