Show IH: Scratching our own itch by creating a weekly planner
Hi Indiehackers!
@sanderfish and I just launched a product called Essential (https://essentialcal.com). Essential is a weekly planner that helps you plan your work, personal and social life.
Essential is basically a grid of 21 blocks, mapped over seven days. Each day has three blocks (morning, afternoon and evening). You can write down one priority in each block. You can break up your priority in smaller tasks if you want. To have an overview of all impediments in each block, you can connect your Google Calendar. That's it.
I have been using this method (on paper) for a couple of years now after my psychologist recommended it. The idea of digitizing the product came from a discussion we had back in April on how to get more out of a week as a founder, without going insane. @sanderfish wrote a great article about this and how to find clarity and focus here: https://medium.com/swlh/finding-clarity-and-focus-as-a-maker-by-using-a-planning-system-9baa96c0e075.
Although we created the product for ourselves, it would be awesome if it could help other founders getting their time back. We are now in the process of validating the idea and would love to hear your feedback. You can leave it in the comments or send me a PM.
I love the idea of a "top 3" list. I learned about it from the 5-minute journal and it's been a great way to help me focus and prioritize each day.
Good luck with your project!
Hi. I was hooked by reading an article that you provided, so I decided to try out our app.
First of all, I like your design and how minimalistic your approach is. It is also great to not have to confirm the email on sign-up. Everything is fast and easy to understand. Great job!
However, I have some things to share that didn't quite satisfy my needs/taste. Those are:
the colorscheme, which I personally consider too grim and somewhat depressing;
inability to save a Priority by hitting Enter;
cropped text of the Priority field when character length exceeds the visible limit;
inability to instantly distinguish the Priority field from anything else (id doesn't have a border/different bg/different color, and for me the somewhat increased text size is not intuitive).
Please share your thoughts on my feedback and ask questions if needed.
Hey! Sander, co-creator of Essential here. I think the article you read was written by me. I'm happy to read that it inspired you to give Essential a go.
You're making valid points there. Let me go into them one by one.
We're working on adding more themes (@jorisderuiter would like to see more colour too) and possibly the option to create your own themes similar to Slack does with their sidebar.
Good point, it saves when the field leaves focus now. On enter, would it be best to move to the next block's priority or to the next focusable item (the tasks list modal)?
This is currently too much based on our own preferences (I shorted most projects to "initials" e.g. Checkout Page > CP. I will look into this.
Is this when it doesn't contain any text, or after you've filled in a priority?
Thanks for giving Essential a go and taking time to provide this feedback. It's very helpful.
Hi!
My pleasure - great job on the article :)
Great to hear about different themes - that feature might seem non-essential (pun intended), but I think a lot of users would be very glad if they could customize their calendar.
Good question, but I'm afraid I don't know which option I'd personally prefer better. In my opinion, it is reasonable to either jump straight to the next priority (because lots of times they don't need tasks), or don't jump to anything at all.
Both, but it is critical (for me) when it doesn't contain any text. Right now, when I don't see the priority field, my mind can subconsciously fill that rectangle with up to three priority fields - and it makes me uneasy. Like, I am not sure that I can have only one important task for that block. I hope that makes sense. As for the text after the field is filled in, it is way to similar to the date text and month text - the issue with that is it takes a little extra effort to visually itentify the priorities on the page.
All-in-all, those are my impressions and experience with your app, and some parts of it that I don't consider perfect might be exactly what you have intended for your target audience. So take my feedback, well, as just feedback :) Also, feel free to ask me follow-up questions.
P.S. Filled in the priorities for today and felt unusual clarity. I like it.
P.P.S. Now that I think of it, there are no ways to mark the main Priority field as completed. I think that would bring a great deal of satisfaction :)
EDIT: When trying to edit the text of the Priority field by adding "[D]" at the beginning, the behavior of cursor is chaotic, and it took me a lot of effort to actually write these four characters where I want them. It seems to be caused by the brackets.
Hi joris, congrats on launchjng. My product is in the productivity space as well and I see you are from nl, would be happy to share some experiences and ideas if you like. My email is myname at placker.com
Thanks Reinder, we'll be in touch!
Hi, Joris!
Looks like a cool idea, what are you doing next in this project?
Thanks a lot! Our dev priority right now is in creating a good onboarding process. Our business priority is in understanding the importance of this "planning" problem and if / how we can fix this most effectively (specifically for founders).
In the near future, we will focus on a better UX, create an awesome mobile experience (web / iOS / Android) and desktop apps . We are also considering adding themes .
Good luck!