ditchnow.com - Ditch the distractions, focus on the vital things.

Central Judge my App
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Hello all,

We, as a small team of one designer and one engineer, are working on a browser extension called Ditch Now. We are actually working on this to solve our own problem, which is listed below, but we think it might solve same problem for many of you too.

Backstory:
I’m an entrepreneur and I need every bit of info I can get from everywhere I can. Newsletters, magazines, some blogs and etc. So my day starts off by seeing 20+ emails from these mediums. Then, during the day, I get notifications about something happened directly to my desktop (via browser), I get emails just as soon as when notifications arrive. Then in the evenings I get email digests about what happened during day…This is crazy.

The Problem:
The problem is; I need them. I need to consume all those stuff. But I don’t need them to distract me from what I’m doing during the day, during working hours. I don’t want to unsubscribe from those things and rely only on the notifications, because then I’ll have to react immediately, and that’s going to be far more distractive.

Basically, I want to consume all those things, just not during my working hours. I want to be the one who decides when to consume what.

The Solution:
That’s why I started working on Ditch Now with a friend of mine, who suffers from same problem, as a side project. Ditch Now is a browser extension, which allows you to ditch any distractions, warn you about them, show to you your productivity, and makes it easy for you to focus on far more vital things that’s in front of you. It is a tap on the shoulder. Just as an Alfred to your Batman.

Features:

  1. Analysis:
    At the end of each day, you’ll get productivity stats from the extension[*]. Which sites you’ve used, for how many minutes, which ones you entered and distracted yourself despite the extension’s warning, which ones you really needed.
  2. Modes:
    There are two modes on the extension: Working Mode and Chilling Mode. You can switch between the two using a button. Yet also you can put a time range for your Working Mode and we’ll notify you when the mode is finished and when you’re in Chilling Mode.
  3. Mute Notifications:
    In the Working Mode, we’ll mute all notifications to the browser. After you switch to the Chilling Mode, you will start getting notifications again.
  4. Pouch:
    Let’s say you entered a website while doing something for your work, and you saw some article which interests you a lot but is not related to your work at hand. You can add it to the Pouch. Pouch will remind you about that article twice: Once after the Working Mode is out and once the next morning in the digest email. If you don’t read it in 24 hrs, then it means you actually don’t need it that much, so we’ll delete it from the pouch. Your Pouch won’t be a garbage bin :wink:
  5. Need it, Ditch it or Distract me:
    For the first one or two weeks, for every site you enter extension will give you three options: you can either put that site into your Need List, you can Ditch it, or you can Distract yourself for a little while. Need List is your work-related list. Ditch List will become inactive when in chilling mode, and the time you spend on Distract sites will be subtracted from your daily productivity stats.

We are planning to release the extension for public use at the end of June. Until then we need help from you guys. If you are interested, please check out our website, opt-in your email and we’ll invite you to the beta. From that time on, we’ll need your feedback on the extension, fix our mistakes and be ready for the release.

Thank you for your attention.

We are passionately looking forward to see you with us.

Best,
Metin
Engineer @ Ditch Now.

Email: metin@ditchnow.com
Website: www.ditchnow.com

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Well you said it yourself, there is your problem and also your solution in your own words quoted back to you.

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I’m not sure I understand you clearly, so I’ll just go ahead take a shot:

Yes this my problem. And yes we came up with this solution. It solves our problem. Yet, while working on this, we’ve seen and met with people who suffers from same problem, and gave (and are continuing to give) priceless feedback to us.

Hence the post above. I want to see if there are people here, who has the same or similar problem, and I want their feedback on our solution.

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@mtn The solution for some may be to unsubscribe to incoming overloading information. The love/hate- I need it I don’t want it is an experience solved by “ditching” the behavior all together instead of delaying the distraction till later?

It’s a matter of choice- for some the solution maybe discipline of not picking up phone to see if those notifications are necessary in the first place.

Depending on the age of the people you ask- you will get different responses as well, due to different life skills learned in childhood. I didn’t grow up with a phone- so while your idea seems innovative and very good- my solution would be to unsubscribe or put the phone in a drawer and go back to the way life was before but phone use is so personal and people are so different.

If you don’t get the response you need here- print out a survey with 2-3 simple questions and go to a cafe and ask people to fill it out- put in the charm and offer a piece of gum or just talk and ask face to face all different age groups etc…

Best wishes!!

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My apologies @mtn I didn’t mean to be so blunt. I was pointing out that you said the problem is that you need to consume.

The extension could be useful to many people, so that’s nice. Not life-changing, but just nice.

But again I will use your own words back at you: “ditch the distractions, focus on the vital things.” You also said “I need every bit of info I can get from everywhere I can.” Those two statements contradict each other.