i am a simple person - and i need my apps to mirror me
I don’t ask for much. I just want my apps to do one thing well. Not ten things badly, not five things half-heartedly.
Just one thing, properly.
But the tech world loves “feature creep.”
It starts small: an app that tracks notes. Then it decides it should also track your water intake. Then it wants to gamify your focus.
Before long, there are leaderboards, badges, and a chatbot trying to sell you premium.
And by the time you’ve tapped through all that noise, you’ve forgotten why you opened the app in the first place.
Psychologists call this decision fatigue — too many options make it harder to act at all. Hick’s Law backs it up: the more choices you face, the slower you decide. Apps are supposed to remove friction, not add to it.
1. Why I Committed to the Minimally Suite
That’s why every “minimally” app has been my rebellion against bloat.
minimally notes exists because the brain can only juggle a handful of priorities before slipping, and three is the ceiling.
minimally pill was born when my doctor assumed I could remember a seven-day break without placebos — newsflash, I cannot.
minimally travel started when I was rounding ramen prices down in yen and pretending it was fine, until my budget disagreed.
minimally loancheck exists because I’m mesmerised by sliders, and because scenarios should be playful, not painful.
minimally shelf came from plant-milk paranoia — I didn’t need expiry dates or barcode scans, I just needed to know how many were left.
Each app began with chaos, but the solution was never “add more.” The answer was always: strip it back to one thing that actually works.
Curious about the chaos behind each one? [notes] | [pills] | [travel] | [loancheck] | [shelf]
2. The Psychology of Simplicity
Simplicity isn’t boring; it’s freeing. Our brains carry a simplicity bias — we trust and enjoy things that feel easy to grasp. Complexity makes us suspicious. Simple feels safe.
That’s why a slider gives you dopamine when it moves instantly.
Psychologists call it instant feedback, and it’s the same principle that makes us refresh social media or pull a slot machine lever.
That’s why ticking off to-dos feels satisfying instead of overwhelming.
That’s why an analogue-inspired pantry log calms me more than a corporate warehouse dashboard ever could.
The paradox of choice is real: more features don’t give you more freedom, they give you more friction.
Simplicity is what makes tools usable.
3. Life Is Already Complicated
The world is noisy. Inflation. War. Famine. Taxes.
Exploding eggs in the kitchen (don’t ask). I don’t need my apps adding to the chaos.
I need them to get out of the way, do the job, and let me move on.
And here’s the personal truth: simplicity doesn’t come naturally to me.
I’m a perfectionist at heart.
I can get stuck in stage 4.6 of a build, endlessly nudging the colour codes, aligning the fonts, making sure the neumorphic shadows hit just right.
The irony is, perfectionism stops you from finishing.
You never get the satisfaction of completion because you’re trapped adjusting pixels.
So building these apps has been a challenge for me too — a way of forcing myself to live out the bare minimum to its core.
To let “done and useful” beat “perfect but stuck in drafts.”
To create tools that serve life, not ones that stall in my pursuit of flawless detail.
Conclusion: Why I Build This Way
Looking back at all these builds, the pattern is obvious.
Different domains, same story: reduce clutter, get clarity, make better decisions.
So yes, I could add loyalty points, push notifications, AI voices, even broccoli-spoilage alerts. But I won’t.
Because I wnt to be a simple person. And I need my apps to mirror me — imperfect, pared back, but finished.
This is my ethos: apps should do one thing well. They should serve, not distract. They should help you live, not give you another inbox of noise.
And maybe, just maybe, building them this way is helping me learn that I don’t need to be perfect either.
