"Joy Comes from the Process of Creating, Not the End Result" — App Builder, Logan Koshenka

Logan Koshenka from the US has been nominated for a 2020 #Noonie in the Future Heroes category for his beautifully built side project, a Health and Wellness app called Accufit. PSA: Nominations for this award are still open..! Get the Health and Wellness App you can't live without nominated for a Noonie today ➡️ make a Founder's day.

➡️ Nominate Your Health & Wellness Innovation of the Year here

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The Noonies are Hacker Noon’s way of getting to know — from a community perspective —  what matters in tech today. So, we asked our Noonie Nominees to tell us. Here’s what Logan had to share.

1. Tell us a bit about yourself.

I am a 25 year old self-taught iOS Developer, obsessed with all things tech, business, and fitness. I'm currently working full-time in Columbus, OH while maintaining my personal projects on the side, and I've been nominated for a 2020 Noonie one of those projects!

2. Tell us about the things you make / write / manage / build.

I built AccuFit after I worked as a personal trainer. I would constantly have friends and family text me for workouts. I wanted to build a simple tool that could generate a workout given a goal, muscle group(s), difficulty level, and where the person is working out. Later on, I added features such as an interval timer, exercise library, and more.

In general, I love the feeling of someone gaining value from a product you created from scratch. I enjoy the feeling that someone's life is better because of this thing I built. I try to focus on simplicity and overdelivering for my users in the products that I create. Aside from external validation, I just really love building things. Once I realized the joy comes from the process of creating rather than the end result, everything sort of came together for me. I'm looking forward to continuing this whole journey.

3. What are you most excited about right now?

SwiftUI! I am currently doing a ton of tutorials in an attempt to master it (especially in iOS 14). I feel like if you have a good grasp on SwiftUI, your development time can be significantly decreased. The goal right now is to master SwiftUI over the next few months, and then release new apps way more frequently.

4. What are you worried about right now?

This pandemic! Will things ever go back to normal? What is normal? What about the next virus? Who can you really listen to? It all stresses me out so I just focus on doing my part, however small it may be.

5. What's the most useful advice you've ever given somebody?

A lot of my advice to friends is to go for the thing they're hesitating about.

I have taken some risks, some that worked out and some that didn't, so a lot of my friends will come to me like, "I really want to do this, but what about xyz?"

It could be anything from moving far away, starting a business, learning how to code, etc. And my advice is usually in the form of supporting this dream or goal that they have because sometimes a little bit of support and positive affirmation is all you need. It may or may not work out, but going for it is better than living with "what-ifs."

So I'm the one who says, "Go for it. If you fail, so what? You'll learn from it." We're all going to die, right? Go do the thing you want to do.

6. How has the pandemic changed your life and/or career?

It made me realize a few things. It showed me how important your social life can be. I am sort of a workaholic, so I spend a lot of time alone writing code, working on some project, etc.

With the social options basically taken away, I started to feel that isolation and I learned to regularly reach out to friends and family to sort of stay sane in that regard.

I also think it's important to take care of your physical health (always), but especially now.

The pandemic makes it way easier to just lay around at home, which can quickly snowball into one bad habit after another. So, in my opinion, mental and physical health need to be an even higher priority than normal right now. Aside from that, I ended up moving from Seattle to my home state of Ohio for a new job that I'm really enjoying!

7. If we gave you $10 million to invest in one thing right now, where would you put it?

Myself - I have too many ideas to sit around and wait :D

8. What's an opinion you have that most people don't agree with?

Pickles are the worst food on the face of the Earth.

9. Which apps can't you live without?

Spotify - everything is better with music!

10. What are you currently learning?

SwiftUI and Brazilian jiu-jitsu!

For much the same reasons Hacker Noon decided not to put good ideas behind pop-ups or paywalls — nor abuse your personal data to target you with creepy ads — we also decided that you don’t have to be a #thinkfluencer or have 50k followers on Twitter to earn the recognition that comes with a 2020 Noonie Nomination. 

NOONIES NOMINATIONS ARE OPEN ACROSS 5 CATEGORIES — technology, decentralization, software development, future heroes, and back to the internet, Blockchain — UNTIL AUGUST 12, 2020.

NOMINATE YOUR BEST IN TECH: NOONIES.TECH 🚀