Before we start: I launched a Telegram channel where I share interesting stuff to read. You can follow it here. You can also get my advice for your crypto startup - you can read more here.

You have 3 minutes until the water gets boiled.
You spend 10 minutes in your Uber ride.
You sit for 1 hour at the airport's gate, waiting for the boarding to start.

What do you do in the meantime?

Well… your options for doing something meaningful are limited. There’s too little time to start a bigger thing (boiling water), you’re not comfortable enough (Uber) or need to be aware of your surroundings (airport).

But these short stretches of time between our main tasks - a.k.a. meantime - fill our and our users' lives.

When I was a teenager, I lived in the suburbs. Every weekday I spent about 2 hours in buses and subway to get in and out of school.

I had to be at the bus stop about 10 minutes before the schedule because the bus never arrived on time. When it did arrive, it was often so tightly filled with people that I couldn’t get in, let alone dream of finding a place to sit. The overcrowded bus crawling through a traffic jam was how I spent my mornings and evenings.

Despite these obstacles, I read. Almost every day I had a book under my arm and found a way to read it in the bus. It wasn’t a high-focus environment so I couldn’t read a math textbook, but it was good enough for novels and less complex learning material. Trying to read in this environment was a high-investment/high-reward thing to do.

Today, when I’m on a crowded bus, my instinct tells me to check some app on my phone.

The apps managed to replace books in my meantime slots because they are designed that way. Even if you wait 3 minutes for an elevator, you can check your e-mail and get a feeling that you are up to date. Or make 30 swipes on Tinder and feel as if you made progress in your dating live. Or finish a Duolingo class and get some sense of accomplishment.

They are what I call meantime products. Products designed to squeeze into these short breaks in our lives. And our fast-paced lives are full of these breaks.

There’s one research showing that average student used their smartphone for 6 h 53 minutes per day and picked up their phones 113 times. That means an average session lasted 3 min 39 seconds. If you have an iPhone, take it now and check your daily Pickups in the Screen Time app. I bet it’s at least 40 per day.

But meantime products don’t need to be meaningless.

If we look at the last century, there’s been a few products that tried to fill our short breaks.

In 1913 a man named Arthur Wynne published a new puzzle in supplement of the New York World. It later became one of the most Lindy products ever - a crossword.

It was a well-designed product. You had one puzzle to finish (crossword) divided into a series of microtasks (answers) and you could see your progress in real time (by filling the gaps on the crossword). You could stop anytime and return later (and watch the printed ads again!). And it was often a social product - you would ask friends for help when you couldn't figure out an answer.

***

In the 1920s we saw the rise of Reader’s Digest. In first editions, most articles were only two-pages long, so you could read them in a few minutes. Perfect for commuting, short breaks in the kitchen or bathroom.

First edition covered many subjects, from health (“Advice from a President’s Physician”), profiles (“Henry Ford, Dreamer and Worker”), politics (“Is the State too Vulgar?”), war (“The Future of Poison Gas”), science (“The Firefly’s Light”) and many more. This meant that you could buy one Reader’s Digest and share it with a whole family.

***

In the 1930s and 1940s we saw the rise of the pocket books.

These books became popular among soldiers fighting in the World War II because soldiers had a lot of meantime slots - as the saying goes, war is mostly waiting.

Publishers knew that pocket books are more likely to get dirty, so they found a way to make them more affordable. The books were not only smaller but also used lower quality paper. They also used different distribution channels: on top of being sold on bookstores, they were also available in high-traffic spots like railway stations.

Fun fact: Penguin - one of the largest publishers in the world today - started by selling pocket books.

***

Four decades later, in 1979 we saw a huge revolution - Sony Walkman has arrived.

It was a revolution because Walkman was hands-free, eyes-free and you could take it anywhere. You could listen to music and radio while moving, commuting, and doing chores. And man, people did that a lot.

Sometimes the device was even used in a multiplayer mode - I remember that in the Walkman era we often shared headphones with friends so we could listen to the music together.

***

A decade later, in 1989 we saw a new revolution coming in. Now we were able to play games more complex than newspaper’s crosswords or Tetris. We had Game Boy.

Game Boy's legendary, brick-like design was chosen to help the console survive hardships of travelling. And the games were way simpler than PC games and had shorter loops as they were designed for meantime gaming, not intentional gaming like on PCs.

Pokemon - an IP empire that since 1996 brought more revenue than Star Wars, Harry Potter, and GTA combined - started with a Game Boy game.

***

Then in 2008 we saw the rise of the iPhone that packed everything in one device - crosswords, articles, books, music, games and much more. And with the new device we saw the rise of new meantime giants - Duolingo, Angry Birds, Twitter, Tinder, TikTok and other apps.

Since smartphones are handy, they replaced my - and other people's - habit of reading physical books on the bus. And it’s easy to look at our phones today and assume that a "meantime product" must be some digital junk food. But our phones are vending machines. It’s up to product designers and users what they put inside.

They can put there candy bars or they can put apples.

We already saw some digital products that became our "apples in the vending machine".

We have Wordle with the promise of one high-quality puzzle per day. We have Duolingo with daily lessons. And Readwise’s read-it-later, where the goal is to finally read all our bookmarked content.

We have Accuweather with clear weather dashboards. And Apple Notes with inbox to dump our thoughts. There is Chess.com with micro-drills to practice our skills. And Techmeme with its daily digest newsletter. There's even Headspace to do nothing and relax.

And then there’s audio. Audiobooks and podcasts let us consume long content while doing our chores or working out. We might not spend 30 minutes reading an essay but we’d easily listen to a 30-minute podcast while driving to work.

If we want to enter this space and create ‘next Wordle’, we need to start by really understanding the context in which our user is going to open our app.

Our user has 10 seconds as they are waiting for an elevator. Or they have 3 minutes in the kitchen, waiting for the microwave to finish its job. Or they have 25 minutes on a playground, but they need to stay aware of the surroundings because they’re looking after their kid.

We can’t serve this busy user if our app takes 10 seconds to load. The session time can’t take too long either - user needs to get full value in a short, 10-300 seconds slot. Or if it takes longer, there needs to be an “Instant Resume" feature like on Kindle or Spotify, placing our user exactly where they left off.

Then the question is, do we care much about the total session time per day? World’s biggest apps are media apps where more time in the app means more ad revenue, so many PMs became obsessed with session time.

But your app doesn’t need to do that. You open Amazon, buy what you need, close it. You open Obsidian, check notes, close it. You open Chess.com, solve your daily riddle, close it. Your app could be a product where you “do something” and then get out.

Then what do we want our user to feel? Competence because they solved a Chess puzzle? Clarity because they checked the weather and know what to wear? Or a relief that they captured an idea that would otherwise go away?

Many social media apps invoke rage, jealousy and FOMO. But if you don’t need to join the ‘session time maxi’ religion, you can focus on positive emotions that would make your user happier.

Okay, so how could you adapt some of this meantime angle into crypto?

We already have some meantime products in our industry..

Most popular ones would be Coingecko and Polymarket, where you can check the prices and odds you’re interested in and leave. There are also some digest newsletters like ETHDaily. And I’d argue that popularity of Pump.fun could come from being able to open the app, see if you vibe with any meme, invest with two clicks and close it.

But this design space is way bigger.

Let’s say you run a vaults aggregator. You ask users for their risk appetite and show them 3 vaults per day. You do it in a Tinder-like fashion: dashboard + short description explaining where the yield comes from + swipe left to discard, swipe right to bookmark. After 20 days users have seen 60 vaults and can make more informed decisions about their investments.

Or your wallet shows users 3 permissions per week to review. They can revoke or whitelist them and they used their Uber ride to secure their assets rather than scrolling Twitter.

Or let’s say you are a CEX and you want your users to feel safer. So you build an Anti-scam training game, where users see different e-mails and have to pick a sketchy one.

Or your portfolio app tells you in December: “hey, you have 27 coins that went to $0. If you sell them before the end of the year, you can generate $80k in tax loss”. And you show the coins via a Tinder-like UI: swipe left to dump, swipe right to keep. In 3 minutes you can go through all of them.

There are many options to think about. What I want to stress here is that you don't need to rebuild your product, you can just add the meantime angle to what you already have.

Life isn’t just "big rocks", it’s mostly "water".

It's full of those short 3 minute gaps and while they used to be filled by paperback novels, they are now dominated by smartphones. But smartphones aren't inherently bad, they are just vending machines.

It’s up to builders whether they stock them with candy (TikTok) or apples (Wordle, Readwise, Duolingo). And if you think that all good ideas have already been explored, it's probably what someone in 1912 thought, before they saw a crossword, Reader's Digest, pocket books, walkman, game boy and iPhone.

So if you’re a product designer, don’t add another candy to your users' vending machine. Think how to add some apples. And always ask yourself "Can they use this app during the bathroom break?".

PS: And if you need my help in the process, I have some new slots to work with teams. You can read more here.

Before we start: I launched a Telegram channel where I share interesting stuff to read. You can follow it here. You can also get my advice for your crypto startup - you can read more here.

You have 3 minutes until the water gets boiled.
You spend 10 minutes in your Uber ride.
You sit for 1 hour at the airport's gate, waiting for the boarding to start.

What do you do in the meantime?

Well… your options for doing something meaningful are limited. There’s too little time to start a bigger thing (boiling water), you’re not comfortable enough (Uber) or need to be aware of your surroundings (airport).

But these short stretches of time between our main tasks - a.k.a. meantime - fill our and our users' lives.

When I was a teenager, I lived in the suburbs. Every weekday I spent about 2 hours in buses and subway to get in and out of school.

I had to be at the bus stop about 10 minutes before the schedule because the bus never arrived on time. When it did arrive, it was often so tightly filled with people that I couldn’t get in, let alone dream of finding a place to sit. The overcrowded bus crawling through a traffic jam was how I spent my mornings and evenings.

Despite these obstacles, I read. Almost every day I had a book under my arm and found a way to read it in the bus. It wasn’t a high-focus environment so I couldn’t read a math textbook, but it was good enough for novels and less complex learning material. Trying to read in this environment was a high-investment/high-reward thing to do.

Today, when I’m on a crowded bus, my instinct tells me to check some app on my phone.

The apps managed to replace books in my meantime slots because they are designed that way. Even if you wait 3 minutes for an elevator, you can check your e-mail and get a feeling that you are up to date. Or make 30 swipes on Tinder and feel as if you made progress in your dating live. Or finish a Duolingo class and get some sense of accomplishment.

They are what I call meantime products. Products designed to squeeze into these short breaks in our lives. And our fast-paced lives are full of these breaks.

There’s one research showing that average student used their smartphone for 6 h 53 minutes per day and picked up their phones 113 times. That means an average session lasted 3 min 39 seconds. If you have an iPhone, take it now and check your daily Pickups in the Screen Time app. I bet it’s at least 40 per day.

But meantime products don’t need to be meaningless.

If we look at the last century, there’s been a few products that tried to fill our short breaks.

In 1913 a man named Arthur Wynne published a new puzzle in supplement of the New York World. It later became one of the most Lindy products ever - a crossword.

It was a well-designed product. You had one puzzle to finish (crossword) divided into a series of microtasks (answers) and you could see your progress in real time (by filling the gaps on the crossword). You could stop anytime and return later (and watch the printed ads again!). And it was often a social product - you would ask friends for help when you couldn't figure out an answer.

***

In the 1920s we saw the rise of Reader’s Digest. In first editions, most articles were only two-pages long, so you could read them in a few minutes. Perfect for commuting, short breaks in the kitchen or bathroom.

First edition covered many subjects, from health (“Advice from a President’s Physician”), profiles (“Henry Ford, Dreamer and Worker”), politics (“Is the State too Vulgar?”), war (“The Future of Poison Gas”), science (“The Firefly’s Light”) and many more. This meant that you could buy one Reader’s Digest and share it with a whole family.

***

In the 1930s and 1940s we saw the rise of the pocket books.

These books became popular among soldiers fighting in the World War II because soldiers had a lot of meantime slots - as the saying goes, war is mostly waiting.

Publishers knew that pocket books are more likely to get dirty, so they found a way to make them more affordable. The books were not only smaller but also used lower quality paper. They also used different distribution channels: on top of being sold on bookstores, they were also available in high-traffic spots like railway stations.

Fun fact: Penguin - one of the largest publishers in the world today - started by selling pocket books.

***

Four decades later, in 1979 we saw a huge revolution - Sony Walkman has arrived.

It was a revolution because Walkman was hands-free, eyes-free and you could take it anywhere. You could listen to music and radio while moving, commuting, and doing chores. And man, people did that a lot.

Sometimes the device was even used in a multiplayer mode - I remember that in the Walkman era we often shared headphones with friends so we could listen to the music together.

***

A decade later, in 1989 we saw a new revolution coming in. Now we were able to play games more complex than newspaper’s crosswords or Tetris. We had Game Boy.

Game Boy's legendary, brick-like design was chosen to help the console survive hardships of travelling. And the games were way simpler than PC games and had shorter loops as they were designed for meantime gaming, not intentional gaming like on PCs.

Pokemon - an IP empire that since 1996 brought more revenue than Star Wars, Harry Potter, and GTA combined - started with a Game Boy game.

***

Then in 2008 we saw the rise of the iPhone that packed everything in one device - crosswords, articles, books, music, games and much more. And with the new device we saw the rise of new meantime giants - Duolingo, Angry Birds, Twitter, Tinder, TikTok and other apps.

Since smartphones are handy, they replaced my - and other people's - habit of reading physical books on the bus. And it’s easy to look at our phones today and assume that a "meantime product" must be some digital junk food. But our phones are vending machines. It’s up to product designers and users what they put inside.

They can put there candy bars or they can put apples.

We already saw some digital products that became our "apples in the vending machine".

We have Wordle with the promise of one high-quality puzzle per day. We have Duolingo with daily lessons. And Readwise’s read-it-later, where the goal is to finally read all our bookmarked content.

We have Accuweather with clear weather dashboards. And Apple Notes with inbox to dump our thoughts. There is Chess.com with micro-drills to practice our skills. And Techmeme with its daily digest newsletter. There's even Headspace to do nothing and relax.

And then there’s audio. Audiobooks and podcasts let us consume long content while doing our chores or working out. We might not spend 30 minutes reading an essay but we’d easily listen to a 30-minute podcast while driving to work.

If we want to enter this space and create ‘next Wordle’, we need to start by really understanding the context in which our user is going to open our app.

Our user has 10 seconds as they are waiting for an elevator. Or they have 3 minutes in the kitchen, waiting for the microwave to finish its job. Or they have 25 minutes on a playground, but they need to stay aware of the surroundings because they’re looking after their kid.

We can’t serve this busy user if our app takes 10 seconds to load. The session time can’t take too long either - user needs to get full value in a short, 10-300 seconds slot. Or if it takes longer, there needs to be an “Instant Resume" feature like on Kindle or Spotify, placing our user exactly where they left off.

Then the question is, do we care much about the total session time per day? World’s biggest apps are media apps where more time in the app means more ad revenue, so many PMs became obsessed with session time.

But your app doesn’t need to do that. You open Amazon, buy what you need, close it. You open Obsidian, check notes, close it. You open Chess.com, solve your daily riddle, close it. Your app could be a product where you “do something” and then get out.

Then what do we want our user to feel? Competence because they solved a Chess puzzle? Clarity because they checked the weather and know what to wear? Or a relief that they captured an idea that would otherwise go away?

Many social media apps invoke rage, jealousy and FOMO. But if you don’t need to join the ‘session time maxi’ religion, you can focus on positive emotions that would make your user happier.

Okay, so how could you adapt some of this meantime angle into crypto?

We already have some meantime products in our industry..

Most popular ones would be Coingecko and Polymarket, where you can check the prices and odds you’re interested in and leave. There are also some digest newsletters like ETHDaily. And I’d argue that popularity of Pump.fun could come from being able to open the app, see if you vibe with any meme, invest with two clicks and close it.

But this design space is way bigger.

Let’s say you run a vaults aggregator. You ask users for their risk appetite and show them 3 vaults per day. You do it in a Tinder-like fashion: dashboard + short description explaining where the yield comes from + swipe left to discard, swipe right to bookmark. After 20 days users have seen 60 vaults and can make more informed decisions about their investments.

Or your wallet shows users 3 permissions per week to review. They can revoke or whitelist them and they used their Uber ride to secure their assets rather than scrolling Twitter.

Or let’s say you are a CEX and you want your users to feel safer. So you build an Anti-scam training game, where users see different e-mails and have to pick a sketchy one.

Or your portfolio app tells you in December: “hey, you have 27 coins that went to $0. If you sell them before the end of the year, you can generate $80k in tax loss”. And you show the coins via a Tinder-like UI: swipe left to dump, swipe right to keep. In 3 minutes you can go through all of them.

There are many options to think about. What I want to stress here is that you don't need to rebuild your product, you can just add the meantime angle to what you already have.

Life isn’t just "big rocks", it’s mostly "water".

It's full of those short 3 minute gaps and while they used to be filled by paperback novels, they are now dominated by smartphones. But smartphones aren't inherently bad, they are just vending machines.

It’s up to builders whether they stock them with candy (TikTok) or apples (Wordle, Readwise, Duolingo). And if you think that all good ideas have already been explored, it's probably what someone in 1912 thought, before they saw a crossword, Reader's Digest, pocket books, walkman, game boy and iPhone.

So if you’re a product designer, don’t add another candy to your users' vending machine. Think how to add some apples. And always ask yourself "Can they use this app during the bathroom break?".

PS: And if you need my help in the process, I have some new slots to work with teams. You can read more here.