Show HN: I'm a 19y/o and I built an app to help me focus and get things done | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: I'm a 19y/o and I built an app to help me focus and get things done

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3 pointsmandynoe5 comments

My friends and I were absolutely cooked during finals. We’d sit down to study, swear we’d focus… and somehow end up scrolling thru our phones, zoning out, or just procrastinating. We wanted to lock in, tick things off our to do list, and hold each other accountable so I built LocasFocus.

LocasFocus is a social focus timer that makes focusing fun. Set a timer, enter an immersive focus room, and get in the zone with lofi beats. After each focus session, share what you worked on, scroll the focus feed to see what your friends are focusing on for inspo, and compete on the leaderboard to see who’s racking up the most focus hours. Oh, and after every focus session, u unlock pieces of a puzzle to stunning images.

I hope you enjoy using it to stay focused. Let me know what you think!

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I haven’t checked the app, I just saw screenshots. In my opinion the leaderboard is a bad idea, especially global one. It will be unachievable by vast majority of your users, and may lead to toxic behaviours such as working for 12h/day. It will also remind others how bad their productivity is, possibly causing more stress and self-blaming.

Think about something else than gamification. In my experience and the experience of our users (https://workmode.net/) gamification very quickly stops to work.

I wish you all the best as I know how devastating procrastination may be. Stay productive:-)

So your problem was scrolling on your phone so you made a focus app with a social feed you can scroll through?

No need to be snarky. If it helps someone be more productive then it’s a win, even if they spend 50% scrolling and 50% working.

I haven’t checked the app, but the description says it uses social accountability, focus music and gamification. I’m sure it’s the right combination for some people, even if only for a while (in my experience gamification works only short term).

I'm not being snarky, I just don't understand how it helps solve the problem?

If the problem is that you scroll on your phone, how does an app with a feature where you scroll on your phone solve the problem?

I assume that scrolling through productivity feed of friends is less engaging than scrolling through social media content designed and tailored to you to spend as much time on it as possible.

The app has other features to help with focus and to jumpstart productivity.

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