Getting people’s attention these days isn’t easy. Your social media post or blog entry competes with hundreds of others published every day, and people get distracted easily. You might spend hours perfecting a 500-word piece, only for five people to read it. That’s how it goes when you’re not a celebrity. It doesn’t have to be that way. An extraordinary website that conveys the same idea that a blog post would can make a difference.
This year, I want to spend 500 hours solving one small problem for people working on digital products—people like me. The first challenge is choosing a topic. It can’t be a huge, complex issue needing a big team and years of engineering. It should be solvable by one person in their spare time. I’m not focused on financial value. Sometimes, everyday annoyances go unaddressed because they aren’t profitable. That’s the niche I’m aiming for.
To figure out people’s biggest struggles, I need enough data from the right audience—about 1,000 entries, so I can spot patterns and decide where to dive deeper. I won’t get that by just posting a question on social media; I’ve barely used it over the last decade, so my reach is tiny. Talking to people I know directly might yield 50 answers at most. Still, I believe I can spark enough interest!
Because I’m a builder at heart, I think people value something that stands out. That’s how I came up with wishihadbetter.tools—a very simple website with just one input field for typing your wish for better tooling. No authentication, no cookies—just a basic web form. After submitting, you can see what other people have wished for.
I hope this public database of software requests helps not only me but also other creators who want to build something meaningful and make the world a little bit better.
Missing a piece of software? Maybe you need an entirely new tool, or just a better version of something you already use. Share your wish at wishihadbetter.tools.
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