The Anti-App
Most meditation apps are content apps with calming aesthetics. They want you coming back daily, consuming more. It's a business model thing.
A good meditation teacher does the opposite — they teach you to sit comfortably, in silence, with yourself.
The goal is your independence, not your retention.
I started with that goal. Around that time, I was learning about different schools of meditation, and the Buddhist and Ayurvedic histories that brought them to us.
Koans stood out.
Koans are the Rinzai Zen practice of sitting with paradoxical phrases that resist logical answers. They have roots that run through much of East Asian Buddhism.
Some people say "koan study" but this feels like a misnomer to me. The idea isn't to study them or unlock them like riddles. It's to just sit with them, in meditation or in regular life. To let them be with you, and let them go at the same time. (Grasping is this whole thing in Buddhism.)
The underlying impression I got from Rinzai is that we don't need to earn enlightenment, per se.
Some ants work their whole lives toward the fruit. Others sit under the tree and let it fall. The Rinzai masters say we are all already enlightened! It's just we have trouble noticing it!
One Line For Your Mind was inspired by this. Each session offers a single line, the kind of thing that feels just beyond the reach of logic, something you sit with rather than solve. It lets you respond, only to play with the fallacy of responding.
Three to five clicks. Then it tells you, enough.
Go.
Be.
I built the first version years ago.
At one point, I added a notification.
"Your next session is ready."
It felt wrong though. If the thing has value, people will return on their own terms. I removed it.
"Your next session will be here waiting for you."
Turns out not doing the things 'apps' are supposed to was better for 'retention'.
Around 3-4% of cold users — people who found it through social media, not searching for a meditation app — kept coming back. That was about four times higher than bigger meditation apps at the time.
No notifications, no email signup, no streak mechanic.
Just the thing itself.