Disconnect

So I have been working on my first chrome extension, and I am at a point where I think it's 'ready' to be used by some first test users. Finding people to test it is not easy, but I have got 2 signups for the beta version so I will try my luck with them.

I started building it because I noticed that a lot of people seemed to have trouble with stopping to work when working from home. They just couldn't find a 'reason to stop', or just didn't get any signals that they should wrap up for the day. On the other hand, for some people it seems impossible to understand why it would be so difficult to stop working. "when it's 5pm I just close the laptop and I am done for the day". Sounds so easy right? Well for some people it really isn't and I built this for them.

When I imagined a solution for this, I just wanted it to be like having a caring companion that checks in with you and helps you to stop. I think I got pretty close to that with this first version. If you work from home and struggle to switch off at the end of the day, I'd love for you to try it and tell me if it actually helps. Happy to set you up with access.

I've been working remotely for more than 3 years now. When working remotely, you need to be very intentional about avoiding that your work life bleeds into your home life. I have a pretty solid routine that helps me actually switch off at the end of the day. I realised however, that not everyone around me does. I started noticing that some of my colleagues just never seemed to finish work, and when I asked them about it, they'd tell me they were still checking emails at 10pm, replying to Teams on weekends etc. That's what got me thinking about this.

I then also did some research in remote work communities online and found a recurring pattern. People working from home know they should finish work, but still can't seem to actually do it. It turns out they are just missing some key signals to tell their brain that the work day is over. When working remotely, there is no commute, no physical separation, nothing to tell the brain the day is over.

So I'm building Disconnect. It's a Chrome extension, but I like to refer to it as a "browser companion". It's a little cat widget that shows up on your browser screen at your set finish time and walks you through a 3-minute shutdown ritual. Brain dump, tomorrow's top tasks, a "commute" replacement activity, and a shutdown phrase to close the day. A lot of what's in the ritual are things I actually do myself, so I can say from experience that this stuff works. The whole thing is designed to feel like a friend checking in, not another productivity app demanding your attention. No metrics, nothing saved to memory, just a friendly nudge to initiate your shutdown ritual.

I've done some early validation by sharing the idea in a few communities and got a little bit of feedback. The feedback that stuck with me most was "the signal probably has to be almost embarrassingly small." So that's the design principle I'm building around. Since the idea is quite simple, I just started building it.

I'm a self-taught developer working on this as a side project next to my day job, which is also remote.

Will share progress here as I go. Feel free to check out the LP here and let me know what you think of it!