The Focus Brick
A magnet, an NFC tag, two taps — the small gift that got me off my phone.
I gave you this because someone gave me the idea first, and it actually worked.
I was properly hooked: phone in hand before my eyes were open, thumb scrolling through dinners, lectures, entire conversations. Willpower never fixed it. A small orange square on my desk did.
You tap the phone on it and the apps you chose disappear. Tap again and they come back — but you have to walk to wherever you left the brick. That tiny bit of friction is the whole trick.
Two weeks in, my screen time had halved and I had stopped missing it. No subscription, no streak to keep. Just a lump of plastic that says not now.
— Marcello
Start here
The tag is dumb on purpose, the app does the blocking. Both are free.
Then
- Write the tag. Create a profile in the app and hold the brick against the back of your phone.
- Pick your poison. Social, news, games, whatever eats the hours.
- Tap on, tap off. Leave the brick in another room and the second tap suddenly costs something.
Want another one, or one for a friend? The model is free: Focus Brick on Printables — six 5×2 mm magnets, one 25 mm writable NFC tag, an hour of printing. It's a homage to the commercial Brick; the blocking is done by Foqos and Switchly. I only pressed print, no affiliation, nothing to sell.