Paced

I’ve spent my career as a Realtor in Saskatoon, but last year I realized I was losing a daily battle: my phone was winning.

I actually love my phone and I enjoy social media, but I hated the "scroll trance"—that mindless autopilot that eats your entire evening before you even realize you've stopped being productive. When I looked for solutions, everything felt like a "digital jailer." I didn't want to be treated like a kid with a locked device; I wanted a tool that felt like a partner in my health journey.

That’s why I built Paced.

I knew that if I could just create a physical pattern interrupt, I could snap out of the trance and make a conscious choice to get back to my life. As a non-tech founder, I used Google Gemini as my "strategic co-pilot" to lead a team and turn this vision into a session-based blocker with a simple trade: Wait or Walk.

If you hit a limit on a distracting app, you have a choice: wait out a cooldown timer or get moving. Every 100 steps you walk reduces the timer by 3 minutes.

It turns a negative digital habit into a physical win. Honestly? It's the only way I consistently get my daily steps in now!

I’m proving that you don't need a tech degree to disrupt the digital wellness space—you just need a problem worth solving and the grit to build the solution you actually want to use.

I’d love to hear from other makers: How do you handle the "scroll trance" when you're off the clock? Does a movement-based trade sound like something that would work for your routine, or do you prefer the "total lockout" approach?