After a somewhat intense time at work I'm now at a more relaxed schedule and so I've starting writing apps again. This is the first look at my current one. It is currently unnamed, but I intend this to be quite an ambitious project for me.
At the moment as you can see there are a few placeholder graphics. Doing graphics is my least favourite part of the process so it usually gets pushed back to the end.
This app. like my previous apps, is intended to be as simple as possible with minimal fluff. The app itself is a combination of a to do list and an interval timer. The rational for this type of app firstly comes from how I like to work, espescially when I'm in a procrastinating mood! When I was a student I used to take my assignments and spend twenty minutes going into each one, with a ten minute coffee or internet break inbetween. Once I had gone through all the assignments I was itching to get into solving any difficulties I encountered, procrastination smashed!
The beauty of this approach is you can always trick yourself into doing just twenty minutes. For all but the most trivial tasks twenty minutes will let you build up some momentum but you won't really get too far into the task. In fact when twenty minutes is up the temptation will often be there to keep going, which is good it means the intervals are working, but you must stop, rest, and go on to the next task.
If you do resist the temptation to break the intervals and go through all your tasks, then you will have spent a quality twenty minutes with each of the things on your to do list including the stuff you're dreading or bored by. After you've completed it you can do what you want next, but hopefully your motivation to smash through your to do list will be high by now!
A popular technique coming in to the mainstream is the Pomodoro Technique which is very similar to how I used to work. In this one you choose only one task to focus on then you focus on it for 25 minutes, you then take 5 minutes off and repeat, after your fourth interval working you take a longer rest from 15 to 25 minutes. There are apps that are made for this technique already, my app will have shortcuts for both this and my favourite interval program.
There isn't a lot of coding left to do, the majority of whats left is graphics work. In this app I want to experiment with social media, offering rewards for sharing my app. It's a new direction for me, but it should be informative if anything.
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