I'm all in on GreenHabit 🤖 for Makers Festival... and in over my head

I love Product Hunt! I love making products and seeing what other makers design and build. When I saw the announcement this year for the Makers Festival with the environmental theme I was both excited and stumped at the same time, I wanted to be part of it but nothing came to me immediately so I pushed it to the back of my mind while working on other projects. After a few hours an idea came to me. I'd been playing with Bots again after not directly working with the technology of some years. I was toying with the idea of using a conversational bot to help coach startup founders and makers some powerful skills I'd developed in personal productivity and focus to get more out of life. The techniques had proven really successful when taught one-on-one or to small groups, but I am a technologist - a maker - not a coach. I'd developed a few products in this area over the last years and now with Covid-19 there were more people than ever working from home, starting side hustles and challenged with mixing entrepreneurship with paying the bills. In this changed world of work and more people needing this guidance I had ideas that a bot would help deliver this knowledge at scale. Bingo! the idea hit me... could I use what I know about product design, the psychology of human behaviour and motivation to help individuals to make small changes in their life that would both help them personally and the environment? This hit me hard! I know I am guilty. I have started to adopt greener habits over time yet gave many up in *days*... forgotten. I know personally I could do better. It is a choice. Now I was confronted with a moral dilemma - I had a solution that I know would personally work on me and know it would also work on others to make a lasting change. Am I prepared to commit that amount of effort? I enjoy jumping into hackathons and events typically for a weekend or so just to throw myself in the deep-end on a new technology, get our of my comfort zone and meet new people. However, the app I had envisaged on this occasion was a bit out of that scope - this was different, not only technologically challenging, there were scripts for the bot, knowledge to turn into code, gamification, referral system, app and website design... the list was long and it was going to be a solid investment of time. That was last week - I am now with a 'rough out' of the bot working and with the time I've spent so far I am past the point of leaving it at that. I am committed to seeing GreenHabit through to success and not just a hackathon project. There is a lot to do yet to make it a usable and enjoyable product but in order to be effective in its' mission I need to spread the word. I can't just code, I have to build a community around it (that is why I am writing this post right now instead of coding). GreenHabit's goal is to make visible the small individual actions and changed habits people make and at the same time encourage others to follow. The premise is that by committing to a change publicly these changes are more likely to stick; and that one small change multiplied by thousands is not insignificant. The problem GreenHabit addresses is the fact that adopting a green habit is a personal sacrifice. Green alternatives to our normal habits are less comfortable, often cost more and are less convenient. It takes effort and commitment! This effort eats into our willpower. As a solution - GreenHabits' unique conversational coaching method makes it easier to adopt a new green habit one by one until mastered and make them life long changes. The platform's gamification makes it fun and rewarding with visibility over the impact your change is making. That is just a taster, there are some really exciting features I am designing now that I'll unveil in another post. Why I am I posting in the help category? If you agree a product like GreenHabit is needed in the world or this has struck a cord with you then reach out by commenting below I could do with the support to know this is going to be worth while. I've created a PH ship page for ease of subscribing.