Most Learned
September 2025 - Mobile app available on the App Store. Internalize mindsets that matter most through daily focused practice.
The Short Version
A daily practice app. You add ideas, affirmations, or lessons you want to live by. The app walks you through immersive focus sessions to help them stick. Spaced repetition meets mindfulness.
I wanted it built for personal use, and made it happen.
It’s on the App Store.
How This Started
The idea came to me when I was walking across Spain listening to Tim Ferris podcasts. A decade in Talent Management taught me that behavior change, not knowledge transfer, is the most difficult problem to solve for. And I had just downloaded dozens of podcasts into my brain.
Most tools designed to support behavior change are too complicated. I don’t need another gamified habit tracker. I wanted something simple. A way to force a thought into my psyche until it became a predominant recurring thought that turned into physical action.
So in 2019, I hired a contractor to build it. It went as well as you’d expect. Missed deadlines. Misaligned vision. Requests for more money.
I felt hopeless looking at code I had paid for, but didn’t understand and couldn’t edit. Eventually I thought, “How hard can it be?”
The Learning Curve
I didn’t know what a variable was. I didn’t know what an IDE was. Tutorials felt like learning a foreign language. And technically, it is. Many, in fact!
But I kept at it, mostly because I wanted to use the app. Somewhat out of stubbornness.
Most of my learning started before generative AI hit mainstream, which in hindsight I’m grateful for.
Every concept had to be understood from the ground up, every line of code written by hand (or copied from Stack Overflow, R.I.P.) and that forced a kind of learning not worth shortcutting.
Each feature I wanted forced me to learn the next concept. Each wall I hit was a lesson in frustration, pain tolerance, and persistence I never experienced in People Ops.
Fast forward a few years and a dozen side quests later, the app I’d been paying someone else to build was on the App Store, on my own phone, built by my own hands.
The Takeaway
I have a real appreciation now for how hard software actually is.
More than that, I came away with a different appreciation of what anyone’s job entails. Marketing. Finance. Legal. What looks simple from far away is likely much more difficult once you get close. I know firsthand what it means to not know what you don’t know. What it means to be a complete beginner again.
For the Technically Curious
By the time generative AI tools matured, I had the foundation to use them meaningfully. On the “vibe coding” label: there’s more to it than the name implies. Talking through the tradeoffs between sealed class hierarchies and extension types in Dart with an LLM is a different exercise than typing “build me a login screen.” Having a software foundation changes what you can actually do with the tools.
If you’re still reading and know what an MVVM pattern is, this bit is for you.
- Reactive architecture. Three-layer pattern: repositories handle Firebase CRUD, stores manage state with RxDart BehaviorSubjects, and the UI layer consumes streams. Clean separation, not overengineered.
- Cloud infrastructure. Firestore for real-time data with offline persistence, Firebase Auth with anonymous-to-authenticated account upgrades, and Firebase AI for on-device intelligence.
- Spaced repetition engine. A custom scheduling system built on iCalendar recurrence rules with priority weighting to surface the right entries at the right time.
- Immersive UX. Particle systems, haptic feedback patterns, blur overlays, and layered animations that make a simple long-press feel meditative.
- App Store submission. Provisioning profiles, TestFlight, App Review guidelines, and rejection feedback.
- Monetization. Freemium model with In-App Purchase integration, subscription lifecycle management, and receipt validation.