Day 60: thinking beyond productivity
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Hey everyone,
At this point, I don’t really think Unjam is just about productivity anymore.
A lot of what I’m exploring now is cognitive load, emotional resistance, overwhelm, and how much mental state people carry internally all day.
The more I think about it, the more it feels like many productivity struggles are actually “load management” problems rather than motivation problems.
Now trying to build around reducing that load enough for movement to feel emotionally manageable again.
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The cognitive load framing resonates - and I think you're onto something most productivity tools miss.
I've been noticing this with solo founders specifically: a huge chunk of the mental load isn't about tasks at all. It's about not knowing.
Not knowing if client X is about to churn.
Not knowing if the project you've been deprioritizing is the one that pays the most.
Not knowing if this week's focus is actually connected to this month's revenue goal.
The data exists across their tools - it just never assembles into a clear picture. So the brain keeps it all in RAM, running background threads on every open loop.
What you're describing as 'load management' - I think a big piece of it is information architecture. When the right view exists at the right moment, the brain can finally let go of the threads it's been holding.
Curious if you're building for a specific context (knowledge work? solo operators?) or more general 'overwhelmed person' use case. The former gets much more specific on what the load actually is.
Yeah exactly — I think I was describing the emotional layer too broadly instead of anchoring it into specific situations people instantly recognize.
The “reopening the same task every day” example honestly feels closer to the real thing than generic “overwhelm” language.
And I also agree that if the problem framing stays vague, people will naturally compare it to ChatGPT/Claude because it just sounds like another AI conversation layer.
So now I’m thinking more about:
instead of trying to speak to every type of overwhelm at once.
Your feedback genuinely helped clarify that gap for me.