Lockin

Stake against → phone use at work

You did not get less done because you are lazy. You context-switched 47 times.

Lockin puts real money behind your work-day focus. Set a tight daily cap on the apps you do not need for your job, set a stake, and let loss aversion guard your deep-work hours.

Download on iOS Download on Android

Suggested starting contract

$10/day against a daily limit of 30 minutes on the apps you choose.

Why willpower loses against this

You did not get less done because you are lazy. You got less done because you context-switched 47 times. Cal Newport calls the alternative deep work in his 2016 book "Deep Work" (Grand Central Publishing), and the math behind it is brutal. Gloria Mark, the UC Irvine attention researcher whose CHI 2008 paper "The cost of interrupted work: more speed and stress" (doi 10.1145/1357054.1357072) seeded the field and whose 2023 book "Attention Span" (Hanover Square Press) updated it, has shown that after an interruption it takes about 23 minutes to fully return to the original task. Ten phone checks across a workday is roughly four hours of refocus debt. Not four hours of phone time. Four hours of brain wasted climbing back into the problem you were already solving. The pickup feels free in the moment, and that is the trap. Your present self pays nothing. Your 5pm self pays everything: a half-finished deliverable, a meeting you walked into unprepared, a Slack thread you skimmed instead of read. Lockin attaches a price tag to the pickup. You stake money against a tight 24-hour cap on the social and distraction apps that own your workday. Cross the cap by one minute and the money is gone, forfeited to a charity you chose. The cap covers the entire day, not a time-of-day block — but in practice, an unproductive workday burns through a 30-minute social-app budget before lunch. There is no narrative you can construct to escape the daily total. Loss aversion (Kahneman and Tversky) is roughly twice as motivating as equivalent gain, which is why the threat of losing fifteen dollars beats the promise of "feeling more focused." It gives your decision-self the friction your reflex-self never had at the moment of pickup.

How Lockin verifies it

The Screen Time challenge runs on Android and iPhone as a 24-hour daily cap on the apps you choose. On Android, Lockin reads usage from the system data behind Digital Wellbeing. On iPhone, Lockin reads the same daily app usage through Screen Time — the on-device counter behind iOS's Screen Time report. The contract is a daily totals cap, not a time-of-day rule: every minute on a covered app counts toward the same 24-hour budget. The pattern that works for a workday: pick the apps you do not need to do your job, set the cap tight enough that a normal workday of scrolling would blow through it, and leave Slack, email, calendar, and your actual work tools untouched. Verification happens on-device against the OS counters on both platforms at midnight local time. Lockin never sees your screen content.

Set up a phone use at work contract in 5 minutes

  1. 1

    Install Lockin

    Free on Google Play and the App Store. On Android, grant the screen time permission so the app can read OS-level usage counts. On iPhone, grant Screen Time access so Lockin can read your daily app usage.

  2. 2

    Pick the Screen Time challenge type

    Choose the Screen Time contract. Lockin runs as a 24-hour daily cap on the apps you select — the cap covers the entire day, not a time-of-day block. To kill the workday pickup, the cap has to be tight enough that a normal day of scrolling would burn through it.

  3. 3

    Identify the workday apps you DON'T need

    Typical list: Instagram, TikTok, Reddit, X, YouTube, Snapchat, mobile games, mobile browser. Exclude anything your job actually uses: Slack, Teams, Email, Calendar, work tools, Maps if you commute mid-day.

  4. 4

    Set your daily cap

    Thirty minutes total across the restricted apps per day is a good default. Tight enough that a workday of scrolling chews through the budget before lunch and forces a real tradeoff. Generous enough for a legitimate lunch-break check. A 60-minute cap you'll never hit is worse than a 30-minute cap that exposes a context-switching workday.

  5. 5

    Set your stake

    Ten dollars is the recommended starting stake for a workday contract because work time has high opportunity cost. Range: seven to fifteen dollars per day. The number should hurt to lose but not bankrupt you.

  6. 6

    Choose your charity

    Pick from Lockin's vetted list. If you fail, your stake funds the charity you chose. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations.

  7. 7

    Confirm and lock in

    Review the contract: apps, daily cap, stake, charity. Tap confirm. The contract is now active and renews each day until you cancel. Verification runs at midnight local time.

From Lockin's data

Verified on-device on both Android (Digital Wellbeing) and iPhone (Screen Time). Daily totals across the apps you covered are compared to your cap at midnight local time. Did your restricted-app total stay under 30 minutes for the day? Under means stake returned in full. Over by even one minute means stake forfeited to your chosen charity, minus the platform fee.

"First Friday in months I shipped the deck before five. The phone was just sitting there and the ten dollars was enough that I did not pick it up. A 30-minute daily cap on Instagram and Reddit gets eaten alive by a normal scrolly afternoon, and I was not going to lose the stake. Felt like getting a deep-work afternoon back from 2014."

— Anonymous beta user, phone-at-work challenge, 6 weeks active

Common questions

Does Lockin actually block apps during work, or just track them? +

Lockin tracks. On Android, Digital Wellbeing counts your daily usage of the apps you selected; on iPhone, Screen Time does the same. The contract is a 24-hour totals cap, not a time-of-day block. One minute over your daily cap at midnight local time means the stake forfeits. The phone stays usable. The cost of using it goes up.

I'm on iPhone — can I run a phone-at-work contract? +

Yes. On iPhone the same contract uses Screen Time — Lockin reads your daily app usage and the contract settles automatically at midnight local time. Verification is hands-off. Slack, email, calendar, and your real work tools stay untouched because you don't add them to the contract.

What if I work shifts or my hours don't match 9am-5pm? +

The daily cap is the same regardless of when you work — it's a 24-hour totals cap, not a time-of-day rule. A night-shift nurse and a west-coast engineer set the same kind of contract: a tight daily total on the social and distraction apps. The cap covers the full 24 hours, but in practice your work hours are when you'd burn through it. Set the cap tight enough that a long shift of scrolling would blow it.

Where does the forfeited money actually go? +

Forfeited stakes go to a registered charity from Lockin's vetted list. You choose the charity from categories including climate, mental health, animal welfare, and digital literacy when you set up the contract. The bulk of your stake funds the charity you chose. Lockin charges a small platform fee to cover payment processing and operations. Refer to the transparency page inside the app for charity-by-charity tallies.

What if my job requires me to use my phone — can I exclude work apps? +

Yes. Lockin restricts only the apps you select. Limit the apps you do not need for work, typically social, news, games, and the mobile browser. Slack, Teams, Email, Calendar, Maps, and your specific work tools stay completely unrestricted. The contract is as narrow or as wide as you make it. Choose carefully.

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Free to download. You set the limit, the stake, and the charity.

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Author

The Lockin Team — Lockin Editorial

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