u/Commercial_Room975

genuine question, not promoting anything.

I keep seeing people download a focus timer, use it for a week, then silently abandon it. so for anyone who's tried toggl, forest, pomodoro, clockify apps etc:

1. what made you stop?
2. how do you track your work time now, if at all?
3. what was the one friction that made you rage quit?

my theory is most of these apps fail because starting a timer takes more effort than the distraction itself. curious if that matches your experience or if I'm completely off.

ok so be brutal. U one suggestion will help me a lot

I've been building a Windows/Mac desktop app called lapwork. it's a stopwatch for deep work sessions, but the twist is it also tracks your distractions, when you grab your phone mid-session you hit one key, it times the distraction, and at the end it subtracts that from your productive time. so instead of "I worked 9 hours" you see "4h 20m actual focus, 1h 10m on my phone".

It's way different than existing ones like raycast, clockify... because how to start them is very tedious and time consuming not user friendly at all... I personally used many but all have many flaws and many are paid if u want to use there premium one I was trying to make the ultimate one with no data tracking and free of cost...

why desktop: phone timers are themselves the distraction, and browser tabs get closed. mine sits in the corner as a tiny always-on-top window with hotkeys, so starting a session takes 2 seconds.

free, open source.

my two fears:

1. every productivity nerd already has a system (toggl, notion, a paper notebook) and switching cost kills me
2. distraction tracking is a gimmick people try once and forget

so roast away, is this a real problem or am I just building my own hobby tool and calling it a everyone's problem? what would make you actually try it?

2025 BTech CS grad. No full-time offer yet. Only "experience" is a 2-month unpaid Salesforce training (basic Apex/Java, nothing substantial) and that too in 2024. Spent the last year mostly self-studying + building: LeetCode: ~1800 rating, 700+ solved (comfortable with mediums, not hards yet) Codeforces: 400+ solved Built and open-sourced a productivity app (React + Electron + SQLite) — 7 months of work, publicly launched Also built a few full-stack clone projects (Paytm, YouTube, LinkedIn-style) + some Web3 stuff Weak spots I know about: a resume gap that's basically "self-employed." Questions for people who've been through this: Realistic shot at FAANG/product companies applying cold, and will I get referrals? Anyone here start late/self-taught with no internship — how did you actually break in?

How much gap effects??

2025 BTech CS grad. No full-time offer yet. Only "experience" is a 2-month unpaid Salesforce training (basic Apex/Java, nothing substantial) and that too in 2024. Spent the last year mostly self-studying + building: LeetCode: ~1800 rating, 700+ solved (comfortable with mediums, not hards yet) Codeforces: 400+ solved Built and open-sourced a productivity app (React + Electron + SQLite) — 7 months of work, publicly launched Also built a few full-stack clone projects (Paytm, YouTube, LinkedIn-style) + some Web3 stuff Weak spots I know about: a resume gap that's basically "self-employed." Questions for people who've been through this: Realistic shot at FAANG/product companies applying cold, and will I get referrals? Anyone here start late/self-taught with no internship — how did you actually break in?

How much gap effects??

2025 BTech CS grad. No full-time offer yet. Only "experience" is a 2-month unpaid Salesforce training (basic Apex/Java, nothing substantial) and that too in 2024. Spent the last year mostly self-studying + building: LeetCode: ~1800 rating, 700+ solved (comfortable with mediums, not hards yet) Codeforces: 400+ solved Built and open-sourced a productivity app (React + Electron + SQLite) — 7 months of work, publicly launched Also built a few full-stack clone projects (Paytm, YouTube, LinkedIn-style) + some Web3 stuff Weak spots I know about: a resume gap that's basically "self-employed." Questions for people who've been through this: Realistic shot at FAANG/product companies applying cold, and will I get referrals? Anyone here start late/self-taught with no internship — how did you actually break in?

How much gap effects??

2025 BTech CS grad. No full-time offer yet. Only "experience" is a 2-month unpaid Salesforce training (basic Apex/Java, nothing substantial) and that too in 2024. Spent the last year mostly self-studying + building: LeetCode: ~1800 rating, 700+ solved (comfortable with mediums, not hards yet) Codeforces: 400+ solved Built and open-sourced a productivity app (React + Electron + SQLite) — 7 months of work, publicly launched Also built a few full-stack clone projects (Paytm, YouTube, LinkedIn-style) + some Web3 stuff Weak spots I know about: a resume gap that's basically "self-employed." Questions for people who've been through this: Realistic shot at FAANG/product companies applying cold, and will I get referrals? Anyone here start late/self-taught with no internship — how did you actually break in?

How much gap effects??

2025 BTech CS grad. No full-time offer yet. Only "experience" is a 2-month unpaid Salesforce training (basic Apex/Java, nothing substantial) and that too in 2024. Spent the last year mostly self-studying + building: LeetCode: ~1800 rating, 700+ solved (comfortable with mediums, not hards yet) Codeforces: 400+ solved Built and open-sourced a productivity app (React + Electron + SQLite) — 7 months of work, publicly launched Also built a few full-stack clone projects (Paytm, YouTube, LinkedIn-style) + some Web3 stuff Weak spots I know about: a resume gap that's basically "self-employed." Questions for people who've been through this: Realistic shot at FAANG/product companies applying cold, and will I get referrals? Anyone here start late/self-taught with no internship — how did you actually break in?

How much gap effects??