KickMint is designed against that. No streaks, no badges, no overdue counts, no "you missed" notifications. This page explains why.
What the research says about ADHD and shame
Adult ADHD has a documented shame and self-criticism overlay. Newark and Stieglitz (2010) review the cognitive-behavioral literature and identify chronic self-blame as one of the most therapy-relevant factors specific to adult ADHD. The pattern is well known to ADHD-aware clinicians: the person has spent decades attributing executive-function failures to moral failure, because that is the story the environment offered.
The vocabulary that has emerged inside the ADHD community for the experiential side of this is rejection sensitive dysphoria, often shortened to RSD. The clinical literature on RSD as a named entity is still developing (Bedrossian, 2021), and it is best treated as a self-report pattern rather than a discrete diagnosis. But the operational implication for product design is clear: feedback designed to motivate via shame will reliably backfire for this audience.
The design rules we derived
We translated the research into concrete rules. They show up consistently across every screen.
No streaks. Streak mechanics convert "I did the thing every day" into "I broke the streak today." For ADHD, the second framing is the dominant one. The benefit of streaks for sustained habit formation is documented (Kwasnicka et al., 2016) but is not specific to ADHD and is outweighed by the shame cost in this population.
No overdue counts. A task that is "overdue" is a category KickMint does not maintain. Tasks have states (ready, deferred, completed, archived) but never an angry red number attached. The Today view is filtered to ready and deferred tasks created or updated since yesterday, so unfinished work carries forward without an accusation.
No "you missed" notifications. If you do not open the app for a week, the next time you open it KickMint says "Good to see you. Want to start fresh?" That is the entire script. The optional "Start fresh today" button archives your open tasks at once and gives you a clean Today view. The archived tasks are recoverable.
Progress as patterns, not as scores. The Weekly Review describes what happened, not how well. "You moved three things forward this week" is fact-based and morally neutral. "You tend to focus best on Tuesday mornings" is a pattern the user can use, not a grade. The Weekly Review never compares this week to last week, because that comparison is exactly where the shame loop activates.
Quiet empty states. When there is nothing to do, the empty state is "All clear. Nothing waiting for you." That is the entire message. Not "Great job staying on top of things!" (which the brain will frame as ironic on a bad day), not a streak counter resetting, not a leaderboard. Just calm.
What we did not remove
We kept difficulty acknowledgment. When you complete a task that you had tagged as hard, the reward message comes from a curated pool that names the difficulty: "That was the hard part, and you did it." We kept this because the same RSD-aware audience that rejects fake praise responds to specific, accurate recognition.
We kept the sense of momentum. The Focus session ring counts up, not down, so you see what you have built rather than what you are losing.
We kept a non-judgmental version of structure. The Daily Routine Markers strip names where you are in the day. It does not say "you should be done by now."
What changes if you have AuDHD
The shame-free rules carry through. Three additional layers compose for AuDHD users who want them:
- PDA-aware tone, which softens imperatives in the prompt and in the UI copy.
- Stealth mode, which removes nearly all motion and notification surface.
- Stuck Recovery, which produces five-step plans capped at five minutes per step, with no implicit deadline.
If you want to read more
- Newark, P. E., & Stieglitz, R. D. (2010). Therapy-relevant factors in adult ADHD from a cognitive behavioural perspective. Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity Disorders, 2(2), 59-72.
- Bedrossian, L. (2021). Understanding rejection sensitive dysphoria and supporting students in the higher education learning environment. Disability Compliance for Higher Education, 26(10).
- Kwasnicka, D., et al. (2016). Theoretical explanations for maintenance of behaviour change: a systematic review of behaviour theories. Health Psychology Review, 10(3), 277-296.
The full bibliography is at /science. KickMint is a productivity tool, not therapy. Medical disclaimer at /medical-disclaimer.