Squirrel

I really like the idea of putting something between you and doomscrolling. But, I don’t really believe time = money. What if the currency was time itself? If you’re a musician and spend an hour scrolling instead of creating, you owe your music an hour. Not because you can get that hour back. Just to make you think about where the next one goes.

Hey Brian. On the "what made you stop using other screen time apps" question, mine was always finding the "just this once" override button. Does Squirrel have any override at all, or is the block genuinely hard once it's on?

So does it use the user's money to regulate / manage his smartphone behaviour? First, I thought that someone would pay me. 😁

Nice idea, personally I dug out my Gameboy Advance, whenever the urge to scroll hits, I play Pokemon or Mario Bros instead, and honestly it feels satisfying to do something I'll actually remember instead of just mindless scroll dumps haha

Hey PH! Brian here, really excited to intro you all to my baby. I built Squirrel by myself (with some help from my friend Claude ofc).

So this came out of a night over Thanksgiving break this past year. I was talking with some friends after a night out, and at one point the topic of Instagram/social media came up. The overall sentiment was basically that social media has hijacked our brains. It’s rarely something we consciously decide to open, more so just a knee-jerk reaction... then 30 minutes go by and you have no clue how you got there.

That same night we somehow got onto investing, and pretty much everyone felt behind there too. Like it was this thing we knew we should be doing more of, but weren’t.

I was on a massive entrepreneurial kick at the time, and hearing the whole room agree on both of those problems made me want to connect them somehow.

And that was basically the birth of Squirrel (it started off as “Reclaim,” but that felt way too boring).

The idea is pretty simple. You choose the apps you open too much and set your own toll for them. When you instinctively tap one, it’s actually blocked. If you really want to open it, you go into Squirrel, choose how long you want it unlocked for, and choose the toll. Those few seconds where you actually have to decide are honestly doing most of the work.

Important bit because people always ask: Squirrel never charges you anything. No card, no bank account, and you’re not paying me to unlock Instagram lol (Unless..? Joking. Joking.). It just keeps track of what you set aside for yourself. When you’re ready, you buy whatever you want in your own brokerage, tell Squirrel what you bought, and it tracks it from there with live prices.

For some context, I had a 45 minute daily Instagram limit for months and still averaged 10+ hours a week on it. My first week using Squirrel was 1h45m. The week after was 56 minutes. Obviously that’s just me, but the difference was big enough that I figured other people might want to try it too.

Blocking and your savings history are free. Portfolio tracking is the paid part.

I would love feedback, especially from anyone who has tried other screen time apps before (Opal, Brick, one sec, ScreenZen, Jomo, etc.). What made you stop using them?