How a temp worker who almost lost his job to AI ended up releasing his own app—with AI as his partner.
The truth is, I started building apps because I was terrified of my future.
I’m a temporary contract worker, not a full-time employee. My job renews every few months, and stability is… nonexistent.
I kept asking myself: “Is this really okay?”
That’s when I decided to try earning income outside my main job.
My first idea was “AI.”
I studied YouTube like crazy, created prompts that made AI generate VBA code for Excel automation, and sold them on note. It worked—briefly.
But AI evolved too fast. Suddenly anyone could generate decent code with just a few messages.
My prompts became worthless overnight.
My first project was swallowed by the AI wave instantly.
So I made a decision:
“I won’t be used by AI. I’ll learn to use AI.”
That’s when I jumped into app development from absolute zero.
The genre? A “daily logging app”—something I personally needed the most.
The idea came from a YouTube video saying:
“Recording what you did each day helps you reclaim your time.”
Time hacking is life hacking.
I wanted to take notes immediately, but realized:
I didn’t even have a paper notebook with me.
In today’s world, the only thing always in my hand is my phone.
So I thought:
“Then I’ll build an app that lets me record instantly.”
With almost no research and pure momentum, I started building.
I wasn’t an engineer, so of course I was scared.
But this time, AI was on my side.
With Google’s AI agents as my strongest partners, I learned by doing—touching, breaking, fixing.
My first completed app was Zen Journal.
Inspired by Japanese Zen and wabi-sabi, I crafted everything—name, design, icon—pixel by pixel.
For a first app, it was perfect.
But then came despair again.
When I tried to publish it on the Play Store, I saw:
“An app with the same name already exists.”
Total research failure.
I was crushed, but I refused to just rename it halfway.
So I stripped everything down and rebuilt from scratch.
That’s how ZEROLOG was born.
A product built on the philosophy of radical subtraction:
- No unnecessary features
- No ads (one-time purchase)
- No cloud (fully offline)
- No photos (text-only focus)
- One tap → instantly record
Task apps today are overloaded with features.
People get overwhelmed, distracted, and eventually stop using them.
For minimalists or anyone who loses focus easily, these apps become a wall too high to climb.
People quit logging because it’s too much effort.
Because it drains mental energy.
So I made ZEROLOG as simple as humanly possible.
It’s not a diary to decorate.
It’s a transparent tool for recording only the facts.
For your future self.
Do you remember what you did today?
What will you write in the first square of ZEROLOG?
Would love your feedback.
Happy to share the link if anyone wants to try it.
