Why Are You?
Exactly.
Now, as to why the app “Are You” exists- that is a story (a short one). I recently made a site called Pointless Project, and the original idea was that I would make pointless projects- apps that don’t do anything useful (but satirically pretended to). I would then write and make videos about those pointless projects.
But Pointless Project ended up being the perfect vehicle for my writing- I tend to write with an absurdist flavor, and I have mostly focused on getting Pointless Project ready to be the home for an upcoming serialized story, “The Suicide of Mr. Miller.” And so the original idea got sidelined.
But I had a good idea for a pointless project a week ago (from the time of writing), and I thought the site could probably carry both types of content. The idea was for the app Are You, a satire of a productivity app. The principle it satirizes is the imagined ability of technology (and consumerism) to replace making complex, meaningful life changes.
Specifically- when a person begins meditating, a potential benefit is realizing when your thoughts go off track- when your focus has deviated from where you want it to be. It teaches one to notice when this happens and lets you practice returning attention (gently and without remonstration) to where you’d like it to be, like on your breathing.
Are You launches a window to the top of your desktop at a timed interval with a message (the default is “Are you on track?”). The interval and message (and appearance) are all customizable. The idea is to prompt the user to realize when their attention has left their work and give them the ability to return it to what they had been doing.
I thought this would be really annoying and capture the spirit of a true pointless project. After making it, though, I found I quite liked the app and that it does actually help me to stay on track. It is very annoying, but in a helpful way.
So now I have gained an app I can still write a little satirical piece on for Pointless Project (upcoming) and an app I actually keep on to tell me to get back to work every 15 minutes.
Want to try it?
Are You v1.0 is complete, currently available for Windows.
You can build from source to try it on MacOS/Linux (I am trying to gain access to a Mac so I can build installers for it).
Download:
Windows 10/11 (x86-64)Pretty Pictures
