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.

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.

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".

Subscription pricing. No thanks, I'll keep using Notepad++ with two panes, one for writing and one for todos.

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.

This looks neat, but there’s no world in which I start using this product without knowing the price.

Too much of a commitment to add this to my routine to find out you’re charging $50/mo and require an annual plan or something.

I love the concept! Modern interrupt-driven workflows are horrible if you want to get real work done, designing for focus time is a great idea.

How is it with privacy, PII, and sensitive data? Is all processing done locally, or is data uploaded into the cloud?

Looks pretty slick.

When I click "Download macOS App" it downloads an .exe file.

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.

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?

Looks like Dropbox has rate-limited your download link

How did you create these onboarding and landing page videos?

What software did you use for voice and to create this videos.

I am trying this. Thanks

Great job on AI voice blended with Fivver graphics. Got my attention :)

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?

I guess they say to launch before you think you're ready.

So a window manager with metrics? Looks interesting