Overfixation: When You Can’t Let Go

Story of two little apps: lite-crm and book club

Ever feel like you’re obsessing over something for no good reason? Like, your rational brain is telling you to drop it, but you keep going anyway? Yeah, that was me for the past two weeks.

It all started with this idea for a lite-CRM—a really basic tool for managing contacts. Mobile-first, super quick to add a contact, review details, and see the next action (like: call, email, or meeting). It was supposed to be simple, and it worked…until I realized it wasn’t much of a step forward in the world of CRMs. I mean, there are already a million apps out there that either nail CRM functionality or at least have some built-in CRM features. That made me pause and rethink what I actually wanted to build.

So, I pivoted. Instead of creating another CRM, I decided to build a CRM Viewer. This tool could accept data from any CRM in a CSV or Excel format, analyze it, and point out key findings about customers and the data structure itself. It’s working pretty well, and the best part is, it doesn’t store any data—everything stays local, which is a win for privacy and security.

Then I decided to add a “Talk to my CRM” feature. It’s like a basic ChatGPT function where you can upload your file and ask questions. But here’s the catch: this part turned out to be more challenging than expected because of some limitations with the OpenAI API. And I’m not keen on using the Assistants API because I don’t want to upload files there. So, I had to get creative with some summary and helper solutions to make it work.

Right now, the Lite-CRM Viewer is in deep progress mode. Translation: it works most of the time, but it still needs a lot of finishing touches. If you want to try click:

Then, there’s the second app I’ve been working on—The Book Club. It’s a digital tool to help you schedule book club meetings (offline), exchange opinions, and keep track of books you’re reading or where you’re at with your current read. I experimented with a bunch of micro-features like one-link sharing, AI suggestions, and other real-time functions. Nothing too over the top—I’m still aiming for simplicity, but I don’t want it to feel basic.

On top of that, I’ve been playing around with some JavaScript and Liquid code to add extra features to these apps. I can’t share the specifics just yet—only when it’s done and live.

Oh, and yes, I ran into some issues with Git and MongoDB. I had to roll back a few versions and even start over because, for no apparent reason, my database broke, and the versions on Git got corrupted. Just silly little bugs, but hey, lesson learned: I’m backing up my code more frequently now.

So, yeah, it’s been a bit of an overfixation phase for me. But sometimes, that’s just part of the process—stumbling, learning, and moving forward.

Stay tuned for what comes next!