So, another productivity app. Great. Just what the world needs. This one, however, swaggered in with a different pitch. Forget your endless to-do lists and overwhelming project boards. Improve You, its creator Ashutosh Swamy proudly proclaims, is about 5 things. That’s it. Trackable habits. A Pomodoro timer. And that’s mostly it. It’s an exercise in brutal simplicity, a digital monastery in a world of SaaS shouting matches.
Swamy’s core complaint is familiar: most apps are exhausting. A dizzying array of features designed to promise productivity, yet they often deliver only guilt. You open them, feel overwhelmed, then close them, feeling worse. A vicious cycle of aspirational failure. Improve You aims to break that cycle by surgically removing anything that doesn’t directly contribute to doing the damn thing.
He’s not interested in tracking your every whim. The goal? Identify those handful of habits — the water, the reading, the deep work — that, consistently applied, fundamentally reshape your life. Five, he argues, is the sweet spot. Too many, and it’s chaos. Too few, and you’re not building much. It’s a stark contrast to the ‘track everything’ mentality that plagues the space.
The ‘Just Do It’ Ledger
This is where the app gets interesting. Every morning, the slate resets. No backlogs. No overdue tasks haunting your digital vision. You either did the habit, or you didn’t. It’s a daily ledger, stripped bare. This isn’t about planning to do something; it’s about having done it. The system treats these habits not as tasks, but as reflections of identity. They become who you are, not just what you’re supposed to do.
And the Pomodoro timer? It’s not an afterthought. When you’re in ‘Focus Mode,’ that’s it. Nothing else exists. The hours are logged separately. This is crucial. It’s one thing to mark ‘deep work’ as done. It’s another to see you only managed 40 minutes when you promised yourself two hours. It’s a dose of reality, unvarnished.
The hours you log here are tracked separately — so you can actually see how much real work you’re doing versus how much you’re just busy.
Gamification: Love It or Hate It, It Works
Now, gamification. Swamy admits it gets a bad rap. But on him? It works. Earn XP for completed habits. Earn XP for focused minutes. Level up. Unlock badges. Protect your streak. The ‘don’t break the chain’ mentality is a powerful driver. It taps into that primal desire for progress, for visible achievement. It turns the drudgery of daily discipline into something… almost engaging.
And leaderboards? Yes, they’re in there. Seeing yourself alongside others grinding away on their own core habits? Apparently, it makes discipline feel less like solitary confinement and more like a bizarre, digital team sport. An odd, but apparently effective, motivator.
What’s NOT Here is the Point
Every feature considered faced a simple, brutal question: does this make it easier to do the work, or just easier to feel like you’re planning to do the work? If it leaned toward the latter, it didn’t make the cut. No subtasks. No priority levels. No ‘snooze until tomorrow.’ No convoluted recurring task templates. This is the core of Swamy’s thesis: complexity is the enemy of execution.
The Free Tier: Genuinely Free
Here’s a pleasant surprise. The free tier isn’t crippled. Track up to 5 habits, streak tracking, focus mode, XP, and badges are all yours. Forever. It’s genuinely useful. For most people starting out, five is precisely the number you need. The Pro tier adds unlimited habits, deeper analytics (consistency rates, longest streaks), the global leaderboard, and priority support. But the core loop, the essential mechanism for building habits, is completely accessible without paying a cent. No credit card required.
Future plans include a PWA first, then native mobile apps, weekly reflection prompts, and habit templates. For the truly dedicated — the API for dashboard nerds. It’s a roadmap that prioritizes core functionality, then expands.
If your life’s quality hinges on the daily grind, on the small, consistent actions that compound over time, Improve You might just be your digital sanctuary. Or at least, a less exhausting place to build your better self. No onboarding wizard. No endless setup. Just open it. And start.
– Ashutosh Swamy (GitHub · LinkedIn)
