Review: Flipper Busy Bar

I used the Busy Bar in WIRED’s open office, and my coworkers mostly just ignored it. One person jokingly asked if I was too busy for him, but then we just talked about other things anyway. When I needed to record audio in our studio, I flipped the Busy Bar to ON AIR mode and faced it outside on the glass. While the screen is bright, the small device isn’t exactly easy to spot from across the vast expanse of an open office. (To be fair, we also have a much larger ON AIR sign on the studio as well, and people still ignore that.) Mostly, I keep the bar on my desk in clock mode.

The Busy Bar is much better for keeping yourself busy. You can change the timer settings, but the Busy Bar’s countdown system defaults to the Pomodoro technique, which divides work into 20-minute segments separated by five-minute breaks. As the timer ticks down, a little Dr. Mario–esque pill around the BUSY icon fills up, adding an extra visual stimulus to indicate that you’re getting through the session. It starts to feel very rewarding to fill up the little pill, then slap the timer on top and hop up for a break. (I’m using it right now as I type, only 1 minute and 42 seconds to go!)

Flipper does say more features are coming to the Busy Bar, like a more expansive app library and the ability to better modify the open source operating system within. That will be the test of how people really use the Busy Bar, watching the settings and features people add to it. (You know someone’s going to play Doom on it.)

For now, the Busy Bar will likely be seen as an overengineered focus tool that only certain people find useful. It’s hard to recommend at $250, especially since it syncs with the Busy app that you can already download and use for free. But if this thing is for you, you’ll probably be enamored with it. Hell, it’s the only thing that got me to focus enough to write this story on time. OK, almost on time.