An ADHD productivity app, built in Phoenix

Waiting mode happens when you have a commitment later — a call, an appointment, a pickup — and instead of using the free hours before it, your brain locks into a holding pattern watching the clock. Nothing feels safe to start because starting something and getting interrupted or running late feels worse than not starting at all. Hours disappear this way, even when you technically had time.

The mechanism is a trust problem between you and the clock. To start a task, your brain has to believe two things: that the task fits the time available, and that something will reliably pull you out before you're late. With ADHD, time blindness makes the first estimate shaky, and unreliable prospective memory makes the second feel like a gamble. So the brain hedges — it keeps the upcoming event in working memory and monitors the clock manually. That monitoring is the “waiting” feeling, and it occupies the exact cognitive resources a real task would need.

It's a calendar and time-management problem, not a motivation problem. Full breakdown on the waiting mode page.

1. 1. Gap detection. Unstuck reads your next 8 hours of Google Calendar events (read-only) and finds the open window before your next commitment — e.g. “2h 15m before your 3pm call.” You never have to do the gap math yourself, which is exactly the arithmetic time blindness makes unreliable.
2. 2. Safe-to-start scoring. Each task is scored against that gap and labeled Safe to Start, Pausable, or Risky. A 30-minute task in a 2-hour gap is safe; a deep-focus task in a 40-minute gap is risky even though it technically “fits,” because interruption cost matters as much as duration. The label answers the question the brain is actually stuck on: not “what should I do today?” but “what can I start right now without regretting it?”
3. 3. T-15 / T-5 hard stops. A persistent notification fires 15 minutes before your event (wrap up) and again at 5 minutes (move). Two stages matter: an abrupt single alarm forces an expensive instant context switch, which ADHD brains learn to dread and ignore. A staged countdown lets you unload the task gradually — and once your brain trusts the alerts will fire, it can release the clock and actually engage with the task.

Try the loop yourself on the interactive demo — no sign-up required.

The pattern works even without software, and it's worth knowing because it proves the mechanism. Before your gap starts: set two phone alarms — one 15 minutes before your commitment, one 5 minutes before. Then write the commitment and its time on a sticky note and put it where you'll work (“3pm call — alarms are set”). The alarms take over the interrupting job; the sticky note answers the “wait, was there something?” check without a full calendar review. That's the whole trick: externalize the clock so working memory doesn't have to hold it.

What the manual version can't do is scale. You have to remember to set the alarms for every event, redo them when the calendar shifts, and you still have to eyeball which task fits the gap. Unstuck automates exactly those steps — it reads the calendar itself, recomputes when things move, and does the fits-the-gap scoring for you.

Unstuck is built by a solo founder based in Phoenix, Arizona — someone who lives with ADHD and waiting mode firsthand. Being local to Phoenix doesn't limit who the product is for: it's a web app that works for anyone with a Google Calendar, anywhere. Read more on the about page.

Unstuck has a free tier with no credit card required — unlimited gap detection, the full safe-to-start scorer, and T-15/T-5 hard-stop notifications. Setup takes about 2 minutes: connect your Google Calendar (read-only) and you're done.