it ain't over 'til it's over
— Rocky Balboa
I believe that telling people about your plans helps you achieve them. It's simple, a mix of cheers and social pressure helps u do the damn thing.
At the beginning of '23 I started telling people about my plan — hitting the gym 5 times a week (Mon, Wed, Fri — workout + Tue, Thu — cardio). Reactions were well... different. Most of the folks cheered me on, but few said it was stupid or too much.
The plan got even better — my good friend (👋 hi Dawid) suggested running a marathon in September (and helping some charity along that). I couldn't say no to that 🎢
I was in! I wanted everyone to know (or at least a few close folks). I needed a place to track and share my gym progress.
What were the requirements?
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3 clicks max to upload photo,
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easy to maintain,
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scalable in case of new ideas.
What did I need?
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workout app (with good-looking sharable photos),
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database to store all workouts,
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super simple front-end,
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automation to stitch all of that together.
Workout app
I knew Any Distance from Twitter (👋 hi Luke) and was hoping for this day to come for a year. Their attention to detail and creativity is over the top. The decision here was simple — I needed to use this for my photos.
Any Distance allows you to track workouts but also get data from Apple Fitness. You can create your own image for each activity based on plenty of build-in options (layouts, fonts, stats, graphs, etc.). It's definitely the prettiest thing out there!
Database
I started by checking Airtable and all no-code tools (Softr, Bubble, etc.). Unfortunately, any of them had a simple way to upload photos (3 clicks max, remember). I still wanted to play with it and decided to go with Airtable + Softr.
Setting up a database and displaying that in Softr is simpler than some onboarding processes. It took me like 15 minutes.
Front-end
Softr is ok, but not for this project. Don't get me wrong, Softr is more than perfect for any no-code apps where design is not the primary thing. For me, design was important, and I didn't want to compromise it. It was time to look for a new tool.
Lately, I have been playing with Framer a lot and wanted this to work, but I couldn't figure out how to integrate it with Airtable (I'm not a developer, u know). Well, that was time to bury the hatchet with Webflow (open API), which last time I used like 3-4 years ago.
It was a good call! It's not as simple and easy to use as Framer, but gives u 100% freedom in terms of front-end, interactions, well... almost anything!
Automation
So, there I was — Airtable + Webflow stitched with Zapier magic. I need a quick way to add new entries. Apple Shortcuts to the rescue!
I created a shortcut (thanks @ChrisLawley) to:
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Get any photo (option available in iOS share menu).
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Remove any metadata and convert to jpeg.
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Upload it somewhere to get URL.
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Push all of that to Airtable thru API.
It worked like a glove (after like 30 trials).
Simplifications
I wanted to test one last thing before launch — Webflow API. If I can connect with that in Shortcuts, I don't need Airtable or Zapier. This time, I didn't want to watch any tutorials; it was time to go on a solo mission. With Webflow API docs this mission was simpler than I thought. 15 minutes later, I had bug-free automation.
The final effect — here ↗
It was fun! It took me 3 evenings to build (and one morning to publish and write this). It's a proof that anyone can do and build that damn thing.
Now, it's time to hit the gym!