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Building Focus Mind: A Smarter Way to Plan Your Learning Goals

Building Focus Mind: A Smarter Way to Plan Your Learning Goals

I love solving real problems — and sometimes that means scratching my own itch.

As someone constantly juggling multiple learning goals — system design, algorithms, certifications, writing — I often found myself stuck asking:

What should I study today? What’s actually urgent? Am I making progress on the right things?

So I built Focus Mind — a smart planner that helps me prioritize my learning based on what matters.

🚀 Why I Built It

I was frustrated with having:

  • Too many scattered notes and bookmarks
  • No system to rank what was urgent vs. optional
  • No visibility into what I had studied or skipped

Focus Mind gave me what I was missing:

  • ✅ Clarity on my learning priorities
  • ✅ Alignment with my weekly availability
  • ✅ Visibility into my confidence on each topic

🧠 What It Does

Focus Mind helps you:

  • Set learning goals with importance and deadlines

  • Track knowledge units (like topics, books, courses)

  • Auto-prioritize what to study next using:

    • Goal urgency (due dates)
    • Importance levels (high/medium/low)
    • Confidence decay (over time)
    • Your daily/weekly availability

  • Plan your day and week based on available minutes

  • Get AI-powered suggestions for breaking goals into actionable units

⚙️ Tech Stack & Architecture

I wanted to move fast, build flexibly, and keep it scalable:

  • Next.js (App Router) – Routing + client/server logic
  • Firebase Auth + Firestore + Storage – Authentication and persistence
  • Zustand + React Hooks – Fast and lean state management
  • TailwindCSS + Shadcn UI – Clean, accessible UI
  • OpenAI API – Auto-suggest units and goal breakdowns
  • Built a custom modal system with nested state
  • Used React.memo, useCallback, and useMemo for performance

The hardest part? The prioritization algorithm, which balances:

  • Confidence decay (how long since last review)
  • Goal importance + urgency (due soon? high priority!)
  • Pinned units and pinned goals (manual prioritization)
  • User-defined daily/weekly availability

🖼 Example Use Case (Non-Tech)

Focus Mind isn’t just for developers.

Let’s say you’re working on personal development:

  • Goal: Improve communication skills → Unit: Watch a TED talk
  • Goal: Learn personal finance → Unit: Read "Psychology of Money"
  • Goal: Boost productivity → Unit: Track your time for 7 days

You can:

  • Create each goal
  • Break it into small knowledge units
  • Use the planner to study consistently based on urgency + time

📸 What It Looks Like

Swipe through the screenshots in the carousel or visit the demo: 👉 https://learn-flow-zeta.vercel.app

🧭 What’s Next

I plan to:

  • Save daily/weekly plans to history
  • Let AI generate smart daily plans based on previous gaps

Have ideas or feedback? Would love to hear how you stay consistent with learning.

Thanks for reading!