Building an app in 4 weeks | Inbox Experiments #5

Hey, Yunus here 👋

This week kicks off a 4-part series: Building an Indie App in 4 Weeks.
Not in theory. Not in a course.

But by actually building something and sharing the thinking behind every decision.

Let’s start where every product should start.
Not with a feature.
But with a pattern.

🧠 The Spark: “What if I’m working against my own rhythm?”

I’ve always been skeptical of productivity hacks that assume everyone’s the same.
Like the 5AM club.

Nice idea. But what if your brain doesn’t turn on until 9:47?

That question led me down a rabbit hole.
Turns out, we all run on a biological schedule called the circadian rhythm.

It affects when we’re sharp, when we’re clumsy, when we crave food, even when we make our worst decisions.

A few resources that opened my eyes:

• National Institute of General Medical Sciences

• Probing Question: What makes somebody a morning person or a night owl?

And it hit me:
🧩 If this rhythm is so core to how we function… why don’t our tools adapt to it?

🧪 This Week’s Experiment

Can I combine biological data with self-awareness to create something useful?

I had the tools:

• Apple Health tracking my sleep, heart rate, and steps

• A growing curiosity about when I actually feel “on” or “off”

So I started testing:

• Tracking my health data daily.

• Logging focus levels and mood manually.

• And began looking for patterns between sleep, movement, and performance.

👀 I didn’t expect scientific clarity, but I did start noticing things:

• I’m not productive after a long sleep, but I am after early movement

• On days with no morning walk, my focus shifts 2 hours later

• I consistently make my worst decisions around 2-3 pm (hello, afternoon dip)

🧠 From Insight to App Concept

I started with a feeling:
“There’s a gap between how I feel and how I’m expected to perform.”

Then I asked:
What do I already have that could help me explore this?
→ An iPhone and Apple Watch
→ A rich, personal dataset I’d been collecting for years—sleep, activity, even heart rate variability

The shift happened when I stopped trying to “display” this data...
And started imagining how it could assist me.

Not a dashboard.
Not a chart.
But a guide.
A quiet rhythm-aware assistant that nudges me at the right time.

I wrote down real-life questions:

• When should I do deep work?

• When should I rest, not because I’m tired, but because my body says so?

• When is reflection easier?

That’s when the emotional layer clicked.
It wasn’t just about utility.
It was about alignment.

To make the idea real, I talked it through with ChatGPT. We brainstormed names.

Pulse stood out immediately.
Simple. Alive. Rhythmic.
It felt like a name the body would whisper to the mind.

💡 What Changed

Before this, I thought productivity was about planning blocks.
Now I’m seeing it more like catching waves.

You can’t force flow, but you can learn your rhythm and ride it.

The most useful tools aren’t the ones that make us do more.
They’re the ones that help us know when to stop, shift, or slow down.

📩 Your Turn

I'm curious about something: Do you have a time of day when you consistently feel "off" or "on"?

Maybe it's that 3pm energy crash. Or the burst of clarity you get after your morning coffee. Or even those late-night moments when ideas just flow.

Hit reply and tell me yours. I'm fascinated by how different everyone's rhythm is.

Mine was that 2-3pm decision-making danger zone. What's yours?

Next up → Inbox Experiments #6: “Don’t Design the App — Design the Decisions”
Where I show how datas became the real engine of Pulse.

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Until then,
Stay curious. Stay useful.
Yunus 🚀