What was the first thing you did after you woke up this morning? Maybe during lunch? Or a dull moment at work? If you checked TikTok or Instagram reels, you’re not alone.
However, if you’re looking to kick that habit, Saskatoon-based realtor and app developer Rhonda Lavoie has a solution for that.
Named ‘Paced,’ Lavoie’s app works by having users select three apps that they want to use less, and then the app gives them 30 minutes of screen time. Once the allotted time is up, a pop-up appears, locking you out of the app for an hour and nudging you to take a break.
“It’s kind of like a gentle touch on the shoulder, like, no, it’s time to snap out of it. Ultimately, it gets us out of that trance [of constant doomscrolling],” Lavoie said.
“Then, once it’s in what’s called the cool down, the user has a choice.”
As Lavoie noted, this isn’t just a standard screen-time assistant. She included a unique way to reduce the time you have before the app unlocks: steps.
Image credit: Paced
Paced users can reduce the hour lockout by three minutes for every 100 steps they walk. This could be especially useful on a nice Saturday, encouraging users to go for a walk, or if you have a workspace you can walk around in.
But why steps? Lavoie says she got the idea to add an extra way to reduce time from her personal goals.
“I thought, well, wouldn’t it be neat if you wanted to get in faster? Or if you wanted to get past that one hour, you could just go get your steps in—because at that point I was working hard to get my steps in,” Lavoie notes. “I was like, well, that would be extra motivation for me to do so, right?”
Paced also has a pro mode, which unlocks additional capabilities. These include limits for additional apps, custom app groups, customizable timers, schedules for different rules (such as for work or home), statistics, and more.
Development assistance from Google Gemini
Lavoie is a realtor by trade and only went into development because of her idea for the Paced app. With that in mind, she took up the assistance of what she described as “every expert you could ever want at your fingertips,” in the form of Google’s Gemini.
Lavoie explained that she used the AI assistant (which she already pays for) more as a guiding tool than as a shortcut to get the work done faster.
“So, when I originally started doing this, I literally sat down with it and said, ‘Okay, this is my idea. I have no idea where to start. Tell me where to start,’ and then I went down the path, and it became my expertise in Business Development, and like, how do I open this type of business? What things should I be considering, etc.”
“From an app perspective, I used it to do market analysis, like what types of apps are out there like this? How are they doing? Is there an appetite for this?”
While all this sounds like a great idea, Lavoie did find one downside to using Gemini to learn app development.
Image credit: Paced
“You have to know how to use it, which I do in a very small capacity in my real estate career,” Lavoie said about using Gemini. However, she warned that not knowing how to use the chatbot could result in it leading you down the wrong path.
“Gemini can be very positive and tell you everything you want to hear. If I didn’t have the mindset of asking it not to do that, I think I probably could end up in a place where I’d spent more money than I needed to, or added things that I didn’t need to.”
The Paced app is currently available on the Play Store for free, while the Pro subscription costs either $9.99/mo or $49.99/year.
For now, Paced is available only on Android, mainly due to Lavoie’s familiarity with the platform. But she does say that an iOS version is coming soon for the iPhone users out there.
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