What I learned shipping Flow's first beta
The honest retro from getting Flow's first beta into real hands: what broke, what surprised me, what I'd do differently, and what users actually cared about.
Blog
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Calendar overwhelm is a focus problem, not a time problem
When your calendar feels impossible, more time-management rarely helps. The real issue is fragmented attention, and that changes how you actually fix it.
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Pricing a productivity app as a solo founder
How I'm thinking about pricing Flow without a company, a runway, or a growth team -- founding-member tiers, value framing, and the numbers that have to work.
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Energy-aware scheduling: the idea behind Flow
The core bet behind Flow: schedule work to your energy, not the clock. What energy-aware scheduling means in practice, and why fixed timers miss the point.
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Recovery is part of deep work: the case for built-in breaks
Focus isn't a tap you leave running. The research on attention restoration and ultradian rhythms, and why scheduled recovery makes your deep work deeper.
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How I use AI to plan my day (and where it still fails)
An honest field report on using LLMs to plan a founder's day: what genuinely helps, what's theater, and the failure modes nobody puts in the demo.
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Why your calendar should adapt when a meeting runs over
Static calendars punish you for reality. When a meeting runs 20 minutes long, your focus block shouldn't silently disappear. The case for an adaptive calendar.
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The best time of day for deep work (and how to find yours)
Chronotypes, circadian peaks, and the post-lunch dip: the science of when your brain focuses best, plus a simple way to map your own daily energy curve.
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Building Flow solo: my stack and what it costs per month
A transparent breakdown of the tools, services, and monthly bill behind a solo-built focus app - Expo, Cloudflare, Firebase, and the real euros it takes.
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What HRV actually tells you about your focus capacity
Heart-rate variability is sold as a recovery score, but what does it really say about your ability to focus today? A grounded look at the evidence and its limits.
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Time blocking vs. to-do lists: what actually protects your focus
To-do lists tell you what to do; they don't defend the time to do it. A look at why time blocking protects deep work better, and how to combine both without overhead.
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Calendar blocking that survives a chaotic day
Most calendar-blocking advice collapses the moment a meeting runs over. Here's a flexible approach to time blocking that bends instead of breaking when your day goes sideways.
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Why I moved Flow's AI off Firebase mid-build
A solo founder's first-hand account of switching AI infrastructure mid-build, from Firebase Functions to Cloudflare Workers, and what that decision actually cost.
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Why Pomodoro fails knowledge workers, and what to use instead
The Pomodoro Technique was designed for a different era of work. Here is a fair-minded look at why it struggles with modern knowledge work, and what adaptive scheduling offers instead.
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The Science of Deep Work: What Actually Predicts Cognitive Output
HRV, circadian biology, and cognitive recovery research explain why a fixed 25-minute timer is the wrong unit for knowledge work. Here is what the evidence actually says.
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Why I'm building Flow
I keep failing at deep work. Here's what I'm doing about it.
