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!
Late reply–somehow your comment didn't show up earlier. We hadn't seen the 5 minute journal before, parts of it do really align with the approach we use in Essential.
I feel like sometimes I don't reflect enough – is this a reason you like the 5 minute journal? Or do you mostly use it for the planning aspects?
Thank you!
I use it both for reflection (3 daily gratitudes) and to prioritize.
I think I will try this myself for a while to see what the effects are. Thank you!
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:
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.
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.
Hehe, we make this pun all the time :-). You'll see this added soon!
No preference is preference too. Thanks for clarifying.
You're right about the layout of the blocks. There can be more division between those. I'll try to improve this this week, I may indeed be back to ask you for feedback on it. Anywhere we can reach you?
That's amazing to hear. We would love to hear how you keep using it.
Interesting point. The downside of marking things as done is that it can leave you unsatisfied when you haven't been able to finish something. But it can also make it easier to reflect and plan the next week. We'll give this some thought.
Eeek, this is a bug. Will be fixed asap! :-)
Hello, and thanks for replying!
I am currently using this app only for the weekend planning (although now that I am writing this, I realize that I should be using it for the weekdays as well, regardless of my day job occupying most of my schedule).
I just filled in the priorities for the weekend - it satisfies me to crystalize my activities in that specific way.
I see you have fixed the bracket bug, and also added support for Enter button in the priority field. It is awesome to see that you are working on improving the app!
Regarding Enter button, I have some further feedback. Personally, I think jumping from Priority to Priority would be the preferred behavior of Enter button. I can think of two adequate ways to implement it. First is to simply jump from one to another endlessly. Second is to stop at the last priority of the day.
However, here are some other thoughts. You could implement Shift+Enter as well. For instance, it could jump not to the next Priority, but to the detailed task list for the current one. But it's just one of many possibly awesome implementations.
You could also use arrow keys to navigate the fields, or different combinations of other keys, basically creating hotkeys for navigation.
Another thing I'd like to mention is inability to move the calendar horizontally, apart from the option to start the week with different days in the settings, which is not very versatile.
For instance, right now my priorities are on the righ side of the screen, and it would be cool to be able to move them so that Saturday (tomorrow) priorities are centered - or any day's priorities are centered, for that matter.
Speaking of "today" - the color indicator of the current day column is not distinctive enough for me. Once again, my eye just loves rich and colorful stuff.
Anyway, this has now become less of a feedback and more of a brainstorming session, so I'll stop myself right here and give you a chance to actually ask me questions that I'm sure you have. Once again, all the abovementioned detailes are basically just 'nice-to-haves' which would improve my experience (but not necessarily the product itself). I am planning to use your app regardless of them.
You can leave your email here, or add a feedback mailbox to your web app - I'll be happy to contact you for further communication.
Cheers!
Hi @Potatoish,
Thanks a lot for your detailed feedback. This is really helpful! If you are open for it, we would love to pick your brain a little more about this. Would you be willing to have a short video chat? My e-mail is joris[at]stay-bold.com.
PS. The feedback about horizontal scroll was spot on! We are going to give this priority :). As a bonus, the app will be much more usable for mobile.
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!