Building A Self Improvement SaaS Solution

Part 1 - Even though I subscribe to various software services aimed at personal self-improvement, some gaps still need attention. I've decided to build a personal self-improvement SaaS product. I shall document my journey here, and we will see if I can improve some areas in my life that need extra attention and development.

Areas of improvement

I've identified the following areas to improve first:

• time management and productivity
• fitness and exercise
• travel and activities
• art, knowledge and education
• personal projects

Combining the improvements made in these areas will help me achieve more of my personal goals.

SaaS Software Platform Plan

To start, I'm building out this bespoke personal website,

marcallington.com

(https://marcallington.com), with the following features:

1. User Management
2. User access control with roles and permissions
3. Highly SEO-optimised features
4. Built-in analytics
5. Simple blogging feature

User Management

Status: Completed

User management already provides sign-in, invitation-based sign-up, and password reset features.

User Access Control (UAC)

Status: Completed

Website features, data and services are available based on users assigned Application Roles. Each user has one or more Roles that define what pages, components, and services they can access and what data they can access, add, update and delete. User Access Control executes on both the client and server.

SEO

Status: Completed

For the most part, this feature is complete. Many SEO capabilities already exist, including AI features that help generate metadata based on page content and an implementation that ensures high page speed scores.

Analytics

Status: Completed

A basic Analytics service provides the following information: Page Visits Referrer Information Page and Keyword Search Engine position tracking With this information, I can monitor the site's performance, view basic visitor information, and track how well the pages rank in the search engines for specific keywords.

Blogging

Status: Blogging

The blogging feature must be easy to use, look good, have excellent search engine optimisation features, and, most importantly, make it super easy to create content. A blog post is mostly media content such as text, images, audio and video. However, it must also be heavily optimised to perform well with the search engines, requiring meaningful metadata and highly optimised, well-written content. The solution already utilises various cloud services and artificial intelligence cloud functions to help get the SEO performance needed.

Areas of Personal Improvement

Like everyone, I have areas of personal development that I need to focus on. I subscribe to various commercial services such as Audible, LinkedIn Learning, Udemy, Blinkist, Apple Fitness+, MyFitnessPal, Muse, Headspace, RescueTime, IFTTT, Basecamp, Notion, ChatGPT and others. I use them all, but I need to join services together and hold myself more accountable. To do this, I will develop new features on this website to introduce the missing data services, workflows, dashboards, reports and AI that will help to improve my personal development.

I aim to focus on the following areas of personal development to achieve my goals more quickly.

Time Management and Productivity

First, I want to get into the habit of getting up earlier - by 6 am. The goal is simple: to take a photo each morning before 6 am on every work day and no later than 8 am on non-work days.

Second, I want to keep a new simplistic time management journal to record my productivity levels and if I manage to complete specific core tasks.

Fitness and Exercise

I spend too much time at my office desk, so I must allocate time to follow a daily fitness plan and do more exercises, particularly strength training. I'm not going into training to run a marathon or anything similar. Instead, I want to concentrate on improving my mitochondrial health and enjoy the sensation of feeling fit.

To help accomplish this challenge, I will create an AI persona whose task is to keep me on the straight and narrow. If necessary, I will give access to a real trainer to help where the AI can't.

Travel and Activities

I want to do more travelling and social activities. Theoretically, this should be easy; unfortunately, it is not for me. I have an all-encompassing passion for turning my ideas into software. I spend almost as much time coding in my own time as I do at work, and I'm a software engineer by trade! I do want to get out and about more, so the first task is to determine the "what", "where" and "when". Watch this space on how I'm going to ensure I accomplish this.

Art, Knowledge and Education

I want to take more courses on Udemy and LinkedIn Learning. I also want to listen to more books on Audible and spend more time on Blinkist. I plan to complete more courses monthly and add a new feature to this site to track my progress. Something of particular interest is to learn to draw and write short stories - I'm sure for my consumption.

Personal Project Development

I have several personal projects that I enjoy working on. They are primarily entrepreneurial SaaS projects, turning ideas into software products. The main benefit of these projects isn't finishing them but instead occupying 1000s hours of my time, keeping my skills up to scratch and learning new technologies, languages and methods. I need to release some of this time for other activities, which is fine because I will also improve my productivity to ensure no net loss.

This website is one of my projects. Developed from scratch, I will add various features to help me accomplish more of my goals and share my progress and journey. I'll also use my blog to write about software development and other interests that others might find helpful in their work. I will share more about my other projects in future blog posts.