Flipper Busy Bar Review: This Retro Focus Timer Keeps Distractions at Bay
My first job after college was at a boiler-room-style call center, taking complaint calls for a fly-by-night company that promised it would find your lost relatives if you sent them a lot of money. The office didn't have the budget for a real phone system; calls were transferred manually, and someone came up with a low-tech workaround for indicating you were mid-call: You propped a red Solo cup on top of your monitor. If the Flipper Busy Bar had existed then, I would've used it instead of the cup, if for no other reason than it clips onto your screen instead of sliding off every time someone bumps your desk. It can also display a message, like "Busy" or "at lunch," or "I hate this job." That's this curious device's most prominent function; it's like a Post-it note that says "leave me alone," in LEDs or a real-life Slack status message.
Flipper Busy Bar: Design
I really like the way the Busy Bar looks. The white-and-orange color scheme is eye-catching, the bright pixel art display is retro-cool, and physical dials and switches are always welcome and fun to play with; so much better than a touch screen. The accompanying apps, for phones and PCs, are just as easy to use as the physical device. Overall, it gives a fun vibe. But there's a more serious side of the Busy Bar too.
Flipper Busy Bar: Function
Flipper's current marketing copy for the Busy Bar doesn't mention ADHD, but the company initially announced that the device is "designed to help people fight distractions and ADHD and focus on their tasks." Some parts of the tech press ran with that angle and covered the Busy Bar as an ADHD tool, with headlines calling it "assistive technology" or pointing out that it was " designed it with neurodivergent folks in mind , particularly those with ADHD." So it's worth asking whether the device provides any benefit for people with ADHD.
I'm suspicious of unsourced "ADHD treatments." Before I knew I had the disorder, I tried a lot of tricks for increasing my focus, like body doubling and timers, and 57 browser tabs of productivity advice, but staying on a task was still like swimming in molasses. But the first Adderall I swallowed was a "where have you been all my life?" experience. Suddenly I could focus like a normal person.
The Busy Bar potentially fights ADHD by functioning as an interval timer based on the Pomodoro system of time management, where you break a large task into manageable chunks, traditionally, 25 minutes of work followed by a five minutes of rest. You can set the Busy Bar to block certain apps during your "work" time, and you can set the timer for whatever intervals you want. This is all done cleanly and easily from the iPhone app or from the back of the device itself, so props to a clean, friendly UI.
But that doesn't mean it works. ADHD comes with well-documented executive function issues, including "time blindness," a poor internal sense of how much time has passed or how much is left, and "task paralysis," large, unconstrained goals triggering avoidance. The Pomodoro method seems to address both, but there aren't any scientific studies on whether it actually works for adults with ADHD, let alone whether it works in conjunction with an external device like the Busy Bar. There's some research that shows similar devices have a positive effect on children with ADHD, but those are only a couple of small studies. That leaves us with "experts in the field." Some professionals in the ADHD field swear by the structure Pomodoro provides, while other point out that task-switching can break focus and that the clock itself can become a source of anxiety.
In terms of ADHD and productivity, I found The Busy Bar to be a mixed bag. When faced with a larger task—say, writing a review of the Busy Bar—I might have some trouble kicking off, so hitting the big "start" button on a desktop device and thinking "I'm just going to work for 25 minutes on this" focused me and got me started. But that's where the benefit ended. My "process" is "dive into this and swim downwards until I am either too exhausted to continue or I have completed the task." In that context, a "time to take a break" alarm is only an annoyance, and I don't need apps to be blocked because I'm not paying attention to them anyway—I'm deep into whatever I'm doing. I actually found the existence of the Busy Bar, the "managing this clock thing," to be a distraction in itself. When I gave "25 minutes on, five off" a real try, that five-minute break stretched into 25 minutes, and another struggle to crank up the engine and get back into "the space." It's hard to get there, so I'd rather just stay as long as my brain allows.
On the other hand, when it comes to something like folding laundry, setting a timer works pretty well, and this is an excellent timer. People who need a little help folding their socks, it seems to me, are the most likely to benefit from a Busy Bar.
Flipper Busy Bar: Automation and options
The Busy Bar can talk to Apple Home and Google Home over Matter. I paired it and hooked it up to a couple of smart bulbs I had lying around to make sure it worked, and it does. I set it so hitting "Busy" would dim the light, but you could set it so it turns on your music or turns your TV off, too. This might seem like a small thing, but the dimming is a sensory cue that reinforces "we're working now" the same way punching the "start" button did. The Busy Bar is good at setting a mood.
One thing I wish it did: let you put your own art on the screen. While the company says on its website that you can create a custom message , that seems to be for a future update. Right now, it isn't easy to customize the pixels. It's possible—Flipper's documentation shows you can push custom images through the open HTTP API—but that's a developer feature, not something you can do from the app.
Another "coming soon" feature is other apps. Right now, there are no apps for the device except the timer, but the company promises connection to third-party softwar e is coming. Possibilities include analysis of your work time, a more customizable characters, and a clone of Pong (I assume).
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