Which day was it built for?
A focus app has a strange job. You install it on a good day, when you’re full of plans. You meet it on a bad one, halfway through the afternoon, wanting the exact thing it’s there to stop you doing. Almost everything about how it behaves comes down to which of those two people it was built for.
Most are built for the optimist. That’s where the streaks come from, and the charts, and the red. They make perfect sense on the day you set them up. By the second week they’ve quietly turned into a scoreboard of everything you didn’t manage, which is right about when you needed something on your side.
Motiv is built for the other one. I know that person well. I have ADHD, and I spent a long time collecting apps that turned out to be very good at making me feel worse about it. Not one of them was built for the afternoon I actually needed it.
A number that punishes you on a hard day gets deleted on the hard day.
So the Focus Score counts what you did and says nothing about what you didn’t. A hard day is a Good day. Nothing you skip is ever taken off you. Two things you choose to do will cost you a few points: pausing a block, or ending one early. Both are capped. That’s the whole of the arithmetic, and it’s written down rather than implied.
The same question settles the rest of it. Blocking runs on Apple’s own Screen Time, so it holds when Motiv is shut. Motiv also keeps checking that what it asked iOS to hold is what iOS is actually holding, and puts back anything that went missing. A block that lapses quietly is worse than no block at all, because you carried on trusting it.
There’s no account, because nothing here needs one. No server, no sync, no profile of you sitting anywhere. Nothing to breach, and nothing to sell. It also turns the usual promise, your data is safe with us, into the only version of it worth making: I never have it in the first place.
And whatever iOS won’t allow gets written down instead of discovered. One device, no sync, twenty blocks running at once because that’s the platform’s ceiling and not a price list. Those limits have a section of the FAQ to themselves.
None of it is especially clever. It’s mostly a matter of deciding, early and then over and over again, which of the two days you’re building for. I picked the hard one, because that’s the day I needed the help.
Who builds it
Motiv is made by Northern Software Limited, which is one developer. There’s no waitlist and nothing to sign up for.
If you’re using Motiv, I’d really like to hear how you’re getting on. What’s working, what isn’t, and anything you wish it did. That’s what makes the next version better, and it comes straight to me.
- Tell me how it’s going
- liam@northernsoftware.co.uk
- Something’s not working
- support@motiv.help
- Company and legal
- hello@motiv.help
Motiv arrives on iPhone soon.
Start with one block, or one morning.
No waitlist, and nothing to sign up for