At some point in my 9 to 5 job I wished that I had more time. More time to do the things that I like. For example to work on this brand or to work on other projects. I wished that something happened that I don’t have quit my job myself. Because taking those kind of risk is against my personality. I like safety. I like to have a secure look into the future.
And then suddenly everything happened very quickly:
The company that I worked in went bankrupt.
I am unemployed for 2 1/2 month now. I am now in the happy situation to do what I want every day.
But suddenly you realize how difficult it is to motivate yourself. You have that blank canvas in front of you. An opportunity you once wished for but that now feels unsettlingly vast und uncertain.
You have a full bank account that you could use for a few years to come. Receiving 60% of your old salary from the state as unemployment benefit.
You tell yourself you can easily survive on that money for years.
But you always have in the way your dreams for the future: Start a family, build a house, have children.
How are you going to finance all that if you don’t go to work and what you do in the meantime isn’t successful? If your own started projects to earn money fail and you tend to lose more money during the period of unemployment.
I didn’t had really the guts to say I concentrate my life on building my own projects. Will I be able to find a well-paid job again afterwards when it doesn’t work? There is always this fear. The fear of failure and no longer having the perfect CV.
So I came to conclusion that searching for another job opportunity would be the best option.
But in the mean time I had time. The time to work on my own projects. I loved it.
App development
I had the idea that I could get back into programming. Something I hadn’t done for about 10 years. Back then I had learned PHP and SQL and, like probably every teenage nerd, tried to develop my own browser game.
I looked at how the programming world had changed in the meantime and decided to take a look at Flutter. The ability to develop for web, iOS and Android at the same time excited me. I started with courses on Udemy and YouTube and quickly moved on to developing my first own app. After all, you learn the fastest from fixing your own problems. Debugging code, which used to take forever, is no longer a problem in times of ChatGPT and other AI tools, so you learn and progress much faster.
I was motivated and tried my hand at the first features for a running app. Many ideas came to mind: an app for running coaches, an app for creating training plans, an app for organizing run clubs, an app for mental training in running, an app for athletes/influencers who can sell their own training that has led to success.
Rather than focusing on some particular field I started with simple features that popped into my head:
- Login and registration with feature screen
- Predefined training plans that the user can set with any start date
- Calendar overview with the planned workouts
- Dashboard with today’s workout and the following workouts
- Workout library from which the user can select training sessions
I am now finalizing a minimum viable product of the app and will then release it to the first users.
I’m starting my old, new job in two weeks’ time for the new year. So the time to work full-time on this project is over for the time being. I have reduced my working hours from 40 hours to 35 hours, so that I have more time available to work on my own projects.
I have learned a lot in the almost 3 months I have been unemployed. It has shown me how much you can learn and implement in such a short time.
But sometimes I wish I had more courage. To have the courage to put everything on one card, on my card, so that I don’t regret it later.
