My Dear Reader,
One look at the future suggests I need to try again at diversifying my income stream.
Every morning, I write my Morning Pages. Most mornings it’s a dump of what happened the previous day, maybe with a description of a dream I remember. Now and then, I use it to brainstorm new ideas.
Usually, about a page and a half into it, ideas start flowing. Good ideas, bad ideas, but they come.
People pay for things that reduce friction during their day, or at least solve a particular problem. Since I’m a person, I have problems other people also have. So, this morning I reviewed my frictions over the past few days.
After lamenting that my biggest problem is lack of funds, a real one just rang out. Klang!
My boys are wrapped up in sports. One is in two different little league baseball teams, the other is in a baseball and a soccer team. So, four sports in all, each with a different schedule. Soccer’s schedule is on a PDF. One baseball league is on the TeamLinkt app, the other is on the GameChanger app.
Being a chronic forgetter of all things time and space, I need to get all these dates on my calendar. Being a chronic procrastinator, I won’t do it. And didn’t do it during the Winter season. And royally messed up a few times.
One of the apps will export the calendar to an .ics file, which you can then just upload to your own calendar. The other app and the PDF are more difficult. You have to basically translate one game or practice at a time. Which is a pain in the ass.
Wouldn’t it be great if I could just drop that PDF or a screenshot of a clunky app schedule into a third party app, and get back a nice .ics file my Google calendar will suck right up?
So, that’s the brainstorm. Translate sports team calendars into convenient formats for parents to import into their own calendars.
I emailed the head of the soccer league today with an example .ics for my younger kid’s winter schedule – made completely by hand. I asked him if he’d be interested in coughing up some cash for the Spring season’s schedule in such a format that he can just give to the parents.
We’ll see what happens.
Now, get back to work.
Yours, Peter
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