The story of one personal productivity application

The birth of an application designed to solve personal problems, which later changed the life of the author.

This post - the history of the application. How the idea was born that brought me closer to the dream of turning mobile development into a lifestyle and source of income. During the development, a great team gathered, and the idea of ​​creating a “just a timer” grew into a whole international project.



There will be a series of publications on the development of the project: the idea, development, preparation for publication, participation in the competition, ALD, experiments and observations, promotion. I will try to describe everything that was done and what worked with the figures, facts and details.



The article with the technical "stuffing" with details about the development of Swift published on Habré .

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Part one. Story

Toward the close of 2014, there was a feeling that a skating rink had passed through me: one by one, failures in undertakings, a crisis, a systematic lack of sleep, a lack of time for work and family concerns — all this almost crushed me. Waiting for the upcoming holidays as living water: you had to exhale and understand what kind of delusion it was.











On the third of January, having closed at the office, I began to put things in order in my head and read articles about the organization of time. Then I came across the blog of the company Desktime , a world leader in accounting for the time of work of remote employees and freelancers. The guys talked about an interesting study. After studying the algorithm of the users, they noticed the pattern:



The most successful and productive employees work intensively for 52 minutes, and then 17 rest.









It was possible to forget, and it was possible to come up with a lot of reasons why this is not for me. But I decided that there is nothing to lose. I'll try. I wrote down on paper the time of the beginning of my first working segment and proceeded to rake the list of tasks for today.



These first 52 minutes were for me the most vivid illustration of my "productivity". I counted EIGHT calls to distract myself: suddenly I was thirsty, then I remembered about the toilet, then I climbed into the mail, news, sms, incoming call ... and so on.



Having completed 52 minutes, I quickly rushed to do all these “urgent matters” and found that time gained weight, and I do everything quickly so as not to miss the start of the next “work session”.



The most surprising result of this experiment was that I completed all the tasks for which I had planned the day in 2 hours! The remaining time was reading and pondering a lot. It turned out that even such a primitive organization of the workflow freed up two thirds of the day!







Then I decided: this time management formula suits me. The only inconvenience was the need to constantly practice in mathematics: count the minutes before the break or the new working segment. This could help stopwatch and alarm, working simultaneously, but it is inconvenient.



So the idea was born to create a timer application with notification and pre-installed modes of operation. Studying the question, I found a description of the Pomodoro time management methodology. It turned out that this idea was not new, and 30 years ago the Italian Francesco Cirillo invented the technique of working time management. The name "Pomodoro" was in honor of the kitchen timer in the form of a tomato. The main idea of ​​Pomodoro: divide work time into segments. 25 minutes of intensive work, then distract for 5 minutes.



The result was such a picture: the technique is known, proven. On the market there are many applications, timers, based on it. I tried a dozen variants of various applications, trying to work on a 52/17 scheme. It was necessary to manually set parameters from one time to another, and in some applications the settings were completely unavailable.



The method of Francesco Cirillo suggests a whole set of solutions for organizing time. The user is invited to maintain a special kind of records, tables, plan your day, estimate the time to complete tasks, monitor the implementation of the plan and other techniques.



At the same time, an awareness of the depth of the changes that have occurred in the 30 years since the invention of Pomodoro has come.

• The first is time. Changed the rhythm of life, the amount of information and the speed of its perception. I admit that 52 minutes are more relevant today than 25.
• Second: a good tool should be simple. Turned on and working. Everyone decides for himself how to plan his affairs.
• The third is flexibility. It is wrong to implant 25 or 52. Some find for themselves the best academic hour, and someone has verified 40 + 10. Flexible and customization: the ability for each user to create and save their favorite script.

The contours of the future application are given. At this stage, the team work begins, I write those tasks to the designer and programmer.







Since mid-January, work began on mock-ups, and in February they have already begun programming. Appetite came with eating. Gradually, we complicated our task: we chose Apple's latest Swift language for programming. Then we decided to add work statistics and graphics. And for dessert, the idea has already come to realize the support of Apple watch and have time to enter the watch on the market.



With the development on Swift, we lost a couple of weeks in the end, and my understanding of the Apple Watch functionality was destroyed by Tim Cook. The clock had to be done anew, throwing almost all the functions out of them. The design for the clock was also not an easy task. At some point we came to a creative crisis - “the design did not go.”

March 31 work was completed.

Part 2 About the application and technology Pomodoro

Looking ahead, I will say that all this really works, and I personally changed a lot in my life.

Perhaps the only condition for the application to work is your willingness to believe it, turn on the timer and focus on what needs to be done.



5217 Pomodoro plus is an assistant application for organizing an effective workflow.



For many people, time is the enemy. Anxiety caused by “passing time”, usually at the moment of approaching the deadline, leads to inefficiency of work and study, which in turn entails a tendency to procrastination (postponement of cases “for later”). The Tomato Technique was created to use time as a precious ally in achieving what we want to achieve, how we want to achieve it, and to improve our work or study.



At first glance, this is just a timer and statistics. You start it and start working, concentrating on your tasks. While the timer is running, do not get distracted, and during the break - completely disconnect from work. But, in fact, when you start the timer magic comes into play :

• anxiety over time and time recedes;
• increases focus and concentration by working with “distractions”;
• increased awareness of your decisions;
• growing determination to achieve goals.

So,

We have created a modern time management tool , the essence of which is aimed at improving the process of learning and working. I believe in this technique and have experienced a positive effect on the systematization of my work. I want to convey to everyone who cares how easy it is to learn new things in a short time, quickly do the work and at the same time live a full life.

Part 3 . Results and conclusions

The idea to create "just an application assistant" turned into a whole story.

• Almost three months of work.
• Reaching the final of the international computer talent competition "Golden Byte".
• Mastered the development of a clock and a new programming language.
• In the development process, I learned a lot of new in the field of marketing, monetization, promotion and creation of applications. He received great pleasure from work.
• Translated and localized the application into 5 languages.
• Spent about 80-90 thousand rubles. This design, programming, an attempt to create a video in support of the application, localization and translations.

It all started with the fact that I could not cope with the huge flow of "cases" and tasks. Then I tried a solution based on the observations of the Desk-Time company, and it worked. Then he decided to turn this “solution” into an applied tool.







For me personally, time management is salvation.



Thanks for attention! I wish everyone to work for the result and not forget about the world around.