Momo: ADHD Body Doubling

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Inspiration

I was diagnosed with ADHD at 23, during my master's. It finally explained a pattern I'd never been able to make sense of: I could handle hard engineering problems, but not the easy administrative ones. I could do the hard thing and not the easy thing.

The moment that made it real was a visa application. It was maybe an hour of form-filling, and I'd known about it for weeks. I still couldn't start it, and I missed a family trip because of it.

Then I found something that worked. When someone sat near me doing their own work, I finished that same form in 50 minutes. The ADHD community calls this body doubling. The other person doesn't help, check on you, or say anything. They're just there. A witness is all that is needed to collapse the space between having the intention to start work and actually starting to work. A silent library made it worse. Another person working beside me changed everything.

The problem is that you can't always get a person. It's 9pm on a Tuesday, the form is due, and asking someone to come sit in your room feels like a lot. So I built Momo: a raccoon who sits at the table and does her own paperwork while you do yours. I know a cartoon raccoon isn't a person, but the ritual around her works, and you can invite a real friend into the same session whenever you want.

I named the app Momo: ADHD Body Doubling because that's exactly what it is. It's my diagnosis, not a lucrative demographic for a wellness brand.

I wrote the full story here: I Named My iOS App After My Own Diagnosis