Why I made it

I’ve always noticed beauty in the ordinary. Fog hanging low over the acreages on my drive to work. The way light falls through a room at a certain time of day. Strangely, in spite of life changing in some big ways, those are the moments that stay with me. Tiny Acts came from a desire to bring that same noticing into an app. Not in a heavy-handed way. Just a simple prompt that says: here’s something small to step out of your routine.

Conceptually, it isn’t groundbreaking. Other people have build similar things in one way or another. But I don’t think that rules out the space to create impact. Or the chance to recognize ourselves in small ways.

Building it

What I didn’t expect was how being so close to every detail would feel. When you’re the one designing and building the whole thing, you see every mechanism exposed. Every boolean, every date check, every animation stutter. Testing over and over can dull the magic a bit. You stop seeing whimsy and start seeing wiring.

What kept me moving was mostly stubbornness. The same instinct that fuels me on the back half of a run I didn’t feel like doing. And the belief that the next morning I’d wake up and see a clearer path forward, maybe by trying a different technique. That rhythm, push until you’re stuck, rest, then solve it tomorrow, was the only way through.

One early idea was to limit the skip feature. I wanted users to only be able to skip an act only once every seven days. It felt clever. A way to gently force people to sit with the act they were given. But the reality of building it, managing app states, date logic, and edge cases, was brittle and frustrating. I eventually realized it was my vision, but not the best one for everyone. The compromise became better: by default, you can’t change the act. But if you want to, you can toggle the feature on in settings, with no restrictions. It felt more honest.

Like being the architect of a house you’ll never live in alone, you design with other people in mind.

Learning curve

This was an iterative project. I always knew notifications and sound would be important, but I left them until the end. They were intimidating. They complicated things. I lost track of how many mornings I would wake up expecting to see a toast notification from the app, only to be disappointed when I realized I had tweaked something that preventing it from firing. For a while, I thought about cutting these pieces out entirely. But I kept layering features piece by piece, and eventually they found their place. Adding them and staying patient gave the app its rhythm.

The biggest lesson was simple: anything is possible. Or learnable. Or executable. You don’t have to know the whole path at the start. You can sketch the blueprint, start with the foundation, and trust that the rest can be figured out when you get there.

What feels like me

If there’s a fingerprint in Tiny Acts, it’s in the quietness of it. The way it asks you to pause, or notice something small. Some acts might take you a few minutes, or miles out of your routine. Others can be as brief as a deep exhale. The app doesn’t want to hold you. It doesn’t want to optimize your life or demand your attention. Once you’ve revealed your act, there’s nothing left to see. Nothing left to do other than click ‘Completed’ once you’ve finished it. Two taps and you’re done.

That feels true to me. And it’s a counterpoint to the notion that every idea has to be bold or revolutionary. Sometimes the smallest things add texture.

Success

Apple approved Tiny Acts on the first submission. Maybe that isn’t uncommon, I honestly don’t know. But as a first time developer, I’m proud of it. I brought the idea into the world, in a way that I think I’ll still appreciate when I look back later.

Downloads and feedback would be great. Of course I hope for those.

But the only certainty is this: I built it. I learned what I didn’t know. And it’s out there now.

View more about Tiny Acts on the product page here.