Why MostliHere exists
The short version of the story behind the app. A quieter phone, real-world activities, and the trap of trying to fix phones with more apps.
The longer version of how MostliHere came to be is on the about page. If you have ten minutes spare, that’s the one to read.
This is the shorter version.
The pattern
A few things were happening at once. Jonathan Haidt was publishing on teenage mental health. Daughters’ phones were going off every time something landed on Snapchat or Instagram. And anxiety levels dropped noticeably whenever the feed hours dropped.
The research on this is reasonably solid now. Constant feeds correlate with measurable anxiety across age groups. The platforms borrow their mechanics from the gambling industry, which is part of why it’s hard to put them down. Phones are loud, and most of what’s on them adds nothing to most days.
The wrong fix
The first idea was an aggregator: one quiet place instead of five loud ones.
The platforms aren’t built to let you out, though. The algorithm is the product. Ad revenue pays for the lights. Calm isn’t something those companies sell. So the aggregator idea died.
The actual fix
Sitting underneath the social-media problem was a bigger one. Phones are full of disconnected single-purpose apps. Each one wants attention. Each one pings on its own schedule. The free ones harvest data. The paid ones stack up to thirty or forty dollars a month.
What if all of them were replaced with one calm app? Twenty-five small, opinionated, ad-free utilities: to-do, water, mood, habits, budget, expenses, weather, calculator, world clock, packing list, real-world planning. All on one device. All private. All reachable from a single daily summary screen.
That, in short, is MostliHere.
The hero app
The one app inside MostliHere that’s actually a new idea, rather than a calmer version of something else you’ve seen, is Mostli Real World. It’s a planner for the activities you’d actually do with the people already in your life: a coffee, a walk, a phone call to your mum, a dinner. Plan it. Mark it. If you forget to log a day, the app assumes you lived your life.
The thesis under Mostli Real World is the thesis under the whole product. Wellness based on thousands of years of evidence in the Blue Zones; community, family, friends, nature. It isn’t complicated. Streaks and scrolling and keeping virtual pets alive don’t lower anxiety. The things that do are simple, and within reach.
The whole story
If you want the longer version (the Blue Zones bit, why the aggregator idea didn’t work, why MostliHere is opinionated where Notion is configurable), it’s on the about page. About five minutes.