Show HN: Brutu Timer – Stay focused or burn your money

One of the hardest parts of being a freelancer is not having a boss. Having a rigid external structure can be both a curse and a blessing. Daily deadlines, defined commitments and face to face meetings can be very effective for one’s productivity.

One of my biggest productivity hacks is using financial incentives to make myself more accountable. If I’m running late and don’t leave home until after my 9:30 a.m. goal, I pay a $5 “penalty” to a friend who acts as a referee. I have a goal of doing at least seven pomodoros (25 min timers) of focused work a day. If I do less than seven I pay $3 for each one unfinished. It’s quite surprising how risking even small amounts of money can motivate me to be more productive. Reaching my goal of focused work for the day has a much higher value than the few dollars I sometimes lose from my penalty. I think that using small monetary stakes works so well because of loss aversion — we are proportionally more afraid of losing something than we are excited about gaining something. I trick my brain into being scared of losing a few bucks and in return I get much more valuable gains in my productivity.

Because I’m a freelancer, at any moment I can delve into the mysteries of the cosmos on Wikipedia, daydream about the exotic trip on my friend’s Instagram, or jump into a statistics tutorial on a YouTube channel. Each one of these things feels important at the moment. And with every coming year technology will only become more distracting. Algorithms are getting better at figuring out what makes us uncontrollably want to engage in technology. I struggled with being distracted by Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and other apps. I managed to find a couple of effective tools to block distracting websites on Mac (check out Freedom or SelfControl). However due to system limitations, these tools mostly don’t work on iPhone and iPad. That’s why I created Brutu Timer.

Brutu is an iOS timer that helps you stay focused. Select an amount of money and start a timer. Put your phone down and stay on task. If you leave the app Brutu will charge you. You can still receive phone calls or swipe to the notification center. You can also add a break — leave the app and Brutu will notify you when to come back.

How you can use Brutu Timer: Start 8 h timer with 30 min break to make sure to only use your phone for 30 min before bed Start a 25 min Pomodoro timer and quickly repeat it using timer templates *Start 4 h focus timer with 10 min break when you can use your phone as much as you’d like