Hyperfocus — how I spent one night accidentally building this app
I was scrolling TikTok at around 9pm. Perfectly reasonable adult behavior. I had things I should have been doing — we don't need to get into what — but I was doing this instead. And then I saw the ad. Again.
You've seen it too. The same Liven ad that's been following you around for weeks. AI-generated animation, someone dramatically discovering they have "untapped potential," a wellness app that promises to rewire your brain for three easy payments of your dignity and $99.
Something in me snapped. Not dramatically. More like a quiet, petty, I am going to look this up kind of snap.
The part where I make a reasonable decision
So I asked Claude — Anthropic's AI — to help me check out Liven. Just a quick investigation. Five minutes, tops. I'd find out it was fine, feel vaguely stupid for being suspicious, and go back to doomscrolling.
Except it wasn't fine. Hundreds of complaints about unauthorized charges. Subscription costs running nearly $100 for three months. Consumer review sites giving it under two stars. And those ads — the ones that make you feel broken so you'll pay to feel fixed — described by researchers as deliberately manipulative.
Reader, I got annoyed.
The part where things get out of hand
Here is where I should tell you that I made a sensible decision, closed the app, and went to bed.
I did not do that.
Instead I said, out loud, to an AI, at 9:15pm: "A well-made Liven alternative seems like it might be a good idea."
And Claude said sure, let's build one.
And I said okay.
And that was it. That was the moment. If you have ADHD you already know exactly what happened next. If you don't, let me explain: my brain found something interesting, something that felt urgent and solvable and new, and it quietly locked the door, turned off the lights in every other room, and got to work.
Hyperfocus is not the same as concentration. Neurotypical concentration is a tap you can turn on and off. Hyperfocus is a flood — once it starts, the off switch stops working. ADHD brains have a dysregulated dopamine system that makes most things hard to engage with and a handful of things impossible to disengage from. The cruel joke is you rarely get to choose which category something falls into.
By 10pm we had a working prototype with four tabs — Start, Timer, Brain Dump, and Regulate. By 11pm it had a privacy policy, a color scheme, and a name. By midnight it had a domain, a Netlify account, and I was being told, gently but firmly, to go to sleep because I had to be up in five hours.
I'd like to tell you I listened.
The part where I notice the irony
Here is the thing about building an ADHD executive function app during an unplanned hyperfocus episode: it is, structurally, extremely on the nose.
The app has a tab called Regulate. It has cards for hyperfocus trap, shame spiral, and overwhelm freeze. It has a timer designed to interrupt focus sessions and force breaks. It has an entire game mechanic built around the idea that ADHD brains need external structure to direct their attention toward the right things.
I built all of this while completely unable to stop, completely ignoring my own bedtime, completely failing to regulate, and having an absolute blast doing it.
The app I built to help people manage hyperfocus was itself built during a hyperfocus episode I had no intention of starting and zero ability to stop.
My brain did not find this ironic. My brain found this deeply satisfying and wanted to keep going.
The part that actually matters
Here is what I want you to take from this, beyond the entertainment value of watching someone spiral productively:
Hyperfocus is not a superpower. You will see that framing everywhere in ADHD content and it drives me quietly insane. It is not a superpower. It is a loss of control that occasionally produces something useful, like a tornado that sometimes sorts your recycling.
What it is — what I genuinely believe after living with it for years — is a neutral force. The same mechanism that had me building an app until midnight has, at other times, had me reorganizing a room I didn't need to reorganize, reading everything ever written about a topic I'll never use, and watching six hours of videos about a hobby I have not started and will not start.
The difference between productive hyperfocus and wasted hyperfocus is mostly luck and context. I happened to be annoyed about something real, talking to a tool that could help me act on it, at a time when I had enough unstructured hours to let it run.
That is not a strategy. That is a Tuesday.
The part where I tell you what Nudge actually is
The app that came out of that night is called Nudge. It is free. It will always be free. Nudge Labs — which is me, sitting here, slightly embarrassed about how this started — has committed to that publicly inside the app itself because I built this specifically because I was angry about apps that aren't free.
It has six tabs now. A task launcher designed around the specific problem of starting things. A visual timer for time blindness. A brain dump for thoughts that surface when you can't act on them. A regulation guide for RSD, overwhelm, and shame spirals. A game where you literally fight procrastination bosses with pixel art and boss music. And a habit tracker built around forgiving streaks and habit stacking.
It was not planned. It was not strategic. It was one annoyed person, one late night, and one brain that does not have an off switch.
If that sounds familiar — the app is at nudge-adhd.org. It's free. It works offline. And I promise no one will charge you $99 for it.
The Regulate tab has a card specifically for the hyperfocus trap — what it is, why it happens, and one concrete thing to do when you realize you've been in it for three hours. It was written at approximately 11:30pm the night this app was built. Make of that what you will.