I’ve been working on a side project for a while now. It started a little before I started working on the rework of my website with a simple requirement. I needed to track the value of some things that I owned as well as pictures for insurance. Originally I was thinking of just throwing together something in Obsidian or in excel/sheets.
Instead, I figured let’s get in some more practice and build something personal for my needs. This continues to this day. I’m noticing as I reach for a tool I think to myself why not build something instead.
It’s definitely not as fast as just using something free online, and if I’m honest it’s probably a form of procrastination. At least there are some ideas and skills learned along the way right?… RIGHT?!
The inspiration to write some of this down today because the idea of writing a tool for myself instead of looking to find one that matches my needs came up again. This time it’s for project management. This is can be a big task to take on but at least there’s lots of examples out there to borrow from.
One of the systems I like the most is Azure DevOps, as it’s fully flexible and behind the scenes everything is generic but named. I doubt I’ll down that road to start off with as my needs right now is pretty simplistic.
I’m looking for a dump zone, an ability to do all the generic crap you need like title, description, start / end dates (maybe) and assignment to a project. I have ideas of UI that’s similar to a kanban but maybe tasks or items need to live between projects or can do that, so the UI may have some kind of drag/drop for moving things between projects.
So that’s the next task I’ll tackle. What’s great about all this is that I’m not on a deadline, I’m able to build up and tear down things that are not working as I see fit. At the moment the product(s) is for a user of 1, so the feedback is instant.
The other features this project of mine has started are, things management, bookmarks management, pto management, breath control practice timer, games tracker, other tools to support my obsidian vault processes. I have planned this project management, and a plant management system as well.
So all this could easily just be a notepad text document or markdown. It could be solved with Google, Apple, ClickUp, Notion, Evernote etc. But the idea of owning the code, running locally and offline as well as practicing and building things is very rewarding.
I think for now my blog posts will most likely be about this type of thing compared to “thoughts” section where that’s more about an idea/thought specifically. if your confused about that, me to don’t worry.