Start something
There has been a persistent tension within me that I've found challenging to reconcile or resolve. This tension revolves around the idea of creating a productivity app. The thought keeps circling in my mind, analyzed and detailed in an ephemeral manner. I do have an Obsidian canvas, but it only captures a portion of what's in my mind. Inevitably, I'm faced with the prospect of actually building the app, and I simply freeze. It's potentially a complex app with many components. So why can't I pick one and start building?
I try to convince myself that it's a matter of scope: there's no organization, no roadmap, no plan to follow. Just a collection of tasks with no clear guide on where to begin. This isn't an IKEA set or even a pile of wood. It's a vast wilderness from which I hope to carve out a home, like Henry David Thoreau at Walden Pond. And like him, perhaps what I need to do is keep a record. Be my own product manager.
I've been trying to approach this like I do music, where I just open the DAW and start creating. But a code editor isn't a DAW, not really. I can't reconcile the freewheeling process of making music with the methodical approach to building a web app. While there's room for improvement in the latter, years of professional software engineering have left me craving direction. And in the complete absence of it, I freeze.
My resolve for today is to start something. I'll break down the app into its parts and begin building one of them. If I'm unsure about the UI, I can focus on the logic for analyzing tasks and breaking up a day into chunks. If that sounds too daunting, I'll start with a simple to-do list. If I'm unsure how to create a file-first app, I'll start with component state. I'll just pick up my tools and make something. Once the screen is no longer blank, once the infinite has been collapsed into the finite, however large, the work will no longer seem impossible.
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