Your house

Why is a house shaped the way it is? Have you ever thought about it? In the middle you have the peak, and that’s where you are. The peak is where all the things about you live; it’s where you shine. It’s where your passions live, the things you enjoy the most. Work on those, do those things. That’s what makes your house the tallest it can be.

For me, that peak has been building things, mostly vibecoding. I took an extra week of summer holidays after our overseas trip, just to have time to really chill and do nothing. The kids could sleep in, we could sleep in, but we could also have guiltless vibecoding sessions.

I learned and built a lot during the first few days, but I felt like I was somehow wasting my days, because I was neglecting a lot of other things I wanted to do. (Addiction to vibe coding is real.)

So I did what every developer would do: I built some apps to help me manage my time.

The first one was health related. Since we got back, there’d been a drastic drop in the number of steps I take in a day. I remember someone mentioning that all these watches and health apps are like the 90s tamagotchi trend, except the tamagotchi this time is us.

So I decided to build just that. I already have Samsung Health, which tracks my steps and has a nutrition input mechanism for logging meals. I didn’t want to build a replacement for the health apps, because that already exists. I just wanted a visualization of the same data in a way that motivates me a little more.

So I built an app that spawns a tamagotchi based on data from Health Connect, where all the health apps can sync their data from various sources. Right now it’s pretty basic, just steps and nutrition, but I can imagine it getting more complex, with different outcomes based on the data from your health app. I got bored of it though, so it hasn’t really moved much.

The other thing I was neglecting was my writing. So I decided to build an app, One Line a Day, which prompts you for an image and one line to describe your day. I think there’s already an app that solves this problem.

I also wanted it to track habits I wanted to develop. It started with tracking everyday habits, so I added a way to add habits you want to track and a way to see a history of how you’re doing. Now you’re tracking streaks as well as a history of one-liners from your day.

Serendipitously, it also motivated me to do something noteworthy every day. I needed a picture every day, so I was motivated to actually do something worth a photo. One of the habits I’d added was “learn something new,” so I figured I should add a way to put a note on some habits too, so I can keep track. The more I use it, the more ideas come, and I’m happy to report that I’m actually doing more of the habits that used to just stay out of mind.

The third thing was… indulgences. Because it’s “vacation,” you make the excuse to indulge a little more and procrastinate away the must-dos. For that I built an app called Vice Versa. I think of it as a tracker for the easily distracted, who spend too much time on distractions.

I’ve held on to this one for a long time: 1% a day is better than 0%. The idea is to have low-bar tasks that unlock indulgences. Think: folding five pieces of clothing unlocks “versa,” the app currency, which you can then spend on your vices. Vice versa! :D

With Vice Versa I also poked at Google Play publishing, just to have that workflow ready — but their console is slow and confusing, so for now I lean on the sideloading setup I’d already built, which drops the APK on my itsybit site with a much faster turnaround. Realistically the only people using these apps are me and my family anyway.

It’s been fun building these apps, and one perk is having the data just on the phone, which keeps it private.

Work on your peak — it’s the thing you’re best at, the thing that makes your house the tallest. But once the peak is humming, there’s always everything else: the steps I’m not taking, the writing I keep putting off, the vices I lean on. For me the peak was never the hard part. Caring about the rest was.

So I pointed the peak at the problem. The thing I can’t stop doing — building — turned into the scaffolding for the things I keep failing to do. That’s really all these apps are: small nudges I built for myself, so I can stay up at the peak without the rest of the house sliding down.