Focul

Focul is a tool I built for myself to help manage the chaos of student life. As a student, I was constantly juggling different apps—one for notes, another for assignments, a separate one for grades, plus one for event scheduling to keep track of everything else. It felt disorganized, fragmented, and way more complicated than it needed to be.

I just wanted one place where I could see everything for my classes, keep track of deadlines, stay on top of my grades, and keep my notes organized. That’s when I came up with the idea for Focul, a simple tool to help students stay organized and in control of everything school related.

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🎯 The Idea

Focul was meant to be a central hub for students—a place where you could:

• Add and track courses
• Manage to-do lists and assignments
• Schedule events
• Take notes
• Calculate your grades

All from one intuitive web app.

No more jumping between platforms or forgetting deadlines. Just one clean, focused tool to keep students organized and on top of everything.

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🧱 The Challenges

Building Focul was exciting, but it came with a lot of challenges:

1. Designing UI for Multiple Pages

I wanted Focul to be simple but still have all the features I needed. Coming up with a design that was both clean and functional was hard. Trying to fit everything, like the calendar, grade calculator, and notes, into one app without making it too crowded took up most of the time.
Solution: To figure it out, I looked for ideas on Dribbble. Seeing how other people designed similar apps helped me come up with a layout that was clean and easy to use.

2. Balancing Features with Simplicity

It’s easy to want to add everything: reminders, cool note options, checklists, colors, and more. The list just kept growing. But the more I added, the harder it was to keep things simple.
Solution: I learned to focus on what really mattered and didn’t add features that would just make it complicated. Focul is all about keeping things simple and easy to use.

3. Time and Burnout

With school and life in general, it was tough to find enough time to work on the project. And since I was doing everything by myself, I had to deal with every bug, every design, and every backend problem.
Solution: I worked in small chunks and focused on building just the basic features first instead of trying to make it perfect right away.

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⏸️ Why I Decided to Pause Focul

Even though I was really happy with how Focul was turning out, I decided to put the project on hold for now.

Here’s why:

• Too many ideas: As I came up with more ideas, the project started getting more complicated than I could handle.
• Doing everything alone: Doing everything by myself—coding, designing, testing—became too much.
• Other priorities: Other stuff came up that I had to focus on, and I didn’t want to leave Focul unfinished while trying to do too many things.

This wasn’t an easy decision, but I feel like sometimes stepping back helps me figure out what to do next.

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💭 What’s Next?

Focul might be on hold for now, but it’s not over.

The idea is still there, and I’m proud of what I’ve built so far. Maybe I’ll come back to it later with a team or a fresh perspective. For now, I’m grateful for everything I’ve learned along the way.

If you’re a student, developer, or just someone who’s been in a similar situation, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks for reading! 💙