Deon🇿🇦

Building @pauzedapp
Get Pauz on iOS → Crooh

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

#UFC

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

@claudeai just reset everyone's weekly limit again

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

@jacobrodri_ Lol I built one, made it free with an optional subscription that just gives you a star next to your name and a thank you. Currently have 60 active users and 1 of them is a paid user 😂

@pauzedapp

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

fAblE5 iS bAcK -> 5 minutes later

🫠

#Fable5

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

@rom1trs Vox

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

@Manu_Sisti PDF

[Pauz @pauzedapp]

https://t.co/yCuquV3hXm

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

@rihntv https://t.co/tU6sIrRvEa

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

@omarvvvr farming

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

@heysatya_ I've built @pauzedapp, Tired of screen blocking apps locking all the features behind a paywall so I made a free one, not perfect yet but for 50 users this week 😅

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

This week I launched @pauzedapp. 100% free, no paywall. The only thing you can pay for is a star next to your name and a thank you.

Most apps lock the features that actually work behind a subscription. Pauz does not. The mechanisms trace back to real behavioural science.

I did not get a million downloads. I am not making $10k a month. But I am proud of it, and we got our first paid subscriber this morning and the feedback has been amazing, actually helping people 🙏

IOS Download: https://t.co/SdDjGF0zwP

[Pauz @pauzedapp]

Stop scrolling. You’ve got work to do.

…okay, that was a little aggressive. But that pause you just felt? That half-second of “wait, he’s right”? That’s the entire idea behind Pauz. Your phone, interrupting you with your own words.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

I refuse to paywall someone's own attention back to them.

I built it for me. Maybe it helps you too or share it with someone how might need it.

https://t.co/awYc35mie7

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

Earlier this year, I wasn't okay. And the thing making it worse was in my hand.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

It's live now. And it's free. Genuinely free, every feature, on purpose.

There's a $4.99 "Pauz Plus" tip jar if you want to keep an independent app like this alive, but it unlocks nothing.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

You earn your minutes by doing the things you planned to do that day.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

So I built around what the science says, not what looks good in a demo. When you open an app you've chosen to guard, Pauz doesn't say "blocked." It shows your own words — the person you said you're trying to be — and gives you a choice, not a punishment.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

A one-second delay before an app opens cuts opens by about a third (PNAS, 2022). How strongly you *identify* with a behaviour predicts how much you do it. Showing people their screen-time number? Changes nothing.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

So I started building my own, at first just for me. I read the research instead of guessing, because it turns out a lot of this is studied.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

2. The features that actually helped were behind a subscription. You had to pay to get better. That felt genuinely wrong.

[Deon🇿🇦 @deondotjs]

1. They treated me like a problem to be managed. A grey "blocked" screen. A willpower lecture. Nothing about *me*.