Why I built Untethered

I remember one Christmas morning waking up at about 4am, way too early, just lying there wide awake because I knew in a few hours I would be getting an iPod Touch.

I was ridiculously excited. It genuinely felt like something was about to change, like I had unlocked something new. I would never have to be bored again.

Which is funny because I definitely had a Nintendo DS at that point and could have just played Pokemon, but I must have decided I was too grown up for that and moved on to something far more mature like Doodle Jump.

For a while, it actually felt like that promise was real. Facebook started to become a thing, and that little notification ping was addictive straight away.

It felt important, like something was happening, like people needed me or were thinking about me. It gave you this tiny hit of excitement every time, and I just got used to that being there all the time.

I guess from that point on, I never really was bored again.

At some point it stopped being fun and just became the default. I was no longer seeing what my school friends were up to I was seeing the world being destroyed.

I did not notice it happening, but my ADHD got a lot worse. I do not even really remember having ADHD as a teenager, or at least not in the way I experience it now.

It is more like I cannot sit with anything for long enough to get into it properly. Everything gets interrupted.

I started having less and less time for the things I actually care about, or at least that is what I told myself. The truth is I had the time, I just did not have the energy.

I am constantly running at about 40%, which is enough to get through the day but not enough to actually do anything properly. Not enough to feel like I am really living my life.

I love filmmaking. A few years ago I hiked from Mexico to Canada and made a film about it. It is still just sitting on my hard drive. Two years later and I have not released it.

I keep telling myself I do not have time, but that is not really true. I do have the time. What I do not have is the focus or the energy to actually sit down and finish it.

Every time I try, I end up on my phone. Scrolling, checking things, jumping between apps. Before I know it, the day is gone and I have done nothing that actually matters to me.

Then something kind of accidental happened. I dropped my phone and broke it.

At first it was pretty stressful. That feeling of not having it, not being able to check things, not knowing how I was going to manage basic stuff.

But after the first day, once that initial withdrawal feeling wore off, something shifted. I started to feel a lot calmer. More present. My head just felt quieter.

The next couple of days were actually great. I was not constantly reaching for something. I was not being pulled in different directions all the time. I could just exist without that constant background noise.

Obviously, it was not sustainable. I needed maps to get places, I needed WhatsApp to talk to people, and I needed basic things that you kind of rely on without thinking about it.

So I got my phone fixed. Pretty much straight away, I slipped back into the exact same habits.

Then I broke it again. Same thing happened. Stress, then a couple of really good days, then I fixed it and went straight back to how things were before.

The third time it happened, it was hard to ignore. It was not just bad luck. It was a pattern.

Every time my phone disappeared, my life got noticeably better. Every time it came back, so did all the habits I did not like.

I started trying the obvious fixes. App blockers, screen time limits, all of that stuff. None of it worked.

It is too easy to get around if you know how. And if you are the kind of person who is already aware enough to try and fix the problem, you are definitely capable of undoing whatever restrictions you have put in place.

It just turns into a constant battle with yourself, and most of the time you lose.

I looked into dumb phones as well, but they did not really solve it either. They are too restrictive. You lose things you actually need, like maps, messaging, and basic modern functionality.

The few minimal phones that do exist either still let too much through, or they are just really expensive for what they are.

At that point it clicked that the problem was not really something I could fix with software on my existing phone.

The phone itself is the problem. It is designed to pull you back in, and trying to fight that with more apps or more settings does not really make sense.

What I actually wanted was something in between. A phone that lets me do what I need to do in the real world, but does not constantly try to take my attention away from it.

Untethered is basically the phone I wish I had all those times I broke mine.

Something that keeps the useful parts, like messaging, maps, and music, but removes everything that is designed to keep you hooked. No feeds, no endless scrolling, no easy way back into the same habits.

It is not a dumb phone, and it is not a normal smartphone either. It sits somewhere in the middle.

I did not build it because I thought it was a good business idea. I built it because I kept accidentally experiencing a version of life that felt better, and I could not find a way to keep it without completely disconnecting from everything.

This is just an attempt to make that version of life the default instead of something that only happens when your phone is broken.