What if we built tools for foggy brains, not focused ones?
I’ve been thinking about how a lot of learning and productivity tools assume the user is already… well, focused.
But what about the rest of us?
The ones who start with good intentions but end up with 12 tabs, brain fog, missed timestamps, and a memory like a sieve?
I wasn’t a lazy student. I just had a chaotic brain that didn’t respond well to daily planners or review cycles.
My team isn't building a study app or anything like that - We're working on ad tools - but I’ve been really curious about how other makers approach messy minds.
Seen any cool tools recently that help people catch up or organize after the chaos hits, not before?
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This is such a refreshing framing most “productivity” tools really do assume you’re already in control.
One thing that worked surprisingly well for our internal ops team (a mix of designers, PMs, and dev's juggling way too much) was building post-chaos recovery loops into our tools.
Think:
automatic tab grouping based on context
session summaries (what did I even do in the last hour?)
gentle nudges like “You opened this file 4 times today want to pin it?”
These tiny affordances created a huge sense of relief not more control, just more forgiveness.
Would love to see more tools lean into repair over discipline. Any tool that starts with “it’s okay, let’s pick up from here” hits differently.