Running hurts my knees but also helped me generate my app idea.
In 2023, I ran my first marathon.
In 2022, I ran my first 5k.
And in 2021, I HATED running.
I know hate is a strong word, but it’s true. I used to look down on people who ran.
- “Don’t you know the injury risk?”
- “What happened to the first person who ran a marathon? Didn’t he die?”
- “Running on a treadmill? Don’t they use those on prisoners of war?”
- “Going for a run? Why don’t I take a hammer to your knees for 30 minutes?”
… were some of the nice thoughts I had towards runners.
Unfortunately, being a software developer meant being sedentary for many hours of the day. This led to an inactive lifestyle and an unhealthier me.
It seemed like my health wasn’t too bad until I bought a scale, stepped on it, and saw 200 lbs - a 40 lbs difference from when I started my career.
Something needed to change, and that thing was me and my health habits (and weight).
To start, my supportive girlfriend and I decided to sign up for a 5k.
Since I was making fun of running for the previous years of my life, I needed to figure out how to run one.
What it takes to run a 5k
Run for 30 minutes.
If you can run for 30 minutes straight, there’s a high chance you can run a 5k.
Couch to 5k (C25k) is a popular plan to help a person who has never ran before to run a 5k, and it’s the plan I used to train for mine.
It sets up a schedule for you to do from Monday to Sunday and tells you how many minutes to run and walk each day.
Although the mileage and distance differ from the plan to run a 5k or a marathon, the system is the same:
Set aside time each day, do the mileage whether you like it or not, and check the box.
As I was spending all my time running, I had a lot of time to think.
I wanted to start programming more in my spare time to help my skills, but I was never very consistent at it. I wanted to make a habit out of it.
One of the ideas that popped into my head was this: can my running plan I use be the same as a programming plan? Can I create a plan that would tell me how many minutes of programming I needed to do each day, and mark each day off as I complete it?
The Programming Plan
I started with a simple Excel spreadsheet and started doing exactly that.
When I first started out, I would create ‘challenges’ for myself and try to build an app on the days I had 60 minutes (like Who’s That Pokemon or Hangman). Other days I would spend planning out what I wanted to build, and it would take me a a little longer. Either way - the important part was that I was programming and creating a habit out of it.
During one of these “mini-hackathons”, I thought back to my programming plan I created.
I thought “What if I created an app around that?”
How Flowmodoro helped me create Flowmodoro
I replaced my manual efforts with an Excel spreadsheet with a database. I replaced my timer with a frontend application.
But as I worked on it, I thought of other ideas to make it better.
- How do I deploy this?
- What if I had authentication so other people could use it?
- What if it was a circle timer instead of numbers?
- What if you could set different times for each of the days of the week?
- What if you could add stats and see how much time you spent each day? Each month? Each year?
- What about badges for reaching milestones?
I followed my minute timer app which helped me build the app itself.
Thus - flowmodoro.com was born.
Helping others
Flowmodoro helped me become a better programmer, and I hope that it can help you in your area of expertise too.
Do you want to write more? Read more? Create a study habit? Become a better programmer yourself? Then you better put the time in.
And I hope Flowmodoro helps you do exactly that.
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