I built a feature nobody asked for

You didn't ask for this in Doaily.

No one emailed me about it. No one left a comment or sent a request through the app.

But, I built it anyways because I wanted it.

//Journaling

For a while now, journaling has been one of those things that I've been on and off with.

And in the times when I do manage to stick with the habit of journaling, I always feel better. Clearer. A lot more intentional.

So, this is just another attempt at building and hopefully maintaining the habit.

It's working so far.

I think it's obvious by now, but the new feature is to be able to write about the things you want to be writing about by creating prompts for yourself.

And these prompts are baked into your todo list in Doaily.

Every day, they will be there mixed in with your to-do's waiting for your input.

Personally, I have 5 prompts in total right now.

3 prompts that I ideally want answered before my day starts:

• "How can I make today even 1% better than yesterday?"
• "What's one challenge I might face today and how will I handle it?"
• "What’s the one thing I can do today that’ll help me sleep easier tonight?"

And 2 prompts that I ideally want answered before going to sleep:

• "What experience or something you've done that you can highlight for the day?"
• "How was the day? How are you? Your body, your mental... you. How did things go?"

Another reason why I built this feature is because the main reason for Doaily is to replace the bullet journal system that I use to have on dotted digital paper.

I would list out my to-dos, write down my reflections, track habits, and just feel like I at least have some sort of control with my life.

Doaily started off with just the todo list portion of the whole system just to get something out there and get the ball rolling. Otherwise, Doaily wouldn't exist still.

But, that was always the plan and to then slowly build out the features:

• to-do list
• journaling
• habit tracking
• calendar
• etc

I guess I could say journaling is step two of the plan and the rest is a hint at what's coming next for Doaily.

And I can't say I'm surprised, but there are actually people using the journaling features!

I don't know if happy is the right term for what I'm feeling, but it's something along those lines.

There's something about knowing that something I built, partly for me, might be helping someone else in their own way.

Anyway...

Since I label Doaily as a gamified productivity tool, this update comes with some basic extra game elements too such as stats for how many days you’ve journaled and how many words you’ve written.

Small things, but nice to know.

//Privacy

And on top of all of these changes, I knew that privacy is going to be a real concern that surprisingly (unsurprisingly?) not a lot of apps (especially the big ones) really prioritize.

I don't want and or need to know what you are writing about.

I like minding my own business. A little too much sometimes and that's a whole different post.

So, all of your personal data is 100% private.

Meaning, your reflections, your to-dos, and every new thing coming to Doaily, will always make sure that your data is yours.

Meaning, your data is end-to-end encrypted.

Meaning, everything that gets sent out of your phone is gibberish and only you have the key to make it so that it's understandable.

And that key is never sent out of your phone.

Lose that key? Well, the data is pretty much lost.

That's the trade-off for true privacy.

That's why it's extremely important to back up your encryption key.

In the app, you can view your encryption key and have multiple options for backing it up.

• take a screenshot of the view encryption key page
• email it to yourself
• physically print it out value and QR code
• write it down somewhere

It's up to you.

That's the feature nobody asked for.

Thank you for reading.

More coming soon.

– Renz