This morning I caught myself scrolling Instagram reels while procrastinating on building an app designed to cure Instagram scrolling. I was sprawled in my massage chair, one of only two working buttons giving me a stretching massage that literally presses the shit out of me, binge-eating chips with our favorite Dijon mayonnaise.

The irony burns like my French throat-clearing ritual gone wrong—that holy trinity of C’s: Coffee, Cigarette, Croissant. Each one kills that 6 AM silence before your phone buzzes. (The fourth C might be my Curls, treated with spartan nihilism—nature and dust doing their anarchic work.)

But here’s the thing: I’m not building another productivity app that shames you for being human. I’m building Instagram’s better twin—same dopamine pathway, different destination. Instead of getting your hit from watching other people do cool things, you actually do them. The app suggests activities mixing novelty, skill-building, and whatever makes you curious. Like the four-minute rule I used to write this blog: small promises you can actually keep, building healthy pride one tiny commitment at a time.

i’m a scrolling piggy

Here’s what I learned researching my own addiction: I’ve been having thoughts of “scrolling piggies snorting” in my mind, disgusted by people mindlessly swiping. Then I realized I was haunted by that disgust because I am one of those scrolling piggies.

A friend told me about a nightmare where he hated Donald Trump and Elon Musk. He woke up in horror when he realized they represented facets of himself. Same energy. We judge others for the exact addiction we can’t kick.

Instagram reels aren’t just time-wasters. They’re elaborate theater where we practice being the hero of someone else’s story. Each swipe promises the next hit will make us feel competent, worthy, capable.

But it’s a fata morgana—that desert mirage where you think you see water dripping from date palms. The closer you get, the more it reveals itself as heat distortion from your own desperation.

Self-confidence is trusting your character. Self-efficacy is trusting your actions. We scroll seeking self-efficacy—that “I can do things that matter” feeling—but get the sugar rush followed by 3 PM crash of passive consumption instead.

i have a broken index finger

There’s a German joke about Fritzchen going to the doctor saying his whole body is broken. The doctor discovers just his index finger—the one he used to check his whole body—was broken.

That’s my relationship with discipline. I’m traumatized by discipline culture the same way I’m traumatized by marketing. I’ve been backstabbed so many times I can’t believe in its purity anymore. So I rebel categorically against anything that smells like productivity porn.

But the problem isn’t discipline—it’s my broken index finger of perception, that voice in my chest that sounds like your disappointed father. This internal prosecutor creates Russian nesting dolls of self-criticism. Open one layer of “I should be better,” find another of “I should stop judging myself for judging myself.”

three lessons in surfing currents

The Vulture Lesson: A friend admitted his love for vultures—those eight-foot wingspan scavengers who’ve mastered riding updrafts from roadkill. When fields burn in Latin America, vultures don’t fight the heat. They ride it. “Radical honesty requires radical listening,” he said. “Whether it’s listening for vulture cries or watching for burning fields.” Both require telling your internal prosecutor to hush for precious seconds.

The Pressure Cooker Lesson: Another friend said, “Put half a glass of water in a pressure cooker. It heats immediately. That’s lazy.” Minimum energy for maximum output. Three farm boys eating potato binges with beloved Mayonnaise de Dijon, fed efficiently by understanding the system rather than fighting it.

The Climbing Circle Lesson: A third friend works with kids in boulder climbing sessions. In their chair circles, children blast out insecurities with the opposite effect our internal prosecutor makes us believe vulnerability will have. They don’t perform authenticity—they simply are authentic. No meta-layer, no strategy, no story to protect.

children are wise non-procrastinators

Children don’t procrastinate the way adults do. They might resist switching from using your freshly-made spaghetti as boxing practice to actually eating dinner, but they don’t procrastinate play itself. They have impulses, curiosities, immediate engagement with crusty cereal bowls and brilliant ideas.

When adult conversations become cumbersome, I revert to playing with toy cars and feel that prosecutor lift from my chest, sometimes leaving a wet fart on my sweatshirt as his phony goodbye note.

my sexiest excuse

My 16-year-old self would be most disgusted by my smoking habit. For years, I kept myself to exactly one promise: don’t smoke. I harshly criticized myself when, in some alcohol rush where I also drank flower water from a bar, I had a drag from a cigarette.

Now I find smoking sexy and artistic. The physical manifestation of the tortured artist self-perception, my sexiest excuse for avoiding the boring work of actually creating something.

My generation suffers from chronic overestimating. We don’t want to start small. I wanted to meditate three hours daily for a week straight—failed by day three. Then forty-two days of blogging—dipped after day seven.

But here’s the gift: when I treat failure and success equally as data points, the pressure releases. The meta-joke becomes productive tension rather than paralyzing irony.

the real shit

Here’s my confession: I need the app to build the app. I need the community to build the community. I need self-efficacy to create the tool that generates self-efficacy.

This isn’t failure—it’s the most honest place to start. If the person building the anti-procrastination tool can’t solve his own procrastination, maybe the solution isn’t perfection. Maybe it’s creating systems that work with our beautiful messiness rather than against it.

The real product isn’t an app that makes you productive. It’s a mirror that shows you you’re already capable—and that the scroll was just practice for something real.

The thermic currents are there. The vultures know how to find them. The children know how to play without permission. The pressure cooker knows how to work efficiently.

Our broken index fingers can heal.

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Help us build this thing properly: We’re creating Instagram’s better twin—an app that gives you the dopamine hit of actually doing cool things instead of watching others do them. But we need to understand what you’re really seeking when you scroll.

Fill out our 3-minute survey about your scroll stories and what you’re actually looking for when you find yourself mindlessly swiping. Your insights will directly shape what we build.

[https://forms.gle/7v4ajvKsZAN74ELC9]

What’s your “scroll story”? What are you really seeking? Tell me about your own scrolling piggy moments—I’m collecting the blueprints for this strange journey we’re all on together.