Project Idea #1: A to do list that speaks to you

So I started Celestial Biscuit IGDTUW back in 2022 - coolest thing I've ever done ngl. There was a project that I started with the team “a sarcastic to-do-list”. The idea was to send the following meme whenever a person failed to do their tasks on time:

Pretty cool right?

Taking a moment to mention the cool meridians (we called Celestial Biscuit developers as Meridians) who worked on the Sarcastic To-Do List project (Mitushi Sharma, Monalika Patnaik, Muskan Joshi, Nancy, Nandini Parashar, Navya Agarwal, Navya Munjal, Nidhi Bhatt)

This was the original idea, pretty simple - the user can perform CRUD operations via a bot, a Cron job checks the database regularly and whenever the deadline for a task is reached, a reminder with a “judgemental” meme is sent on WhatsApp / Telegram. To-do lists are the first projects of 90% of developers, why shouldn’t they also taste the sweet sweet nectar of innovation right?

Now if you want to go ahead and build this version itself please feel free to do so, share the project with everyone as well - I for one would love to use this ??

Moving to the idea from my treasure box now. I was in the middle of an online examination and my phone kept ringing and ringing and ringing, I kid you not this happened 11 times, thankfully the exam ended and I picked the call - “Ma’am would you like to get a credit card"?” My reaction: ?????????????????????????????????? But then I thought, if I displayed the same amount of diligence to do my work as this person just showed to sell me a credit card - I’d be a billionaire, if only, if only I had a reminder system like that which could call and remind me that I have to complete my leftover projects (goldfish memory issues).

Now this, is the updated idea. Twilio IVR is a wonderful solution which you can use to bring your project to life. Personally I would pay anywhere between 250-400 Rs / month for this tool - { organized life === successful life }.

Why will this be better than normal to-do lists?

• No clutter on already cluttered messaging platforms / emails.
• Calls are hard to dismiss or forget.
• Psychologically, phone calls create a sense of urgency.
• With GenAI, you can also alter the tone and the voice of the call.

Possible challenges to tackle:

• Some people live their lives on DnD, will have to ask them to bypass their settings by allowing your IVR’s contact number to always be able to call. A fallback mechanism could be to call as well as drop a text / email.
• The above said fallback mechanism would also be useful in the cases where calls fail, or a person opts out of receiving calls for a while.

If you have any comments or questions around this, feel free to reach out to me to brainstorm more. I am actually hoping one of you builds and sells this soon. ??

TL;DR

1. To make such a project (for starters) you will need an understanding of CRUD operations, authentication, building an API in any language, Twilio (IVR particularly).
2. It will be a good learning project for someone who wants to start with backend development.
3. Even if you are able to make 5 friends of yours use this - I would appreciate it so much, start with 5, then 25, then 125, then 625…. Earendel is the limit for you

Thankyou so much for taking out time to read this, have a positive and productive day ahead!

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Until next time! ??

Pooja Gera

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