Bckbrnr was a productivity and project management tool I built to keep track of my side projects.
From a practical standpoint, building bckbrnr was a beneficial crash course on the architectures, best practices, and tools for modern webapps. To my surprise, the majority of development was dedicated to implementing pre-made modules and making sure they played nice together.
More valuable were the insights I gained through the self reflection needed to understand my working habits and how I could better them. I learned that technological tools are not always the best solution. (Here’s a great article elaborating on this).
Rather than continuing work, I decided to commit myself to improving my focus, memory, discipline and willpower. I only tackle one side project at a time and I work tirelessly to finish it as quickly as possible.