Apologies if this is uncouth, but if anyone wants the opposite of this product, check out Pixelist on the App Store: it’s a 100% free and private, extremely minimalist habit tracker. I’m terrible at marketing (my Show HN had zero response) but it’s had a growing organic user base that seems to love it.
It looks really nice! I'm looking for an app to replace my current tracking system.
If I may give some feedback: when editing the name of the habit, could you please insert the habit name string into the text field? Completely retyping it is a bit cumbersome.
I noticed that if you drag a habit to the last position, but a little bit too far, the app crashes. Excellent app otherwise, I really like the simplicity! :)
Thanks so much - you’re right, I think it’s about time to finally create a product page. Also thanks for the pointer, the everyday calendar looks great!
Very couth. Opened the comments only to see referrals to minimal alternatives.
Everything what my ADD brain needs. Nothing my ADD brain doesn’t need. And perfect alignment with libre ideals! May I suggest that you make a tiny update, just so that the App Store can tout your impeccable privacy policy!
Yes, exactly. And there is no indication of wether it actually cycles through or is generating at random. So I wasn’t even sure I could get it back. It’s small stuff though.
I asked because I just got a few nfc tags to play with. They can have a uri programmed into them, so that whenever I tap them, the uri is accessed. This is often used with Apple's Shortcuts app for example. It would be neat to be able to tap something to mark the habit behavior as being done.
Hm, I’m not sure what adds up to 25MB but overall it’s very lean on dependencies - essentially just RxSwift. It might also be the Swift runtime, which used to be bundled into binaries before ABI stability.
I have mild to moderate ADHD, and in the long run, I haven’t found any tools that try and “get in my way” to block distraction to be that helpful. No tool can save me from myself, and they usually end up interfering with my “productivity” in the process. For example, with this tool, what happens when I need to use a browser extension, or look up something from a random website, or research something on HN or Reddit? What happens if I need to use the terminal, or message my partner? And then aside from all that, how does it protect me from just turning to something else (phone) to feed my need for distraction?
So while things like this can have some benefit, no productivity tool can come close to touching the things that have really helped me: therapy, meditation, psychedelics, self-compassion, medication, and some books that helped me see “productivity” through a new lens and recognize the pathological relationship with myself that it was keeping me trapped in.
Books I recommend:
1. Four Thousand Weeks by Burkeman
2. Self Compassion by Neff
3. The Now Habit by Fiore
If you can only read one, read 4000 Weeks. Game changer.
Hey ryanwaggoner, I do agree that this app is not meant to completely isolate you from everything and prevent all distractions, including distraction from smart phones. The one thing it does really well though is to help you setup goals and track all your tasks and reminders with ease. It also shows you your web apps in a single window with way less cluttered tabs. If you want to research or open any website, you can. You just open the command bar using CMD+1 shortcut (in mac) and just type the website you want to visit. By default, the command bar will open your websites or apps in split view so you don't lose focus of the work you were doing. But if going to a website is deliberate and you want to switch contexts fully, you can always press SHIFT+CMD+1 to open websites, apps, bookmarks etc in full view. Again, it is an extra but a deliberate step to switch contexts fully.
Basically, a lot of things are built into the app to help you focus by default. Even the daily productivity goals help you track your work habits and even tracks focus time by default. A lot of things in the app are done by default so you get to build atomic habits to achieve greater success in the long run and on a consistent basis.
Can you do all of this in other apps? Sure, you can do a lot of what this app offers by sticthing together many different and distinct apps. The problem is you will use those apps initially but revert back to your old habits. Since Floutwork helps you bring everything into one place, although it might feel restrictive at first, once you get used to it, you will realize you are able to focus way more. Would love for you to try it out. If it works, great! If it doesn't, at least you can say you tried ;-)
I find ad blocking to be an important part of focus. Any support for extensions in the browser part? It would be nice to be able to add in uBlock Origin, and probably a password manager extension rather than using your vault.
@Bendon292 - I agree with you on ad blocking being an important part of focus. At least personally, I didn't find myself getting too distracted by ads because most web apps we use for work don't rely on an ad model. But I do get distracted if I need to research something or go to something like forbes.com to read an article etc. I am planning to add support for Chrome extensions soon. uBlock Origin seems like an excellent candidate to roll out as part of the initial extension support.
I think there's definitely room for tools. But they have to discourage distraction, somehow.
Personally I took one look at this Show HN and knew it wasn't for me. Too many things going on in one window - I'd find that very distracting and it would make it hard for me to focus.
For me, I have to explicitly do things that reduce distraction. On OS X, this means having a virtual desktop just for work, for example. Browser only for reference pages. Then another desktop which has all my super distracting things, like calendar/outlook/browser/chat. And I force myself to stay on the work desktop when doing work things.
What I have been looking for is a simple task tracker. This does help! Unfortunately I haven't found anything perfect on OS X yet. On Linux, I found the flowtime [1] app worked really well.
All it needs to do is:
- Let me enter a task I'm working on
- Track how long I work on it
That's it. Just the simple action of entering the task and clicking start seems to help kick my brain into focus mode.
Hey nvarsj, I do agree that you need to do what works best for you. Everyone have a method and if it works, great!
However, I do feel like Floutwork really solves your problem of keeping work related things isolated. Although it comes with many producutivity features, you can simply use it just to work on your work related apps. It will be the same as logging into virtual desktop but if you ever need the extra productivity tools later on, you can always use them. It tracks productivity by default and helps you track your tasks with ease. Would love for you to give it a shot! But if it seems overwhelming to you, I totally understand.
My issue is that with productivity theres a big factor of "good data in good data out". If a system is too overdesigned it often gets underutilized. I used to have complicated setups for my "productivity" but honestly I've paired it down to one google sheets time tracker with a few fancy features like time predicting on projects but not much.. and google calendar. It wasn't until I reduced my tools that my productivity increases.
I worry that overanalyzing productivity will innevitably lead people to forget the 1 rule of "do less".
Hey CEO2, I totally understand where you're coming from. There are a whole bunch of "productivity tools" out there. Many people try to stitch together multiple productivity apps in an attempt to improve their productivity. Floutwork is trying to solve that problem by bringing it all together into a single "work system" that helps you focus on your work, rather than the tools. It's designed to help you be productive by default, and you really need to go out of your way to be distracted. We would love for you to try it out and let us know what you think."
Hey Daniel, hope all is well. I completely understand and I'm sure I'll check it out at some point. I'm just saying in my experience I've yet to find a tool that justifies adding yet another tool in this space.
I'll have to check it out, haven't seen any of his work! I based my current system off of Cal Newports work. I basically intentionally designed and overly comprehensive and overly complicated system and paired it back until I had a good balance of inputs and outputs!
@CEO2 - I loved Deep Work from Cal Newport! That books changed my whole mindset regarding productivity and was partly the inspiration for the app. I did build the methodologies from Deep Work into the app. Here are some of those:
- Plan your day ahead of time and know exactly what you are working on next. In Floutwork, you can give time estimates for your tasks and it will suggest best times to work on those tasks on your calendar. It won't show those suggested times "as busy" on your calendar but you will know exactly what task to work on in between meetings etc..
- Focus for longer periods of time without interruptions. In our regular desktop setup, we constatly get inturrupted by chat notifications and email notifications. In Floutwork, you can mute them all in one shot and it is totally configurable.
- When you are doing deep work and you remember you have to do something else, most people will drop what they are doing and go do that other thing because they don't want to forget about it. Now they just switched contexts completely and it would take them about 23 mins to regain focus on their original task. In Floutwork, you can pull up the command bar any time by pressing CMD+1 and quickly enter your task like "Get with Mike tomorrow at 4pm" and then continue doing your work without losing focus.
- Cal Newport says measuring focus is hard. So I added a way to track how much time you spend on each app you use and also have a focus timer built in to measure your focus.
These are just a few examples. I can go on but I just want to say I loved the book so much I wanted to implement practical features that will help people incorporate those concepts in their work environment.
Something I need to read within the first five seconds of browsing such a product:
- all your data will be downloadable in an easy-to-parse format in case we go bust, suddenly switch to an extortionate pricing model, or submit to the general enshittening and destroy a once-great UX after a year in the name of innovation
Modern Saas offerings just give me so much insecurity: if your app is good now, will it still be good in a year or will you change it beyond recognition?
There's a real market for this, and this is a really ambitious app. So much so that I'm very skeptical it will work without significant resources behind it. So you'd need to overcome that for me, as well as privacy concerns, by disclosing a lot more about the company an the codebase.
Also the name is confusing, Flout is kind of the opposite of Focus Work.
Hey @drewg123, thanks for taking the time to check out our app and share your thoughts. We agree that the productivity market is huge, and that's why we're passionate about creating an ambitious app that meets the needs of modern professionals. We understand that building such a comprehensive productivity platform requires significant resources, and we're committed to continuing to improve Floutwork over time.
Regarding privacy concerns, we have a dedicated page on our website that outlines our privacy policy in detail. Additionally, we are always open to answering questions and providing more information as needed. As for the name Floutwork, we understand that it may be confusing. The name Flout is actually meant to convey "flouting the rules of modern work", but we understand that it may be interpreted differently. We appreciate your feedback. Thanks again for your interest in Floutwork!
Why do you need to write in this strangely distant faux friendly yet stilted corporate PR tone? Don’t want to be rude but all your responses have this tone and it just feels unauthentic and disconcerting.
E.g. “Thanks for your patience in taking into account my feedback!!”
Thanks for checking out our app! We recently updated our subscription pricing page to provide more transparency around our pricing model. We're currently considering a plan starting at $5/month, but we want to hear from you – what price point would be fair for the value you're getting? We're open to feedback and committed to providing affordable options for all users. Looking forward to hearing from you!
quite honestly HN is the last place you want to do market research on pricing. the income distribution is skewed extremely low and extremely high and attitudes on paying for anything do not reflect market reality, largely due to ideological dispositions.
Hi Zenkat, thanks for your interest in Floutwork! We take privacy seriously and have a detailed privacy policy that outlines our commitment to protecting our users' information. You can find it here: https://www.floutwork.com/privacy-policy. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to reach out – we're always happy to provide more information and ensure that our users are comfortable with our practices. Thanks again for your support!
I didn't get to check this out yesterday so a bit late to respond. While it is a very interesting product, the privacy policy is a little concerning. You mention collecting cookies and say they are commonly used as anonymous unique identifiers. However, they are also commonly used to store your login session, and would mean you can use them to impersonate the user too. Which is no good. Definitely don't want any third party collecting them. Especially with hooks in to a lot of personal stuff.
The tool looks awesome, but why do you need anything on your end? Opt-in telemetry might be reasonable, to see what domains (not full URLs) people are using it for. But what exactly is done server side? If I could use it 100% locally, or self hosted, I would be all over this. I would still be willing to support development, in some way, but really don't want third party servers involved. Have you looked at the way Obsidian handles pricing? I wonder if something similar could be viable.
@Bendon292 - I have thought about some privacy options including a "fully private" option where all data is stored locally and can be synced to any of your favorite cloud providers (or our servers) if need be. This is similar to what guys like obsidian seem to be doing as well. I will be down to exploring this further. If you are interested in developing it with me, let's chat. Just shoot an email to hello@floutwork.com and we can take it from there.
Thanks for letting us know about the download issue – we've fixed the problem and you can now download the Mac version without any problems. If you have any further issues, please let us know. Thanks for your support!
Hey JTyQZSnP3cQGa8B, we're sorry that you experienced issues downloading our app from Dropbox. We believe the issue has now been resolved, and you should be able to download it without any further problems. Thanks for your patience! And yes, we're definitely going to look into hosting it ourselves!
Nice concept. I especially like the three bars to fill.
I assume you use this yourself. When you have to do computer work outside of Flout, does it bother you that it’s not tracked? Manually adding data in a way that isn’t annoying and doesn’t feel like cheating is challenging; I remember old companies like RescueTime agonizing over it.
Hey 1123581321 - Yes, the 3 bars to fill definitely keeps me motivated especially if I am so close to completing them. To be honest, I actually brought all the apps I need to use within Floutwork because there is always a web version for even the desktop apps. So I even have Slack, Teams, Outlook and other office apps within Floutwork just so I don't have to switch around between multiple desktop apps. That's been working well for me. Even desktop apps like Slack and Teams are pretty much just rendering their web versions within their desktop clients so I don't feel like I lose any functionality.
Interesting. Is this basically a browser that's focused on productivity? Seems like it's just adding different sites as "apps" that I can switch between?
Hey dhruvarora013, thanks for your question! Floutwork does indeed have an in-app browser that makes switching between apps and managing tabs a breeze, but it's much more than that. Floutwork is an all-in-one productivity system that brings together all your work essentials into one platform. Our powerful built-in Tasks app helps you track your goals and tasks, while our built-in apps for Notes and Emails streamline your workflow. Our command bar keeps you focused by helping you stay on track with your work, without losing context. Our built-in productivity tracker monitors and improves your productivity habits, while our gamified system helps you stay motivated by completing 3 productivity goals (like the rings in Apple Watch) every day. It has a lot more functionality that you can checkout from floutwork.com that really upgrades your productivity game. We'd love for you to give Floutwork a try and let us know what you think!
Hey maxfurman, thanks for bringing this to our attention. We're sorry that you experienced issues downloading our app from Dropbox. We believe the issue has now been resolved, and you should be able to download it without any further problems. If you encounter any more issues, please let us know. Thanks for your patience!
Hey tmanager2023 - I am horrible at voice overs so I used naturalreaders.com for the landing page video and beta.elevenlabs.io for the onboarding videos. Once I had the voice overs, I created videos of the app and stitched them together with various effects using Adobe After Effects. I didn't really know how to use After Effects before creating these videos but a few tutorials helped me get a better grasp of it. Hope it helps!
I thought HN was supposed to be a place with real people and real interactions. Instead all of OP's replies to every comments seems like a reply from a customer service rep. Can we stop entire marketing departments from taking over HN?
@adithyassekhar - I am glad you think there in an entire marketing team behind this. I really wish I had that. Based on some of my replies, I can see why you would think that. But no, for a tiny little startup like mine, it has just been me responding. Since I was in a rush earlier didn't want to come off as rude to some of the replies so I was experimenting with letting ChatGPT help me with some replies. Although it spit out replies quickly for the 2 liners I gave it and the replies did look professional, I didn't realize at that time how they came across. Like one of the HN users in this post pointed out, it came across overly verbose with lots of marketing jargon and PR speak. Anyways, lesson learned here for me is AI tools can help you a lot but if you are not careful, they can use the wrong tone etc without knowing the full context and can cause a real headache.
As for replying to all the questions/comments, just trying to be courteous and responding to people who took the time to write something.
Wow I didn't realise it was chatgpt. It's interesting how similar it is to corporate speak. I wonder where they trained that from. Sorry for being rude.
@muscle6 - Although window management is only one aspect of Floutwork, yes, window management in itself was a huge problem for me and a source of distraction with all those open windows and multiple browser windows with tons of open tabs. Even if you just want to use it for window management, it will still save you a heck of a lot of effort.
