202020 Timer
A simple Mac menu bar app to help prevent digital eye strain
The doctor-recommended 20-20-20 rule has helped me avoid headaches and eye strain from too much uninterrupted computer use. I wanted a simple reminder to take breaks, but all the existing apps were intrusive/complex.
After having 202020timer.com live for 7 months, I finally got my first paying customer who is a complete stranger to me! Having the support of a friend is fantastic, but it is an even better feeling when a stranger buys your product. Hopefully this means more to come!
Today I had a new type of notification pop up on my phone: it was Stripe telling me I made a sale! It is a great feeling to see that notification and have that validation of your product's value.
But...I quickly learned the customer was one of my good friends who I had just told about 202020 Timer. 馃槄 I'm definitely thankful for his support, but I'm also looking forward to the first non- friends and family customer.
After finishing the first version of the app and getting the website's landing page set up with a Stripe "Buy" button, I shared 202020 Timer for the first time!
As a long-time reader of IndieHackers, I am proud to finally have something of my own worth sharing with the community. 馃槃
Even though I already had a simple Mac script to give me 20-20-20 rule reminders, it was missing features that I wanted. Most importantly, I wanted to be able to pause the timer manually and I wanted it to pause automatically when I wasn't on my computer. Coming back to my laptop in the morning with 60+ notifications from my script telling me to take a break wasn't exactly the experience I had envisioned.
So, it was time to start work on a more serious version of the 202020 Timer.
After looking at and trying out some other pomodoro-style break timers/reminder apps, I realized I didn't want something that blocked my screen or forced me to take a break; I just wanted a gentle nudge.
So, three years after having the initial idea, I put together a super simple shell script to accomplish what I wanted out of an eye strain timer: non-intrusive notifications to remind me to take breaks from my screen.
If you're interested in a script like this, I wrote a how-to page on how I set it up.
This was the day I added the idea for a "Pomodoro/eye-strain timer as a chrome extension or Mac menu app" to my idea list.
My idea list is a simple list that I have been keeping since early 2014, with most of the ideas either being just a cool idea but not a great business idea or are already being done well by someone else. Although the eye strain timer wasn't a new idea, I'd later learn that the existing apps and timers out there seemed to leave a gap in the market.