Here's an uncomfortable number for anyone who makes a wellbeing app. In 2019, researchers looked at real-world use of 93 popular Android apps for anxiety, depression and emotional wellbeing. A month after people installed them, a median of 3.3 per cent were still opening them.
Not because the apps were bad. Many of them were thoughtful, and some have good evidence behind them. The trouble is that they ask for something a busy person rarely has to spare: ten or twenty minutes, every day, plus remembering to start.
When we designed Grinly, we started from that number.
Habits grow slowly, and that's fine
There's a well-known study from University College London, published in 2010, that followed people trying to build a new daily habit: something to eat, drink or do at the same time each day. For a typical person it took around two months before the habit felt automatic, and the range was huge: some got there in a few weeks, others needed far longer.
One finding from that study shaped Grinly more than any other: missing a single day didn't undo the progress. A habit is not a streak. It doesn't snap.
The choices we made
It comes to you. One card a day, at the time you choose. You don't have to remember to open anything.
It's tiny. A joke takes five seconds. A pause takes one or two minutes. If you only have five seconds today, five seconds is enough.
It's something you'd want anyway. A good joke, a kind note, a strange fact about octopuses. Calm comes along for the ride, never as homework.
There are no streaks. Nothing in Grinly wilts if you skip a day. The little tree only ever grows. A missed day is just a day.
It never asks how you feel. No mood scores, no check-ins, no account. What happens on your phone stays on your phone.
What we don't know
We can't tell you how many people keep using Grinly after a month, because the app doesn't track anyone, so we don't know. We'd rather not know than build a tracker into something meant to be kind. What we can tell you is that every choice was made to ask for as little as possible, and give back a smile.
If you'd like a little more of that in your inbox, the Sunday Grin arrives once a week, takes three minutes to read, and is easy to leave.