This is a submission for the World's Largest Hackathon Writing Challenge: Building with Bolt.
Hey DEV community,
Most online users know me online as "docski." From the outside, you might think I have it made. I’m a solo game developer from the tiny island of Jamaica. I run two live FPS games (Repuls.io and BlocOps.io) that people actually play. I’m a husband and a father to three kids.
But for a long time, the truth was this: My mental health was falling apart.
While my games were getting players, I was losing myself.
The Downward Spiral
Let me be brutally honest. I wasn't just "stressed" or "busy." I was in a deep, dark hole of burnout that was bordering on depression.
Imagine this: you're in Jamaica, a place people dream of for vacation, but you're chained to a desk. You're trying to fix a server bug for your European players, while your kids are asking you to play, players are demanding an update, and all your personal dreams are turning into ghosts.
Every single day was a battle. A battle between being a good father, a good husband, a good developer, and a good provider. I felt like I was failing on all fronts.
I tried the tools everyone swears by. Trello, Jira, Notion just gave me a prettier, more overhwhelming view of my own failure. A digital monument to all the things I couldn't get done. It wasn't just burnout; it was a slow-motion collapse. I felt like I was drowning, and my to-do list was the anchor.
Coding a Lifeline: The Birth of "Lifify"
I hit a point where something had to change. When I saw the DEV.to & Bolt.new Hackathon, I didn't see it as a competition. I saw it as a lifeline. A reason to build the one thing I desperately needed: a way out.
So I built Lifify.app.
And let me be clear: Lifify.app is not a productivity app. It's my personal rebellion against burnout. It’s the map I drew to find my way back to my dreams, built specifically for people who feel the way I did.
How I Gamified My Own Rescue
As a game dev, I know what motivates people. It’s not checking boxes. It’s seeing progress, feeling powerful, and earning rewards. So I built Lifify around the mechanics of a game, but for real life.
A Visual Life Map, Not a To-Do List: Instead of a list of tasks, I mapped my entire life. Pillars for "Family" and "Freelance" sat right next to pillars for "Finish My Memoir," "Save for a House," and "Prototype New Game." It let me see the whole battlefield, not just the chaos in front of me.
A Real-Life XP Bar: This is the core. Every time I complete a task, a master progress bar fills up. It's a simple, visual shot of dopamine that proves I'm moving forward, even on days when it feels like I'm stuck.
Guilt-Free Rewards I Actually Want: I programmed a system where completing tasks unlocks personal rewards I set for myself. Not just a checkmark, but permission. Permission to play a video game for an hour. Permission to spend an evening tinkering on my car. Permission to do nothing at all. It helped me fight the guilt that comes with rest.
Total Privacy (Offline by Design): This journey is personal. This fight is mine. Lifify is 100% offline. My data, my struggles, and my map are for my eyes only. Lifify let's you decide how to protect your data - keep local backups or optionally upload to cloud via supabase for multi-device editting.
How a Hackathon and AI Gave Me a Fighting Chance
As a solo dev in Jamaica, I'm on my own. I don't have a team, or an office full of people to help. So when I decided to build Lifify for this hackathon, I knew I needed a force multiplier.
I'll be honest, I had zero experience with AI development tools like Bolt.new before this. I was skeptical. But the moment I started using it, something clicked.
Bolt didn't just write code for me; it cleared the runway. It handled the scaffolding, the setup, and the tedious issues that usually drains your creative energy before you even get to the fun stuff. It allowed me, a complete newcomer to the tool, to go from a desperate idea to a functional app that I could actually use combined with easy deployment via netlify.
Frankly, without Bolt.new, netlify, supabase* and the push from **World’s Largest Hackathon presented by Bolt, Lifify would still just be an idea in a notebook - another thing not done. It gave me the leverage I needed to actually build my own lifeline.
I Built This Lifify.app to Save Myself and anyone like me
Lifify didn't magically solve all my problems. But it gave me something I hadn't had in years: clarity. **And with clarity came a sense of control.
I started seeing that I could update my games, spend real time with my kids, and make progress on my dream of owning a home. I wasn’t a failure; I was just overwhelmed. **I didn't need to work harder; I needed to see the path clearer.
I'm sharing this because I know I'm not the only one fighting this battle.
My wife has started using it, my teenager and heck everyone I mentioned it to seemed intrigued - maybe I had something?
I built this app to save myself and pull my dreams back from the brink. If this story or this tool can help even one other person who feels like they’re drowning, then every single late night on this project was worth it.
Top comments (2)
This is so real and relatable. I love how you turned your struggle into something useful. Not just for yourself, but for others too. Lifify sounds like the kind of tool many of us actually need.
Why do you think most productivity tools end up making people feel worse instead of better?
Hardest thing about a productivity tool is managing complexity, life is complex;
The more problems you try to solve with the tool - the more complex it gets until the tool itself becomes a stress point for new users.
This isnt to say I nailed it with Lifify, the onboarding might be too basic - but Id rather improve it slowly with time and feedback than assume whats best for everyone.