I have 6 side projects running at the same time.
Features to build. Bugs to fix. Design ideas that come at 2am.
Marketing tasks. App Store updates. Server costs to track.
For a while, I used Notion. Then Trello. Then Linear.
Then back to Notion. Then a plain text file.
Nothing stuck.
Not because these tools are bad — they're excellent.
But they're built for teams. I'm one person with a laptop and too many ideas.
The real problem
Every time I opened Notion, I spent 15 minutes organizing my workspace
instead of actually building.
Linear felt like I was running a startup of 50 people when it was just me.
Trello boards turned into a graveyard of cards I'd never move.
I needed something that understood: one developer, multiple projects,
no meetings, no managers, just ship.
So I built it
I spent 3 months building Project Brain —
a project manager designed specifically for indie developers.
The core idea is simple:
- Every project has 4 tabs: Features, Design, Bugs, Notes
- Each tab has cards with statuses: Idea → In Progress → Done
- That's it. No nested pages. No kanban boards with 8 columns. No sprints.
What I learned building it
1. Constraints are features.
The 4-tab structure felt limiting at first. But it forced me to categorize
every task clearly. Is this a feature or a bug? Design or a note?
That question alone saves 5 minutes of decision fatigue every day.
2. Mobile-first wasn't optional.
Half my best ideas happen away from my desk. If I can't capture
a bug fix idea while walking, it's gone forever. Project Brain is
built for iPhone — not "also available on mobile."
3. The tool should disappear.
The best productivity tool is one you don't think about.
You open it, log something, close it. Done.
I measured success by how fast I could get back to coding.
The tech stack
- React Native + Expo for cross-platform mobile
- Firebase for real-time sync and auth
- TypeScript throughout
- Monorepo with
apps/mobile,apps/web,apps/desktop(Tauri, WIP)
The hardest part wasn't the code — it was resisting the urge to add
features I didn't need. Every "wouldn't it be cool if..." got a hard no
until the core was solid.
Where it is now
- Live on the App Store: Project Brain
- ~50 users in the first month (mostly indie devs from Reddit and ProductHunt)
- Version 1.1 shipped last week with sync improvements
The honest takeaway
Building your own tools is a trap and a superpower at the same time.
Trap: you can spend 3 months building a to-do list instead of your
actual product.
Superpower: you end up with something that fits your brain perfectly,
and you understand every line of it.
Would I do it again? Yes. Would I recommend everyone do it? No.
But if you're an indie developer drowning in half-finished Notion pages —
maybe give it a try.
What do you use to manage your side projects?
Curious if anyone else abandoned the big tools for something simpler.
Top comments (1)
The 4-tab constraint resonates. I bounced through the same stack before landing on a simple Todoist setup with one project per app. Fast to update, nothing to maintain.
The piece I hadn't solved was financial tracking across projects. Server costs, domains, subscription tools, app store cuts add up across 3-4 projects and I kept losing track of what each one was actually costing monthly. Built a lightweight tracker for that (Money Me - money-me.com) that just shows what is actually left to spend after recurring costs are counted. Same principle as yours: tool that disappears, log something, get back to building.
Good luck with v1.1. Sync improvements are the unsexy work that makes everything else hold together.