Review: Focus Friend
Aug. 21st, 2025 07:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
livingdebI recently blogged about corporations hacking your brain for profit. And now I’m writing about an app designed to hack your brain to focus on actually doing stuff, “Focus Friend by Hank Green” (and Bria Sullivan of Honey B Games).
It’s a very simple app. When you start it running, you choose a specific period of time during which you are going to focus on something other than playing on your Apple device. During this time, a cartoon bean character begins knitting. When you do anything else on your phone the bean gets distracted and sad and stops knitting. When you succeed in leaving your phone alone, the bean has time to knit quite a lot of socks. And then you can sell these socks to buy decorations for the bean’s room.
So, this is not about rationality. Why spend time setting the timer and decorating an imaginary room if your goal is to actually do stuff? Why is it more motivating to not want to disappoint a cartoon bean than your own self? But people are not always perfectly rational, and when they’re not, it’s so cool if they can work with their weirdnesses to get stuff done anyway. And for people who enjoy the dopamine hits of certain kinds of video games, this app can help them use that enjoyment for something useful.
On first glance, that’s not me. I do like spending too much time on video games, but they aren’t on my phone. They’re on my laptop and tablet. But that’s just a technicality. I can still set the timer and then make myself turn it off if I get off task. In fact, the default setting actually lets you do other things on your phone, and you are just trusted to only focus on the things you want to be doing and not let yourself get distracted.
Another cool thing is how they make their money. Like many apps, it’s free to buy and you can use it for free or spend money for extras (like even faster knitting, or knitting more-valuable scarves, or having a different look for your bean). Unlike other apps, there are no ads. Because there are no ads, they don’t have to collect information. There are actually no scumbags involved. And yet, somehow it jumped to the #1 spot in Apple's App Store in the US and some other English-speaking countries for a while.
It’s a very simple app. When you start it running, you choose a specific period of time during which you are going to focus on something other than playing on your Apple device. During this time, a cartoon bean character begins knitting. When you do anything else on your phone the bean gets distracted and sad and stops knitting. When you succeed in leaving your phone alone, the bean has time to knit quite a lot of socks. And then you can sell these socks to buy decorations for the bean’s room.
So, this is not about rationality. Why spend time setting the timer and decorating an imaginary room if your goal is to actually do stuff? Why is it more motivating to not want to disappoint a cartoon bean than your own self? But people are not always perfectly rational, and when they’re not, it’s so cool if they can work with their weirdnesses to get stuff done anyway. And for people who enjoy the dopamine hits of certain kinds of video games, this app can help them use that enjoyment for something useful.
On first glance, that’s not me. I do like spending too much time on video games, but they aren’t on my phone. They’re on my laptop and tablet. But that’s just a technicality. I can still set the timer and then make myself turn it off if I get off task. In fact, the default setting actually lets you do other things on your phone, and you are just trusted to only focus on the things you want to be doing and not let yourself get distracted.
Another cool thing is how they make their money. Like many apps, it’s free to buy and you can use it for free or spend money for extras (like even faster knitting, or knitting more-valuable scarves, or having a different look for your bean). Unlike other apps, there are no ads. Because there are no ads, they don’t have to collect information. There are actually no scumbags involved. And yet, somehow it jumped to the #1 spot in Apple's App Store in the US and some other English-speaking countries for a while.
no subject
on 2025-08-22 01:02 am (UTC)I agree, the idea of this app seems weird to me. And not in a useful way. Perhaps for people who have waves of self-control, then nothing?
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on 2025-08-25 12:55 am (UTC)It's not rational. So it's for people who have a complementary form of irrationality. I do have some of that. The first time I used it was to make myself really try to fall asleep for 30 minutes without reading or otherwise playing on my iPad. (I didn't happen to fall asleep that time, but sometimes I do.)
I'm not sure you need waves of self-control. You start doing a thing and then think, hey, I'd like to do a distraction now! And then the app reminds you that no, you don't, not yet, hold off, be patient, keep working or whatever.
It might work the same way as when people set timers to encourage themselves to just work on a project for some tiny amount of time like 15 minutes, or even 5, hoping that once they get started, they'll keep it up a bit. (And if not, a little is still more than nothing and can add up.)
I think you might be better at just making yourself do stuff because you're "supposed to." Me, I'm all "I'm a grown-up," "I'm retired," "This is America," so I can do whatever I want. And then, oh, right, I *do* want to brush my teeth so that I can keep having teeth. I love having teeth.