Me And The Bean

As I write this, a bean is next to me. He is knitting a sock. It is the cutest bean I have ever seen.

And to allow it to continue knitting, I must not touch my phone. There are many games on iOS and Android, and they generally look as cute as this. But only this one, called Focus Friend, is at the top of the iOS download charts, outdoing literal giants like ChatGPT and Tea. (Yeah, about Tea …)

One could credit the rose of wellness apps, or the app’s affiliation with legendary-influencer-who-sells-socks Hank Green, but I think its appeal is that it managed to figure out a novel way to make ADHD aids exciting.

In a lot of ways, I think the reason why it works is akin to what made the Tamagotchi work nearly 30 years ago. Except in inverse. Yes, both games are mind-boggling cute. But each comes at different ends of the digital revolution. At the time the Tamagotchi came out, people barely owned cell phones. They had not been trained that they needed to nurture a device in their pocket for hours on end, that this training would create a natural dopamine hit.

Focus Friend does the opposite. You put the timer on, and it knits socks, potentially other things if you’re willing to pay for them. It puts natural pressure on you, the user, not to look at the phone because you know that the second you pick it up, you’ve ruined its work—and your phone has ruined yours. It is designed to make you feel guilty, and unlike a phone made of e-paper, you still have your regular phone at the end of the day. (Which you can then presumably use to watch Vlogbrothers videos to your heart’s content.)

We are constantly on the hunt for ways to minimize our distractions, and this is one of many. But the gamifying approach, while not unique (Focus Dog and Focus Plant share similar gambits), is legitimately clever. Another in this vein, while more complex and detailed, is Habitica, which turns your productivity failings into an RPG.

(I just want to point out that, while it is absolutely not being sold this way, you are technically building a form of cryptocurrency. All the socks being created by the time you’re spending not looking at your phone? That’s proof of work. If Green and his collaborators at Honey B Games could come up with a way to monetize the socks beyond just decorating your room, it would be more valuable than Bitcoin.)

Surprisingly, this Tamagotchi commercial is not voiced by Bill Burr.

Now, one might argue that the Tamagotchi has its own benefits from an ADHD standpoint: While never promoted this way, it is a tool designed to encourage tiny amounts of executive function. After all, if you ignore it, your virtual pet dies. A 2021 Vox piece opened up the discussion as such:

Humans grow attached to things when there’s an investment. While the Tamagotchi may not cost much money (unless you pay for it with your own allowance, a hefty toll), it costs a whole lot in time. Sweeping away tiny, digital poops with the press of a button. Feeding it a sandwich, a slice of cake, or a piece of wrapped candy. Scolding it when it won’t eat. Checking its weight and age. Administering medicine when it’s sick.

The Tamagotchi requires devotion. And the sheer time required to keep it alive only further binds us to it.

That we now have a straight-up trending inversion of the idea that is seeing real success suggests that things are starting to move in the other direction. I mean, we’ve been going this way for a while. I have an app that I use only use when I want to take power naps. The Pomodoro Technique has seen a straight-up renaissance in the past few years. And I bet you that more than a few people are vibe coding their own ADHD tools.

I think it’s no accident that ADHD is the biggest trending mental-health meme of the past five years. The pandemic forced people who were susceptible to obsessive habits to do obsessive things, and those obsessive things became a real problem, foregrounding something that might have always been there that they didn’t know about. Official diagnoses soared. Unofficial ones are probably out there in a big way thanks to people whose executive function challenges make it hard to book a doctor’s appointment.

The Tamagotchi has its place in our world. So too, does this sock-knitting bean. It doesn’t ask much of us (except a subscription fee, which is important to note is totally optional and doesn’t come with the tracking that many mobile apps do.). But it’s nice that it’s around.

Plus, as I was writing it, it made me 17 socks. You can never have enough socks.