ICYMI: Today's the last day to take advantage of the Thought Detox launch-week sale! Download it on the App Store for US$0.99 before it goes to full price.
New App Launch: Thought Detox for iPhone
My latest iPhone app was launched yesterday! It's called Thought Detox, and it's meant to help you clear your mind by letting you write out your negative thoughts, and then discard them.
It's still on sale, too! Get it on the App Store until the end of the day for US$0.99 — the price jumps to US$2.99 tomorrow.
I've been sharing some thoughts on Twitter, and want to collect them all here.
The concept for Thought Detox is based on this article in Psychology Today. Essentially:
As it happens, writing down your negative thoughts on a piece of paper and then physically throwing this piece of paper in the trash lessens the salience of these thoughts. Our neural circuitry doesn’t always make a clear distinction between the mental and physical. Physically discarding negative thoughts turns the volume down on them mentally too.
I experimented with this idea on the web in the form of this Glitch app — a way to transfer the concept to the digital domain.
I've had an interest in the idea of apps as tools for self-care, but I've also always been skeptical of their effectiveness — most seem to be game-ified, and I think it's important that these tools be built for usefulness, rather than engagement. I was invited to chat with Anil Dash about this on the Function podcast, and got to chat about that original web app as well.
Eventually, I decided that I wanted this to be an iPhone app, too, so that I could take advantage of some features that might make Thought Detox even more useful. So I got to work, building the thing in SwiftUI, setting up Mindful Minute tracking in the Health app, creating home-screen widgets, and integrating it with Wind Down.
This is the first app I've launched from my app business in five years or so, so I tried a few different things.
First, I made the app available for presale. It was approved for sale on the 7th of February, so I opened up pre-orders the next day, and announced it on Twitter:
Trying something a bit different with @ThoughtDetoxApp — it's now available for pre-order, at 2/3rd off, and will be going up to its full price two days after launch. https://t.co/GMBL8351Ul
— Angelo Stavrow (@AngeloStavrow) February 8, 2021
I also set up a Twitter account for the app, and rather than link it on the Dropped Bits site, gave it its own landing page with a fancy .app TLD.
The landing page has some info on the app, an FAQ and a press kit. I've never created a press kit before, and I've never actually emailed any press contacts about an app before. This was harder to do than you'd expect — I procrastinated on it a lot, probably because of shyness. I tend to think my work is kinda not-bad until I have to show it to the public, and then I get pretty nervous about it not being good enough.
As an aside: a huge thank you to Christina Szilbereisz for designing the landing page. This was her first design project shipped into the world, and it's ten times better than anything I would have come up with. I love the colour palette, I love the layout, I love how clean it is.
I've also launched the app on Product Hunt. There was some weirdness where I launched it on the site yesterday, but about halfway through the day it decided I was only launching it today, and no matter what I did, I could not change that back. 🤷🏻♂️
I don't have a great frame of reference for what “doing well” looks like on Product Hunt, but it's driving a decent amount of traffic to the website (that's right, web analytics are publicly available for the site).
Anyways, it's been exciting to launch a new thing, and I hope you find it useful. I'll post updates every so often here, and if you want to keep up to date with my app business, I publish a weekly newsletter every Wednesday, and share business stats in the first article of every month.
Remember, it's still on sale until tomorrow!
The silver lining in getting a bump in a monthly invoice (during a pandemic!) is that it reminds me to review my usage. For every $1 increase imposed, I average about a $3 reduction in costs. 🤑
That glorious period between raw selvedge denim no longer feeling like you’re wearing cardboard pants, and the inevitable crotch blowout.
Like… two weeks of perfect jeans.
Tea: if hugs were potable. 🫖
Spent the entire day in pyjamas, and I'm fine with that.
Stress, Fractured
Here's the entry in my journal for Wednesday, 21 October, 2021:
The “jammed toe” pain, whatever it is, went from “this is mildly uncomfortable” yesterday morning, to “I can't walk or put on a shoe” last night. [...] Fourth toe is swollen and pain is below ball of foot at that joint, too. WTF — I can barely walk.
The initial diagnosis was metatarsalgia, because I don't remember any kind of trauma to the foot. After consulting with an orthopaedic surgeon and an orthesist, I got orthotics at the beginning of December that relieve pressure on the metatarsal head, and also correct some arch and footfall issues.
While the pain is far better, that toe is still swollen today, just over 100 days later. No, I'm not sharing photos of it; no one deserves that.
I finally got a CT scan done of the foot a couple of weeks ago. Turns out, it looks like there was a stress fracture; they can't see the fracture itself, indicating that it's perfectly aligned and will set nicely, but they do see evidence of the area healing itself from a stress fracture.
Selected causes, from the linked Mayo Clinic article on stress fractures:
- Increased activity. Stress fractures often occur in people who suddenly shift from a sedentary lifestyle to an active training regimen or who rapidly increase the intensity, duration or frequency of training sessions.
- Foot problems. People who have flat feet or high, rigid arches are more likely to develop stress fractures. Worn footwear contributes to the problem.
That sounds about right. I was trying to get back into shape, and I do have foot issues.
So anyways, it's healing nicely, but slowly. It'll take another 3 or 4 months before I can jog or jump, which pretty much takes my goal of “couch-to-5K by May” and throws it in the garbage.
Oh well. Patient's gotta be patient.
Love the smell of new beta archives fresh off the Xcode Organizer! Shipped a new beta for Thought Detox early this morning, and new betas for the WriteFreely iOS and Mac apps this afternoon. Hashtag Productive!
Thing I want to type: “smart”
Things my fingers are typing for me: “smort”, “shart”
February is shaping up to be a winner already.
I've given up on widgets on macOS 11. I know it's part of “livin' the beta life,” but having to set them up all over again every time there's a system update is a headache.