Hey HN! Story time:

A friend of mine who I've known since childhood has adult diagnoses for autism + adhd. He's a business owner and has always struggled with creating and maintaining healthy habits both in his personal and professional life. Those of you with adhd will get it: He knows what habits he wants and needs to form, but the executive function disorder often prevents him from being able to initiate and follow through on them. The autism side of his brain adds a whole extra layer of complexity. Through therapy and a lot of personal research, he's learned techniques to manage this in small doses but has always had difficulty maintaining those habits for more than brief periods of time.

As a fun little side project, I created an app to help him maintain the habits he struggles with based on techniques that we've seen actually work for him in the past. It was meant to be a simple tool that he'd be motivated to use regularly, and it worked! It worked so well that we decided to polish up this little side project and publish it for others to use.

We figured, if it worked so well for him, it'll probably work for others with similar neurodivergent brains for whom more traditional habit forming apps just aren't effective enough.

- The website is linked in the title.

- It's on the iOS App Store here: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/kudos-habits/id6746104744?plat...

Questions and feedback are welcome!

At the risk of adding too much to this wall of text, I told him I wanted to post on HN and asked him to explain to you all WHY this works so well for him, from his own personal perspective. This is what he had to say:

"Honestly, for me, the way the app works just clicks because it aligns with how my neurodivergent brain actually functions on a neurological level. With ADHD, there’s this well-documented dysregulation in the dopamine reward pathways, so I literally need immediate, tangible reinforcement to activate my motivation system... otherwise my brain just doesn’t engage.

The gamified elements in Kudos basically hijack that system in a good way, giving me those quick dopamine hits and making even basic tasks feel rewarding. And on the autism side, I crave routine and predictability to reduce cognitive load and anxiety, but rigid systems trigger black-and-white thinking and can lead to shutdowns or burnout. Kudos balances this perfectly by offering a scaffolded, flexible structure that supports my executive function deficits without overwhelming me.

I also love that it lets me define my own rewards and success metrics, which strengthens intrinsic motivation and reduces shame cycles. In a way, it feels like it's designed to work with my neurological wiring, leveraging my need for predictability, my dopamine-driven motivation, and my sensory preferences...instead of forcing me to conform to some rigid neurotypical productivity model."

user:	inthreedee
created:	February 13, 2020
karma:	21