DEV Community: Flowmodoro

Time Well Spent

Flowmodoro — Sun, 04 Feb 2024 18:30:00 +0000

2/3/24

With time as a precious commodity, it’s best not to waste it or not let it slip. How do we make sure we don’t waste it? The best ways are to figure out what our activities we value, create awareness with how we spend our time, and create a time budget.

Value activities

A value is “A person’s principles or standards of behavior; one’s judgment of what is important in life.” In the same way that we are all different, what we value will differ from person to person. How can we figure out what activities we value? The best way I've found is through journaling.

Journaling is a nice exercise because it focuses your mind and keeps you focused and on task. By taking the time to journal there’s only one thing that you do. It’s easy to not get distracted, and chances are you have a paper and a pen lying around.

Next, think about your past experiences. What times did you feel good about spending time on an activity? What times did you feel bad or regret spending time on an activity? By thinking through these situations, this helps us narrow down what we value. Write them down and create a list of the things you would like to spend your time on, and others that you don't.

Also, make sure that you don't allow yourself to only include work items for the things you want to spend time on. Allow yourself to include the things that relax you as well, like video games, movies, or naps. There are different ways that we all relax, and some activities work better than others.

By creating a list of what you like spending time on and what you don't, you are one step closer to budgeting your time in a way that matters most to you.

Unfortunately, even though we value something, it’s not enough. We need to be aware of how we’re spending time and make sure it aligns with our values.

Awareness

Most people would think that they spend time on the things that they value most. Unfortunately, this is not how we actually spend our time.

Americans on average spend 5 hours a day on their phone. This seems like a lot for one day, but let’s look at how this will affect us in the long term.

5 hours a day x 365 days per year = 1825 hours per year.

The average life expectancy is 80 years. If a teen received a phone at 16, then that means that the time that they will have their phone up until the day they die will be 64 years.

1825 hours per year x 64 years = 116,800 total hours spent on a smartphone.

116,800 hours / (365 days a year 24 hours in a day = 8760) = **13 years spent in total on a smartphone alone.*

Is spending time on your phone a core value? Whether it is or is not, it’s where the time is going and will be a reflection of what we actually value.

There will be a difference when other people or ourselves will look back on our own lives. It will not matter what we say we valued, but what we did will reflect our values more.

As an example, let’s say I value being in top physical shape, and yet I eat more than 3000 calories a day, live a sedentary lifestyle, and smoke cigarettes. In the future when I’m long gone it won’t matter what I said I valued, what I did will reveal what I actually valued.

This is why becoming aware of how we spend our time matters. Is there an easy way to become aware about how we spend our time? This is where a time budget comes in.

Time Budget

In the same way a money budget is a plan for how to spend it in the way you want to, a time budget works the same way.

The most common money budget is the 50/30/20 rule - meaning:

50% goes to your needs

30% goes to your wants

20% goes to savings/investments/debt repayment

In the case that you made $10,000 a month (for simple math), 5,000 would go to needs, 3000 would go to your wants, and 2000 would go to your savings.

The unfortunate part about all this is that while you can make more money to increase the amount that can go into each of these buckets, in a time budget you cannot raise the amount of time unless you sacrifice some of your needs (like work and sleep).

As an example, let’s start with the average American schedule - sleep for 8 hours every day and work for 8 hours every day.

If we subtract the total amount of hours per day (168 - (8 * 7) + (8 * 5)), that leaves 72 hours.

If they followed the time budget like a money budget it would be 36 hours of needs (spending time with family, chores), 22 hours of wants (video games, movies, naps), and 14 hours of investment (online courses, reading books, etc).

How would a person keep track of what they’re doing? Would they track their hours spent on needs, wants, and investments?

No. Like a money budget, pay off your needs, add to your investments, and then enjoy your wants guilt-free. That’s why I have a set number of hours during the week set aside for my investments (reading, programming, etc.) which I track through Flowmodoro. I focus on my needs and investments first, and when I can relax I do so.

Closing remarks

By aligning your values with how you want to spend your time, becoming aware of how you spend your time, and creating a time budget, you will have the freedom and flexibility to spend the time on the things that matter most to you.

How my app helped me build my app

Flowmodoro — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 22:25:05 +0000

Running hurts my knees but also helped me generate my app idea.

In 2023, I ran my first marathon.

In 2022, I ran my first 5k.

And in 2021, I HATED running.

I know hate is a strong word, but it’s true. I used to look down on people who ran.

“Don’t you know the injury risk?”
“What happened to the first person who ran a marathon? Didn’t he die?”
“Running on a treadmill? Don’t they use those on prisoners of war?”
“Going for a run? Why don’t I take a hammer to your knees for 30 minutes?”

… were some of the nice thoughts I had towards runners.

Unfortunately, being a software developer meant being sedentary for many hours of the day. This led to an inactive lifestyle and an unhealthier me.

It seemed like my health wasn’t too bad until I bought a scale, stepped on it, and saw 200 lbs - a 40 lbs difference from when I started my career.

Something needed to change, and that thing was me and my health habits (and weight).

To start, my supportive girlfriend and I decided to sign up for a 5k.

Since I was making fun of running for the previous years of my life, I needed to figure out how to run one.

What it takes to run a 5k

Run for 30 minutes.

If you can run for 30 minutes straight, there’s a high chance you can run a 5k.

Couch to 5k (C25k) is a popular plan to help a person who has never ran before to run a 5k, and it’s the plan I used to train for mine.

It sets up a schedule for you to do from Monday to Sunday and tells you how many minutes to run and walk each day.

Although the mileage and distance differ from the plan to run a 5k or a marathon, the system is the same:
Set aside time each day, do the mileage whether you like it or not, and check the box.

As I was spending all my time running, I had a lot of time to think.

I wanted to start programming more in my spare time to help my skills, but I was never very consistent at it. I wanted to make a habit out of it.

One of the ideas that popped into my head was this: can my running plan I use be the same as a programming plan? Can I create a plan that would tell me how many minutes of programming I needed to do each day, and mark each day off as I complete it?

The Programming Plan

I started with a simple Excel spreadsheet and started doing exactly that.

When I first started out, I would create ‘challenges’ for myself and try to build an app on the days I had 60 minutes (like Who’s That Pokemon or Hangman). Other days I would spend planning out what I wanted to build, and it would take me a a little longer. Either way - the important part was that I was programming and creating a habit out of it.

During one of these “mini-hackathons”, I thought back to my programming plan I created.
I thought “What if I created an app around that?”

How Flowmodoro helped me create Flowmodoro

I replaced my manual efforts with an Excel spreadsheet with a database. I replaced my timer with a frontend application.
But as I worked on it, I thought of other ideas to make it better.

How do I deploy this?
What if I had authentication so other people could use it?
What if it was a circle timer instead of numbers?
What if you could set different times for each of the days of the week?
What if you could add stats and see how much time you spent each day? Each month? Each year?
What about badges for reaching milestones?

I followed my minute timer app which helped me build the app itself.

Thus - flowmodoro.com was born.

Helping others

Flowmodoro helped me become a better programmer, and I hope that it can help you in your area of expertise too.

Do you want to write more? Read more? Create a study habit? Become a better programmer yourself? Then you better put the time in.

And I hope Flowmodoro helps you do exactly that.

How to incorporate user feedback

Flowmodoro — Wed, 17 Jan 2024 02:09:45 +0000

We know it is important to listen to users and get feedback on our product in order to make it better.

But what do we do with the feedback that we get?

For instance, if a user of our app tells us:

”I hate this dropdown, it’s not intuitive. I really wish that it was a slider to select the things I want.”

Or when a reader discusses our book:

“I don’t like this part of the story, it really drags on. I wish there was some sort of fight scene here and that could really make it exciting.”

What do we do?

Do we implement what the customer suggests? Or do we ignore the feedback, and keep building what we originally set out to do?" As Henry Ford says:

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.”

Henry Ford

The problem with this quote is that it’s not asking the right questions to the user.

Don’t ask a user what they want (ex. I want a faster horse).

Ask the user what their problems are (ex. I’m not going fast enough).

Learning from doctors

We can learn how to gain valuable feedback from our users by taking a close look at how doctors interact with their patients.

Imagine, a patient with a headache walks into the doctor’s office and asks for help.

Patient: Hi doc, I’m glad to see you. I really haven’t been feeling too good lately and I was wondering if you could help me.
Doctor: Of course! What are your symptoms?
Patient: I’m having a headache with some ringing in my ears, and I’m having some trouble sleeping. I honestly think it might be a tumor, I’ve been watching a lot of tv lately and I’ve been researching a lot on WebMD and I think that might be the issue.
Doctor: How long have you been having the headache for?
Patient: Around one week.
Doctor: And on what part of your head do you feel the headache?
Patient: On the back of my head.
Doctor: Do you drink caffeine?
Patient: I used to quite a bit, but with my anxiety acting up I stopped cold turkey, why do you ask?
Doctor: (jots notes down) I see, I think I might have an idea of the cause for your headache but I will ask a couple more questions just to be sure.

In this example we see two things:

The doctor focuses on the symptoms of the patient.

The doctor keeps asking questions to get more feedback on what the patient is feeling. By doing this, the doctor narrows down what the potential diagnosis could be and increases the chance of diagnosing it properly.

The doctor keeps the patient’s suggestion in the back of their mind, but does not leap to that conclusion.

It is the doctor’s job to diagnose the problem, not the patient. It may very well be a tumor, but that decision comes down to what the symptoms are of the patient and the doctor’s diagnosis.

How does this relate back to our field of choice?

As the creator of a product, it is important to remember that:

The user is almost always RIGHT about their problems with our product.

If the “story drags on” or “I can’t find where the menu is” or “I don’t know what you’re trying to say here”, the user is almost always right.

There is something wrong and it’s important to dive deeper with what the user finds wrong with our product by asking more questions about which parts the user had trouble with.

The user is almost always WRONG about how to solve our product problems.

We constantly need to remind ourselves that as the product owner, we are the problem solvers of our product, not the user.

Like doctors, it is possible that the solution they come up with is correct, but we ultimately need to take a step back and dive deeper into their symptoms in order to come with a solution that will solve the problem with our product.

TL;DR

It is important to listen to feedback from users, but remember to listen to your users as a doctor would a patient - to take their problems (or symptoms) seriously but their solutions (or diagnosis) with caution.

Flowmodoro vs Pomodoro

Flowmodoro — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 17:59:40 +0000

Intro

This blog post will go over what the difference is between Flowmodoro and the Pomodoro technique, their pros and cons, and when to use one over the other.

What is the Pomodoro Technique?

The Pomodoro technique is a very famous technique created by Francesco Cirillo where you set a timer for 25 minutes, focus on doing a single task for that amount of time, and once the timer goes off, you take a break. It’s really simple and powerful because it helps you stay on task.

The main limitation of the Pomodoro technique

I really liked doing Pomodoros for one-off tasks like doing chores, finishing my homework, or programming bug fixes. But I realized that there is one main limitation to the Pomodoro technique: and that it’s good for short term goals. I really wanted to stick to doing work long term and making progress on longer-term goals that needed more than 25 minutes. 25 minutes on its own gets small things done, but 25 minutes every day going towards a goal for weeks and months gets considerable achievements accomplished.

Enter: Flowmodoro

I created Flowmodoro to overcome this limitation; to help people stick to their long term goals while utilizing the strengths of the Pomodoro technique.

With it, you can:

Set a block of time you want to spend per week working towards a goal (reading, writing, programming, etc.).
Utilize the pomodoro technique with the timer to show you how much time you need to do today on the block.
Once completed, see how much time you’ve spent over weeks, months, and years going towards the goal.

Comparing the two techniques

Flowmodoro and Pomodoro are both good for:

Eliminating distractions
Getting started on tasks

Flowmodoro individually is good for:

Making progress for long term goals
Spending a little bit of time each day completing tasks
Tracking the amount of time spent on a task over time

Pomodoro individually is good for:

Quick tasks that need to be done
Not worried about tracking time - just get the task to done

Conclusion

Hopefully this blog post helps gain some clarification on how the Flowmodoro app works and how it complements the Pomodoro technique.

Want to start making more progress than ever before toward your long term goals?

Try Flowmodoro today!

How do we measure productivity?

Flowmodoro — Sun, 14 Jan 2024 02:25:44 +0000

Is it the number of items that we cross off our to do list? The number of emails we send each day? Or the number of lines of code we write?

The answer is it depends.

The real measurement is how much closer did we get to the goal?

Every action that brings a company closer to its goal is productive. Every action that does not bring a company closer to its goal is not productive.

Eliyahu M. Goldratt, The Goal

When people talk about their “productive” day, they will mention actions like answering x number of emails, attending x number of meetings, writing x number of pages, or pushing out x numbers of lines of code.

The real problem is NOT that they completed those tasks, but rather they did not take a step back and think of what the actions were supposed to lead to.

There is a famous quote by Lewis Carroll in Alice in Wonderland, and I think it’s something important to remember in terms of the importance of knowing where you’re going:

“One day Alice came to a fork in the road and saw a Cheshire cat in a tree. ‘Which road do I take?’ she asked. ‘Where do you want to go?’ was his response. ‘I don’t know,’ Alice answered. ‘Then,’ said the cat, ‘it doesn’t matter.”

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

When there is no goal or destination, then it doesn’t matter how hard you work, how much time you spend, if you are using the perfect productive app, or x amount of items you crossed off of your to do list.

If you are trying to get from Washington to New York, it’s not worth measuring the steps taken, the time spent on the freeway, or even the speed you are going. The importance is knowing that you’re heading in the right direction.

Therefore, if we are trying to be productive, we then there are two steps we need to take:

Have a goal
Do actions that will bring you closer to that goal

So how do we become really productive?

It may seem like all actions are created equal, but some actions will have greater effects than others.

It’s important to remember the Pareto Principle: that 80% of the outcomes come from 20% of the causes.

Therefore, try to focus on the 20%, or the actions that will get you closer to your goal than ever before. Then, you will truly be productive.

Hopefully this article gets you to be more productive! Get out there and start doing your best work today!