On July 14th, 2016, I was being pretty hard on myself.
Normally a Vancouverite, I was sitting in my July-in-Montreal sublet adventure—on the rickety balcony with the plants and the view of the brick buildings—and I was staring at my screen.
I had a website coding deadline for a client.
I didn’t want to do it.
That’s not right. I wanted to do it, but I just… couldn’t. All I had in me that day was staring, not doing.
“Well this is silly,” I told myself. “I’m a productivity nerd. I’ve lectured friends about productivity a thousand times. I know how to do this. In fact, I could write out the steps to do this and then follow those steps.” (I love lists and steps.)
Before I knew it, I had written out an (unpublished) blog post.
Was I then ready to do the thing? No, I had more procrastination left in me. “It would be better if I had a web page that walked me through doing these steps, carrying the info forward to each step, giving me a timer, etc. Then I will be able to focus on my work easily.” (I have excellent procrastination logic.)
For the rest of the day, I brushed up on my Javascript skills and I made one page that made going through my steps a breeze.
I set the timer to 24 minutes, a standard Pomodoro sprint. I still just couldn’t. The thought of even the “doing nothing” step was too much.
I told myself, “Ok, 10 minutes or bust.” I changed the timer to 10 minutes and you know what? I finished my original task in that 10 minutes.
That’s the day that the very first version of this tool was born.
Many iterations later, in January 2018 I launched the adorable version you see now. Featuring the UX of Anton at WP Developer Pro and the illustration & graphic design skills of Leanne Padgett. Yes that is a cartoon me that she created. ^_^
Curious to hear more about my process? You just read Part 1. Read more on my maker blog, starting with Part 2
Is This An App? A Website? What Is This?
Technically it’s a thing called a web app, but that gets confused with phone apps. This is not a phone app — yet. It could become one in the future.
So for now I’m going to call it a web tool or a website.
Whatever it is, I’d love to hear how it helps you.
About Jill Binder
I do WordPress coding freelancing for agencies and run the new WordPress Diversity Speaker Outreach Training group which encourages women and other underrepresented groups to speak at WordPress events.
I was named one of the top 100 Influencers of WordPress in 2014 by Torque Magazine and one of the top 10 Women of WordPress by CloudWays.
I’m also a productivity nerd.
This is my first web app (web tool).