How Getting Sacked Got Me Building an App I Didn’t Know I Needed

I left the UK in August 2024 to go traveling with my partner. By the time I got back, I was single and unemployed.

I wasn’t in a good place. To cope with the traveling blues and the breakup, I turned to bedrotting. I was lying there, scrolling Instagram and TikTok, jumping from news app to news app, opening dozens of loops but never closing any of them. I was looking for distraction and some sort of comfort, but I couldn’t get it on a screen. My phone habits were making me feel worse.

So I set out to better manage my relationship with my device.

And…it didn’t work. The existing screentime apps like Opal, Brick, and Jomo are very all-or-nothing. There's no middle ground where I felt I could stay informed without getting sucked back in by social media algorithms.

I still wanted to go on YouTube to see what news channels were saying about international politics, but I didn’t want to get distracted by all the other recommendations that happened to be there. I still wanted to see what my friends were up to on Instagram, but I didn't want to be enticed by the reels asking me to watch just one more video. I still wanted to check my emails, but I didn’t want to lose half an hour to meaningless messages. Software’s stickiness made it nearly impossible for me to stay disciplined.

So I set out with a new mission: to make something for myself that would allow me to stay updated without becoming easily distracted.

What I envisioned was a hub that put things in an environment where I had control — letting me stay on my home turf instead of cruising through internet neighborhoods filled with booby traps. That way, I could avoid the endless stream of information, the notifications, and the slot machine-like UX.

I’ve started building that. Siftly (https://siftly.space/) is part wellness tool, part productivity tool. It’s completely customizable and designed to put people back in control of their digital experience. Ironically, my relationship to screens has improved since I started creating the app because I'm coming at it from a creator mindset instead of a consumer mindset. But if Siftly doesn’t work out, even if I go on the dole, I’ll be doing it without the scroll.