I’ve been down this road more times than I can spit at – always the same leap of hope that this time, this app is going to change me as a person. Idiot.

To set the scene, someone with a brain like mine needs help remembering basic shit like taking their meds. Drinking water. Replying to texts. Honestly, breathing. Sometimes I realise I haven’t been breathing.

So, last week I pinned down that what I wanted from a reminders app was…something that doesn’t exist. I don’t want the work of organising reminders in my calendar, and I also know I get used to anything regular and block it out. And I need loads and loads of reminders that aren’t anchored in time – more just the kind of things normal people do instinctively.

What I need is, like, Clippy the paperclip on random mode and talking to me like I am a tiny baby who can’t think for herself.

Niche.

I looked for a random reminders app and it not only doesn’t exist (I’m figuring there must be something technically challenging about randomising…OR neurotypical brains don’t want this???) but there are people on the internet trying to find it. Reddit, Quora, comments on other reminder apps.

I thought about what else works on random and came up with affirmations. There are affirmation apps that display messages on shuffle, because they’re not about doing a certain thing at a certain time. They run on VIBES, not dumb temporal space.

I then found an affirmations app that lets you add your own affirmations and turn off its bank of quotes (these were very nice but not what I need).

I set it to send two reminder/affirmation push notifications a day, every day. I then wrote a bunch of reminders of basic life stuff, plus a few encouraging affirmations in the tone I want.

This app also has a widget, so I get the random push notifications but my phone homescreen will also have a card cycling through my reminders. That’s super useful because I’ll have that double accountability and it refreshes every three hours, so I’ll see more of my reminders in a day but not be prodded about them all. Belt and braces required to keep this show on the road, chaps.

The only thing I’m still missing is custom pacing based on reminder or reminder category. I can favourite my affirmations to show them more often, but if this was a reminders app I was building, I’d have at least a daily/weekly setting at the individual reminder level.

I’d probably also build in a SMASHED IT button that would keep track of how often I acted on my reminders. Stats really help me stay on track. Fitbit is basically the only app I’ve ever stuck with because winning at it keeps me dopamining. Is that mining for dopamine? Pretty much, yes.

Most people aren’t writers, so I’d also create a bank of reminders/affirmations but I’d build in AI to give you tone options (strict nanny, kind friend, Severus Snape) or even sampling from your own tone.

I would also have a homescreen widget, with a setting to randomly change the card colour and font so I don’t get used to it and block it out. Tapping it would make confetti happen. We all need confetti.

I always joked with a very long-time colleague of mine that after our current business, we’d do a period tracker app. That’s a saturated (ew?) market now and bad data vibes since Roe v. Wade was overturned, so maybe my new joke-not-joke is this? It’s something I’d LOVE to do, so once this wave of hyperfixation has dimmed and I can see clearly, maybe I’ll pitch it. Be the niche neurodivergent nonsense you wish to see in the world.