MorningHabits App: Rocking the new year

It was a special surprise for me this new year to be a part of the One Side Project a year challenge. Similar to many people, I too had the problem of fully committing to one side project and not running several small ones, many of which never got to see the light of day (The illusion of multitasking definitely goes a long way to dilute good project ideas into half-assed results).

In my everyday life I’m a med student at the University of Hamburg, Germany — a situation that sometimes leaves me with less time than I’d like to pursue my own projects and be creative. The other thing my rigid schedule has done is entice me to try and create a sustainable and productive morning routine that helps a night owl like me get out of bed — even with different day schedules.

There is solid evidence that a calm and structured morning leads to a better organized, happier, and more productive day ahead. People use the morning hours to do amazing things such as meditating, getting their goals of the day aligned and having some precious time for themselves, disconnected and undisturbed by the clutter of notifications, emails and other distractions that abound in todays world.

Even with those great goals and ideas in mind, I’ve had a hard time getting used to rising early, especially since my mornings usually look like this:

• 6:20 — first alarm
• 6:25 — snooze (at least 2–3 times)
• 6:35 — first choice of the day: light breakfast or 10 more minutes in bed (bed usually wins)
• 6:50 — frantically putting together things I need for the day (hopefully I’ve pre-packed my bag the night before), leaving in a rush to avoid missing my train
• 6:54 — glad to live so close to the train station, gathering my thoughts during my commute, frustrated that I hurried up my supposedly calm morning again

One morning on the train, thinking about the frantic hassle I just went through I found myself thinking that there simply has to be a better way to jumpstart my day.

At first I tried structuring my mornings with multiple alarms — however, that didn’t really give me a useful prognosis of whether I’d be running late and what I am supposed to be doing for how long. It also doesn’t show me the things that still need to be done. Especially if you start your day at different times (as most students do), it’s also a mess to set up, requiring you to calculate the alarm times and enabling different alarms on different days.

That’s exactly where my project comes in: MorningHabits — an iOS-App to guide me (and others) through a morning routine with an easy-to-use timer, including a ‘Morning itinerary’ — a schedule just for you and your morning that shows (and tells you) if you’re in risk of running late.

I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel, which is why MorningHabits is not a regular alarm clock — it can of course wake you up, but you can choose to delegate that task either to other great Apps such as your phone’s built in alarm or a loving partner or spouse and just switch into the App once you wake up and let it do it’s magic.

Some days you might even wake up a bit early — just switch into MorningHabits to pre-Start your Routine and enjoy the extra time this gives you.

Once you woke up Morning Habits takes over and calmly guides you through your morning, giving you a real-time overview of what still needs to be done and how you’re running on time.

Roadmap

December and January

During the holidays I was able to get a fair bit of preliminary design and coding done and have a working pre-alpha version that wakes you up, fires local notifications and lets you tick off tasks as you go through your morning. The project already had a noticeable impact on my own mornings and I hope to get to a fully-featured beta by the end of February in order to help other people in their scrambled mornings. Let’s make mornings great again!

February working points

In February I’d like to

• completely finish design work and have wireframes ready for all main user interactions
• Brainstorm and work on a potential Text-To-Speak feature, having a nice voice guiding you through your mornings
• Research potential alarm and notification sounds that fit the App’s theme and purpose
• Set up a first project website to be able to reach out to others and receive helpful inputs and suggestions as well as send out early-beta invites at the middle of the year

Ultimately, everyone gets up in the morning and I’d love to make that just a bit easier for night owls like me and everyone who wishes to superstart their day. I’d love to know what you think! Just reply through medium or message me at J.bjoerklund@gmail.com.

Feel free to give this article a recommend 💚 if you like it.
I’m taking One Side Project Challenge and I will post project update on the 1st of every month. Follow the publication and / or me to see how my project idea develops. Let’s make mornings great!