Your Annoying Little Problems Are Worth Building For

I have dry eyes. And staring at a computer for a long time doesn't help. I learned that resting my eyes every 10 minutes is a good idea. I've also learned sitting for more than 30 minutes straight isn't good for your health.

For a while, I set up 3 alarms on my watch: 10, 20, 30 mins. Honestly, it's pretty annoying and no wonder I forgot repeatedly. But I kept at it for months because I didn't have a better option.

One day, after my eyes felt especially dry, I told myself I have to find a better solution. I needed a way to set up multiple alarms together. Maybe an existing app does have this feature, but I don't want something heavy where 99% of the features are irrelevant.

So I vibe coded it. Version 1 took 10 minutes. A single-page app where I type in 10, 20, 30, hit start, and they all run together. No accounts, no syncing, no features I didn't ask for. That was weeks ago. I use it every single day.

I mentioned it to a friend. He immediately said, “I have dry eyes too, I need that.” He wasn't reacting to the app. He was struck by how obvious the problem was and how he'd never thought to build something for it.

I think that's common. We all have these small, annoying, repetitive problems that we just live with. They're not big enough to complain about. Not interesting enough to post about. But they're real, they're daily, and they're ours.

Next time you catch yourself tolerating one, consider that it might take you 20 minutes to build an app that makes it go away.