As you remember, I said I would delete Respawn completely. And actually I’ve already reinstalled it, of course, but I completed the experiment fully, to the end. And here’s what happened.

Day 1: I stopped waking up on time

Starting from the very first day, I stopped waking up on time. I still had Sleep as Android and two other alarms - on my watch and by the bed, but I just went back to bed after them (all three). Respawn was the difference in whether I would wake up on time. Why, I only understood a week later. Before, I woke up on my own, because the alarm in Respawn didn’t just yell at me like SAA, but contained a plan that I talked about in my last post, about fighting the bad feeling after sleep.

I lost all of this, and I started to simply forget to do it. My first reaction was standard - go back to bed. I lost all my progress.

Okay, I thought then, this is my screw-up. I can just replace this with any other habit tracker. If I had transferred my list of habits, maybe I wouldn’t have gotten so sloppy.

Days 1-3: Small inconveniences accumulate

The second thing I noticed - it pisses me off every time to tell Claude the same things about myself. Because I stored all my memories in the coach. And that Claude can’t send me notifications to my phone.

In Respawn, the killer feature for me - it messages me first. Because if there are no incoming messages - there are no thoughts in my head about self-improvement or maintaining a lifestyle.

The next thing that happened - after just 3 days I stopped brushing my teeth. At all. If before I brushed my teeth 10 times out of 14 in a week (because for some reason this is an eternal problem for me), then during this week without Respawn I brushed them 2 times maximum.

Because I forget whether I brushed my teeth or not. And nothing else reminded me when I need to brush them. So I started blowing it off: ah, I’ll brush later, ah, I’ll brush later, ah, in an hour, ah, after lunch - and that’s it.

But again, I could replace all the notifications in Respawn with any other app, I thought on the evening of the third day.

Day 3: Crisis

On the evening of the third day, a thought came to me that my app wasn’t needed.

My app isn’t unique, isn’t irreplaceable, it’s not saving my life. I didn’t die when I deleted it. At first glance, my life didn’t fall apart and no catastrophe happened.

And I can replace the coach by just talking to Claude. Cool transcription, accurate to the text, can be replaced with the same Spokenly on Mac or using the open-source keyboard I recently shared with you. Alarms? You can use any app. Habits? TickTick already has a habit tracker, why do I need another one? Statistics? Who even looks at these statistics? Timers? You can set them on your watch.

So one fine evening I already managed to whine about how my app isn’t needed by anyone, it can be replaced, it doesn’t change anyone’s life.

Days 5-6: Epiphany

But on the fifth and sixth day, when I was making this blog, I needed to open my old posts. I found my old post on Telegram about how Respawn helps me.

And how could I forget? Reading it, everything became perfectly clear.

Respawn isn’t some app that’s impossible to live without. It doesn’t solve any pain, it doesn’t cover any critical needs and doesn’t save millions of dollars. But Respawn was a constant, stable part of my life that made it a little bit better.

Respawn for me - is first and foremost an anchor and a reminder of my values. This is the main strength of Respawn for me.

Because every time I see the alarm - it’s not just an alarm “wake up”, but an alarm that directly says:

  1. “you wanted to keep a schedule because you’re more productive in the morning”, and
  2. “So, right now put on a sweater (lying on the left) and drink the water prepared since evening. You have 30 seconds.” And that’s why I woke up on time.

When I opened the app, I saw a list of checkboxes. But in this list one of them was “say good morning to loved ones”. You could not say it and not say it, what’s the difference, nobody died. But I would never have remembered these small moments, pleasant for loved ones, if I didn’t have a reminder about it.

Respawn for me - is a tracker not of habits, but of life values and decisions made. And this is the most important thing for me - to correspond to my value system.

For me Respawn is like a buoy. Without it, life by default makes me drift somewhere to the side and slide toward my standard animal way of living. And Respawn - is the only app I know that reminds you at every step what you should be doing.

User interview

I understood this when I went on an interview with one of Respawn’s users. I was shocked when I heard how this person described why they need Respawn and why they use it.

The financial situation with Respawn, marketing, retention and so on messed with my head so much, and I lost my vision so much, that I forgot about this. That I forgot how people use it. And this person told me about it again.

Respawn is needed to remove decisions from your life.

If you constantly think: “Do I want to brush my teeth now? Do I need to brush my teeth? When do I need to brush my teeth?” - you won’t do it on time, if you don’t already have a rock-solid habit.

If you need to constantly think: “What time should I wake up? Do I need to wake up now? Can I go back to sleep? Do I need to open the windows, or clean up, or get dressed?” - then you’re spending your mental resources and the limited resource of willpower on making meaningless decisions. Read about decision fatigue - there’s such a phenomenon.

You’re spending energy on things that should be established for you, that should be written in stone like commandments.

Respawn - is the only app I know that fully doesn’t distract and allows you to delegate all this decision-making to itself. And for me this is the biggest value.

What’s next

Having heard this user and understanding this myself, I want to develop Respawn even more in this direction. I want Respawn to be a guiding product that takes on the responsibility of making decisions and makes them in favor of the user. Makes them by orienting the person to their value system, not to some standard behavior patterns.

I have a ton of ideas on how to implement this. And this will be the real strength of Respawn.

I need to understand who specifically needs Respawn, what attribute of mine as a person defines Respawn’s target audience - I don’t know this yet. Where do such people like me live, who make too many decisions, who want to delegate some life decisions to someone, who need to be oriented to their own values? This is what I need to find out. And Respawn will really be needed by these people.

Conclusions

Can I replace Respawn with other apps? Of course. Can you live without Respawn? Of course.

Does Respawn make my life better? Definitely yes.

Will I continue using Respawn? Yes, and that’s not up for discussion.