Flowmino: Time Block & Focus

Manage your time, protect your attention, set yourself up for success. Time Blocking meets App Blocking.

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Inspiration

We’re 2 procrastinators.

Like 88% of people, before Flowmino we had never tried using a time management system to plan how we spend our time. But without a plan, it’s easy for us to get sidetracked and distracted with unimportant things. All our lives it’s been a big problem. We needed to make a change.

We discovered the necessity of time blocking and protecting our attention reading Indistractable by Nir Eyal.

So we tried a bunch of time blocking apps. All of them felt tedious for us to use. Then we tried app blocking apps to protect our mental clarity. They often felt cluttered.

What if there was a minimalistic app that did both?

We set out to build it.

What it does

Flowmino is an iOS app that helps you:

  • make time for important things with time blocks
  • focus by blocking distracting apps

How we built it

Flowmino is made for iPhone using SwiftUI, SwiftData, the Screen Time APIs, and of course, RevenueCat :-)

Challenges we ran into

Ship-A-Ton was very challenging for us, because before Flowmino we used to spend months building in stealth.

Here are the 3 biggest challenges we ran into:

1 - Sticking to an MVP

We talk a lot about the product together so we come up with new ideas everyday. But we don’t have time for them all, and we have to ship fast to make it for the deadline.

2 - Building In Public

We’re two introverts. Putting ourselves out there online feels terrifying. What if people don’t like what we’re building? What if no body cares at all?

3 - Screen Time API

The Screen Time APIs are notorious for being unstable. Understanding how its 3 frameworks work was… [Takes a deep breath]… time-consuming. We had to circumvent its defects in creative ways. For example, the native ActivityPicker (for choosing which apps to block) often crashes and we had to incorporate some error handling into the UX to soften the issue for the user.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

Our biggest accomplishment: learning from past mistakes. Our previous app was a solution in search of a problem.

But the problem is what's most important. And the only way to understand it is to get to know the people who have it.

That’s why we’re most proud of 2 things:

  • taking UX research seriously
  • having sticked to somewhat of an MVP* to confront market ASAP

*though we couldn’t help slipping in a few nice-to-haves :-) we like to think we did an “MLP” — minimum lovable product

What we learned

Competing in Ship-A-Ton taught us:

  • the importance of shipping fast and sticking to an MVP
  • to cut scope by identifying must-haves versus nice-to-haves
  • to talk to people, get to know who they are, and their specific use-cases
  • to ask better questions by reading “The Mom Test” (Rob Fitzpatrick)
  • the importance of building in public to let people know about our app
  • to overcome our fear of posting online

What's next for Flowmino: Timeblock & Focus

Because we sticked to an MVP, Flowmino is still in its infancy. But we have a huge roadmap ahead of us, including:

  • LiveActivities
  • iCloud sync
  • iCal integration (highly requested)
  • Analytics (insights on Screen Time and Time Management)
  • Time Block Categories
  • Availability on more Apple devices (Watch, iPad,...)
  • Lots of other nice-to-haves that we’ve cut for the sake of shipping fast

We're active on Threads, but we also plan to expand to other SoMe (LinkedIn, Insta,...)

Built With

  • ios
  • screentime
  • swiftdata
  • swiftui
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