The Blink Blog
Notes on focus, follow-through, and building Blink in public.
What Happens After You Miss a Task
Most apps handle a missed task by marking it red and leaving the rest to you. Here's what Blink does instead, and where that approach still falls short.
2026-07-08A Coach That Remembers
The difference between a chatbot and a coach is memory. It should recall what worked for you months ago, even when you describe the problem in completely different words this time.
2026-07-08We Took the Slow Road on Purpose
There was a faster way to launch: a bot on a chat app, live in a week. We built a native iOS app and sat through App Store review instead. Here's why the slow road was the honest one.
2026-07-08When Blink Says It Did Something, It Actually Did It
A confirmation card was showing up whether scheduling succeeded or failed. Here's the fix, and the two other honesty problems we cleaned up in the same pass.
2026-07-07We Don't Ask to Notify You on Day One
Most apps ask to send you notifications before you've done anything. A permission you grant before you understand it is one you'll revoke. So Blink waits until you schedule your first task.
2026-07-07Why Your To-Do List Always Feels Too Long
The list keeps growing because writing something down is easy. Doing it is the part with a ceiling. Here's why that mismatch is the actual source of the dread, not laziness.
2026-07-06A Watch App Should Answer One Question
We spent a week getting Blink onto the Apple Watch. The hard part wasn't the build system. It was deciding that a watch app should answer exactly one question: what's next, and when.
2026-07-05Streaks Punish the Wrong Day
Miss one day and the counter resets to zero, right at the moment you're most likely to quit. Why Blink's rewards only add, and what that trade costs us on the engagement charts.
2026-07-05Dark Mode Isn't Just Inverted Colors
White-ish cards on a near-black background. Text that never quite committed to being light or dark. Here's what our first dark mode got wrong, and how Midnight OLED fixed it.
2026-07-04The Empty Day Problem
Free days disappear for the same reason easy tasks do. One anchor with a real time attached gives the day a spine, and the rest can stay empty on purpose.
2026-07-04Blink Stopped Guessing When to Notify You
Every notification either gets acted on, ignored, or snoozed. We started keeping score, and Blink now leans toward the hour that actually works for you.
2026-07-03Why You Ignore Your Own Reminders
You don't ignore reminders because you're undisciplined. You ignore them because most of them deserve it. What a reminder needs to carry, and what should happen after the swipe.
2026-07-03The First Two Minutes We Kept Rebuilding
Most people decide whether to keep an app before they've used it once. Here's what we found when we audited Blink's first two minutes, and why so much of it needed to change.
2026-07-02Why Easy Things Feel Impossible (And What Actually Helps)
The hard, interesting thing gets done. The easy, boring thing does not. Here's the actual mechanism behind that gap, and what actually helps, in rough order of how much it matters.
2026-07-02One App, Not Five
A task without a time attached to it is a wish. Once it has a slot on your calendar, it's a plan. Why splitting tasks, calendar, and reminders across four apps costs more than it looks like.
2026-07-02The 7-Minute Rule: How to Start Something You're Dreading
A specific kind of stuck has nothing to do with difficulty. Here's a rule that works better than most productivity advice, mostly because it's almost insultingly small.
2026-07-02Cancel Anytime, Actually
Most subscription apps say "cancel anytime." Here's why we built Blink's cancellation flow to be genuinely boring, and why that's the honest business decision, not just a nice one.