Show HN: Progress Dashboard – A dashboard to stay productive with progress bars

Show HN: Progress Dashboard – A dashboard to stay productive with progress bars(progressdash.xyz)

59 points by mubaris 7 years ago | 32 comments

mubaris 7 years ago |

Hi HN

Creator of Progress Dashboard here. I've been working on Progress Dashboard for almost a year now. This is a simple chrome extension to replace boring new tab with a useful dashboard. With Progress Dashboard you can access progress bars for year, month, week, day and hour. You can also create one for specific tasks with start and end time. You can select a background from image, gradient or Trianglify. Progress Dashboard comes with a Distraction Free Mode to stay productive. This mode is very minimal and it's dark mode

dgellow 7 years ago | |

Good job for the launch :)

A short question:

> Progress Dashboard comes with a Distraction Free Mode to stay productive.

Isn't the progress dashboard a distraction in itself? That's at least my experience with those kind of tool, but I didn't try "Progress Dashboard" to be honest.

FromThePast 7 years ago | |

> I've been working on Progress Dashboard for almost a year now

Which part of it took you a year to write?

mubaris 7 years ago | | |

It's a side project. I work on it when I have free time

CoffeePython 7 years ago |

Some feedback:

You should put an example of a use case for some of the task bars in your website photos. "Task Progress" doesn't really convey any type of value to me. Maybe a specific example like "Gym sessions attended" would help show new users what the app can be used for.

mubaris 7 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback! Just updated the site

jamestimmins 7 years ago | | |

If you're looking for example use cases, first thought was that it would be fun to see a countdown until my wedding, which I suppose would take the form of "% of engagement completed."

stunt 7 years ago | | |

Maybe too direct, But why is it paid?

I don't mean it shouldn't be or whatever. I'm just interested to know what is your thought behind "Support the Indie Maker Movement" you've mentioned.

timvdalen 7 years ago | | |

How does the Reading Progress work? Do you have to update it manually, or does it grab data from somewhere?

bizzleDawg 7 years ago |

I did try "momentum" as a new tab for a while, but I've always found these kinds of things distracting - when you hit ctrl+T I'm not (and I suspect most are not) looking for inspiration, but I'm looking to find something. Maybe I'm alone in this view?

If anything, I'd be tempted to make a completely blank new tab page - for me that would avoid the normal routine of seeing all my favourite favicons

chriswarbo 7 years ago | |

Not sure which browser you use, but I only open new tabs "on demand". This is in Conkeror, where the command `find-url-new-buffer` (bound to `C-u g`) will ask for a URL then open the new tab on that URL. Perhaps there are options or addons to do this in other browsers?

This way I can have a CI dashboard as my homepage, but I only see it when I switch to it explicitly or when I close the last of my other tabs. Also, Conkeror doesn't have actual "tabs" in its UI: like Emacs, the open tabs ("buffers") are only listed after running the `switch-to-buffer` command (`C-x b`); so there's less distraction there too.

r3bl 7 years ago | |

I find it hard to believe that tech-savvy people click on something on a new tab page instead of doing Ctrl+T -> first two letters -> enter.

Since there's a whole lot of space to fill in while doing that, it might as well show you a pretty picture and some task or something.

I would consider a completely white page as a waste of screen estate.

bizzleDawg 7 years ago | | |

Spliting hairs here, but it's not about clicking something, it's about changing what those first 2 letters typed are.

Call me a minimalist (or whatever else you'd like), but "might as well" isn't a good enough reason to add distractions for me.

cybervegan 7 years ago |

So... what's this for? I mean, I know what progress bars are for per se but I can't see any mention of a way to tie the meter to something concrete other than time - and we already have clocks and calendars for that. I must be missing something...

spectramax 7 years ago | |

It is just for time. I find this sort of thing along with motivation posters and the like - to be superfluous and for people who lack discipline. You shouldn't have to motivate yourself by looking at a poster - if that's the case then you're fixing the symptom and not the deeper mental root cause. Don't get me wrong, if this dashboard plugged into a task list or something concrete with goal, it would be useful.

stronglikedan 7 years ago | | |

I lack discipline, and this sort of stuff doesn't help me at all, so it's not for people who lack discipline. It is for people who are motivated by this sort of stuff, whether they are disciplined or not. Whatever works, works.

mrhappyunhappy 7 years ago |

I tried a new tab extension that lets you create to do lists and got lazy with it after a few days. Somehow these tools are not very helpful to me. I’m curious if anyone uses these things consistently day to day month to month?

twodave 7 years ago | |

I've found that most organizational/motivational tools aren't sticky. I suspect for me it's in part because I just don't care enough about being organized typically and don't lack in motivation as much as I do in free time (4 kids, 2 jobs).

In fact, the only organizational tool that has remained a constant for me has been Trello, and only for specific projects. As an example, when I moved mid-last year, I set up a Trello board and filled it up with everything we needed to get done, Kanban style. This was super helpful because it helped manage a sense of being _completely overwhelmed_ by the volume of work needed.

And that's where I basically draw the line now. I tend to not live in a way where I let myself be overwhelmed by things, and when I need an organizational tool to help cope with the busy times, I know where to find one that works for most workflows I could come up with.

ljoshua 7 years ago |

Nicely done. I recently made a progress dashboard for myself that tracked my billable hours (I consult) for the week/month in a Google Sheet, and have it pulling the data automatically from Harvest, my time tracker.

Then I have the sheet automatically emailed to myself as a PDF each morning so I can keep track of where I'm at for the week based on my budgetary needs. It visually breaks down how close I am to achieving my goals, and shows on a per-expense basis how much I've filled up the meter for the week (think "The average citizen spends the first 3 months of the year working to pay for their healthcare" type of thing).

It's been a great tool for keeping myself on target, and automatically seeing it every day has been key to its success for me.

supermw 7 years ago |

I highly recommend that everyone make a life progress bar, and look at it everyday.

abelgvidal 7 years ago | |

how would you do it? what would you track?

supermw 7 years ago | | |

The amount of years you've been alive divided by the life expectancy of your country.

fajarsiddiq 7 years ago |

Congratulations Mubaris on the launch. This is awesome product. Much love from Singapore

izzydata 7 years ago |

A progress bar for a generic period of time that has no real significance like a month is kind of depressing. It makes me extrapolate a progress bar for "life" and that I am 35% completed.

rvn1045 7 years ago |

there is another similar one that i use: https://www.progressbarosx.com/

JNRowe 7 years ago | |

I came to this story hoping for a version of that app for non-MacOS users. For fellow Linux users with that feeling, I wrote up a 10 minute hack¹ to emulate it poorly.

1. http://jnrowe.github.io/articles/march_toward_death.html

jkesselring 7 years ago |

Would it be possible to show some UI for what configurations/options are available when creating a progress bar or updating an existing one?

tacone 7 years ago |

It would be nice to have for Firefox as well.

mubaris 7 years ago | |

Working on it