My story: why Wastime exists

This didn’t start in a single day. And it definitely didn’t start with one “big problem” you can solve and forget.

It was more like a slow accumulation: fatigue; the feeling that I’m always busy, but life somehow isn’t moving; money anxiety; a background fear that one day I could lose my job (and I was one step away from that); work immigration and living in a foreign country. A constant feeling that I’m busy every day, but by the end of the day I can’t even remember what I did.

And then, in September 2024, all of that reached an acute phase. One evening (around September 18) I caught myself having a simple and unpleasant thought: it felt like I was scrolling through my life the same way I scroll Instagram. A question appeared, and I asked it to myself. It looked simple, but it was genuinely painful:

“How much time do I waste every day?”

I think I just wanted to look at my life honestly, without excuses, without “I’m just tired”, without “everyone lives like this”. And it wasn’t about urgently coming up with a neat definition of “waste”. It was about understanding what’s happening and where it’s taking me.

Somewhere inside, a quiet but persistent signal turned on: I can’t keep going like this. This can’t continue. It’s time to take back at least some control over my life.

First steps: a notebook instead of self-deception

I started with the simplest thing: honesty. I took a regular paper notebook and began writing down where my time actually goes.

No complicated system. Just as it is:

• scrolling Reels and short videos,
• social media,
• news,
• games,
• mindless wandering around the internet,
• that morning inertia when I can’t start anything for hours and I just keep scrolling my phone.

For about ten days I kept these notes carefully. And after those same ten days I was hit with a strange feeling: I could see separate episodes, but I couldn’t see the scale.

I knew: “today I lost an hour”. But I didn’t understand: is that a lot or a little? Is it a one-off slip, or is it always like this? What happens if I keep doing this for years?

And that’s when I realized I needed a tool that shows not only “I spent an hour scrolling today”, but a simple, sober picture of consequences: what happens if I give this one hour every day.

Important: I wasn’t trying to “ban myself from rest”. Sometimes we really are tired, and we really do want silence. What scared me was something else: autopilot. When I don’t choose how to spend the evening, I just fall into the usual funnel and come back to myself late at night, with a heavy head and a feeling that the day somehow disappeared.

Why I built a prototype

I have an engineering background, and for the last 8 years I’ve worked in IT as a backend/fullstack developer. So the idea “build a small tool for yourself” felt natural to me. And honestly, I’ve always dreamed of making an app. That dream kept me inspired while working as an engineer.

But the more important thing is this: I didn’t sit down to build the prototype with the idea of “launching a product”. It was an attempt to close my own pain and see the truth in numbers, without drama and without self-deception.

I like numbers for one reason: they don’t shame you. They don’t moralize. They just show the scale. And then you decide for yourself: keep everything as it is, or change something.

The first screen and “the click”

I still clearly remember the first screen. There was no design. No “motivation”. Only numbers and a short caption.

If I keep spending 10-15 hours a week on my usual “trivial things”, then in ten years it turns into about 6,500 hours. 6,500 hours is not “oh well, it happens”. That’s around 270 days. Almost nine months of pure time. My first reaction was very simple and very honest:

“Damn, what the f*ck...”

Something clicked in that moment. Time stopped being an abstract background and turned into concrete pieces of life that I either throw into emptiness, or keep for myself.

That’s how Wastime was born, at first as a personal tool. As a reminder to myself that life is finite, and every day costs something.

And only later it became clear: this story isn’t only about me. A calm, honest look at your time, without shame and without a whip, can be helpful not only for me.

I don’t believe in “productivity for productivity’s sake”. What matters to me is something else: clarity and honesty. When you see where your life is going, you get your choice back: what to keep, and what to change.

I’ll be genuinely happy if the tools in the app end up helping not only me, but someone else too.