The rise of “Little Guy” Apps: Externalising Our Self-Care
It started, as so many things do these days, with TikTok.
Dear readers: my attention span is in shambles, and Hank Green is partly to blame. My FYP will not shut up about this silly little bean app called Focus Friend. The premise is absurdly simple, set a timer, and your bean friend starts knitting. Leave the app? Suddenly, you’ve abandoned your poor pixelated pal to dropped stitches and unfinished socks. Are we really letting a fictional bean guilt-trip us into productivity? Apparently yes. And somehow…I care.
With the absolute flood of popularity this app has seen since its release, it goes to show the magic of what I coined “Little Guy” productivity apps. It's not about the clean spreadsheets, sleek timers, and the organised lists. It's not about pretending that you can “optimise your workflows” or “synergizing your task ecosystem”. These apps throw you something (usually cute and cuddly) in your lap, say “here, take care of this”, and along the way, somehow trick you into taking care of yourself. It's Tamagotchi logic rebranded for soft-girl burnout. We are incapable of looking after ourselves at this point, so it's time to redirect that energy into something else.
And that hits the core method: the externalisation of self-care. It becomes not about doing something just because it's good for us. At this point, as long as we are doing the bare minimum, it's hard to find the motivation for self-care for the sake of self-care. It's like, what do you mean that self-care is about me? I don’t have the energy to care about myself all the time. That happy little bean is knitting away though? How could we interrupt him? He gets to knit, and then we stay off our phones.
The psychology is simple: we’re more likely to do something if someone (or something) is depending on us. That’s why we would get up to feed a Tamagotchi at 3 am but forget to drink water until we have a headache. Apps like these hijack that instinct. It's self-care disguised as caring for something else. The ‘caring for something else’ was actually self-care all along! Gotcha, you fool.
It isn’t just the bean app revolutionising the market. Apps like these have been inching their way into the fray for years. Forest had us planting trees in exchange for time off the phone, the satisfaction of seeing your forest grow as a visual representation of the time you spend working away was great to track. Finch encourages self-care functions like journaling, meditating or resting and makes it all about making your little bird happy. Habitica gamifies your to-do list and habits - giving you XP for your virtual character, pets, and more. And heck, even Duolingo became massive because of that Owl hounding you every single day. We were smashing out our Japanese vocab day in and day out because we couldn’t let that green gremlin guilt trip us for a second longer.
Apps like these not only give us something that feeds our instinct to care for others, but along the way, usually provide some other form of motivation. The bean app? Those socks and scarves, and beanies, the bean knits? He exchanges them for currency so you can decorate his house. As you spend more time focusing, you get to see the fruits of your labour grow. While sometimes it's easy to just know that you spent an hour cleaning, or writing an essay, or doing any number of things, those discrete tasks themselves don’t always stay in your brain. Yeah, sure, I spent hours upon hours studying for my degree, but you know what I have to show for it??? A piece of paper. At least with Forest, I can see how many damn trees I planted over those hours of studying.
As we continue moving forward into this age of burnt out bitches trying to grasp at whatever semblance of comfort and coziness we can find in this god forsaken world, it's no surprise that Little-Guy-Self-Care Apps are being latched onto harder than the idea that buying our fiftieth notebook will somehow cure our task management troubles. Walking hand in hand with the Cozy-Game craze happening right now, these apps give us what we are craving: soft aesthetics, kind words, low-stakes achievements, but also low-stakes guilt. My Finch won’t starve if I don’t forget to journal for one day, my bean won’t be out on the streets. It's self-care but also understanding, and that softer approach is something we all need a little of in our lives.
Sometimes they work. Sometimes they don’t. For me, guilt isn’t a sustainable fuel for productivity. That and I’m terrible at even remembering to open the damn app. I can spend a week getting really into it, but it eventually fizzles out as the novelty wears away. Either that or I’m just not built for habits and schedules. But am I the be-all end-all of judging productivity apps? Absolutely not. We can all get burnt out. We can all drop our focus and maybe have a menty-b or two just desperately trying to get our life on track.
Sometimes we don’t need another planner, spreadsheet or Notion dashboard. We need a little guy. Someone small and silly to remind us that discipline doesn’t have to feel like punishment. It can be cozy, or even tender. And if that means letting a bean knit my scarf while I finally do the dishes?
Fine. Let him knit.