I’ve been wanting to write more. I’m pretty sure it has been one of my New Year’s resolutions for at least the past 5 years, if not longer. The goal of writing for me is both a personal and professional one.

I have a tendency to get pretty trapped in my own head from time-to-time, and I feel like that restraint has prevented me from seeing things from different viewpoints, as well as putting things out in the open to better evaluate whether or not something is worth pursuing, or something I should be afraid of. Once it’s out and in a the wild, it’s a lot easier to see things for what they truly are and lets me respond to them more rationally.

But, when it comes time to write, I don’t have a single place where that happens and I thinks that has been one of the reasons for my lack of consistency. I’ve bounced between Medium, Apple Notes™, the CMS on my personal site, Google Docs, and other tools. Some are either too robust and offer too many features that just end up distracting me. Others feel too focused on the act of publishing and pushing it live, which is not the goal when I’m just writing for writing-sake. And, for me to be able to write when I can, I need a tool that lets me write on either my laptop or phone, and easily sync between the two so I don’t need to worry about docs being out-of-sync when I’m switching modes. I also wanted a tool that supports writing in straight Markdown, since that’s typically the format I use when I publish articles to different sites, and is way less distracting for me to use than your typical WYSIWYG editor.

After reviewing the crop of existing tools I use, and seeing what else might be out there, I couldn’t find one that seemed to tick all my boxes. And, when that happens, I have a tendency to get design/dev happy and start throwing some code at a potential solution. After a couple of hours I was able to whip up a writing experience that I felt like I would enjoy using and would keep me motivated to write on a daily basis.

In addition to the shear experience of writing, I know I need a bit of a push, at least for the first couple of months. That’s where the idea for goals and reminders come in. Setting these and getting the daily nudge to keep up on my writing practice–I’m hoping–will be enough to keep me going until writing daily truly becomes a consistent habit for me.

And for further motivation, the concept of streaks will be available for those who have set a writing goal. This feature was inspired by, WIP Chat, which is a community of people who are committed to shipping stuff and who share what they plan to do and what they’ve completed with the community. You build a streak when you complete tasks on a daily basis. The concept of a streak has definitely motivated me to try to complete something for my side projects on a daily basis, to the point where I get mad with myself when I miss a day, and I think this will be helpful for writing as well.

Ultimately, I’m hoping this app will push me to be a more consistent–better–writer. I also hope that other people who are in a similar situation/mind space as me will find it useful. I’ll be charging for the service to help cover the costs of the services it relies on, along with a little to cover my time as I try to make the service better for myself and others.

Success for Tapslock for me would be to empower more people to follow through on their personal goals of writing, while I do the same. And, for it to cover the cost of my time to maintain and refine the service for the people that use it. Along with being able to sustain the service for years decades to come, and be a tool that will be there for the people who enjoy using it.

If anything else happens to come to mind, I’ll be sure to update this and include it. I hope that you’ll enjoy using Tapslock and that you follow through on your writing goals.

Thanks,
Ryan
@ryanhefner

P.S. Curious why this page exists? Check out the goal behind, /Purpose.