Gabriel le Roux

For 3 years I used one productivity tool for everything. Tags, folders, structures, systems. I knew every shortcut. Then one day I opened it and realized I hadn't actually done anything in it for weeks. I'd only been organizing, moving things around, building systems that never got used. I switched to a plain text file, and more work is getting done now.

The tool wasn't bad. I was using it to feel productive instead of being productive.

So for those who've dropped a tool they depended on: was it actually the tool's fault or was it the way you were using it? And the harder question: what tool are you using right now mostly to feel organized not to actually do anything?

For 3 months I shared weekly progress updates publicly. Numbers, learnings, screenshots, full transparency. Then I noticed something: I was choosing what to build based on what would look good in the update not what users needed. "Impressive" features got priority over "useful" ones and a dashboard screenshot performed better than a boring fix that actually mattered.

I stopped posting metrics publicly after that. The transparency didn't keep me honest it made me perform.

So for those who build in public: have you caught yourself optimizing for the audience instead of the user? And the harder question: if you removed the audience tomorrow would you still build the same things?

We launched WISCA on Product Hunt today and the launch runs until 12:01 a.m. PT tomorrow. It is assessment software for schools following India's CBSE curriculum, Classes 6 to 12.

What it does: teachers prepare the question paper from the chapters they teach, confirm marking from phone photos or scans, and get chapter-wise results that show which chapter needs another lesson. Teachers stay in control of the questions, the marks and when results are shared with students and parents.