Aeternus

I had a weird moment last month. I was in a product meeting, and someone suggested we add push notifications to remind users to complete their daily reflections.

On the surface, it makes sense. Retention! Engagement! DAU/MAU ratios! But something felt wrong, and it took me a while to articulate why.

The Real Question We Forgot to Ask

We were so focused on "will this increase usage?" that we forgot to ask: "will this actually help the person?" Because here's the thing if someone needs an external notification to remind them to reflect, maybe the real problem is that our reflection experience isn't valuable enough to remember.

The notification would have increased our metrics. But it would have also trained users to depend on external prompts instead of developing their own internal motivation. That's the opposite of what we're trying to do.

Dharma in Code

In Sanskrit, "dharma" roughly means "that which upholds." It's both the cosmic order and the individual's righteous path within that order. When I code, I try to ask: is this feature aligned with dharma? Does it uphold human flourishing, or does it extract value from it?

This might sound abstract, but it has very practical implications:

We don't use dark patterns. No fake urgency, no "you'll lose your data!" scare tactics, no deliberately confusing UI to prevent cancellations.
We don't optimize for addiction. If a user completes their goal and closes the app, that's a success, not a failure.
We build for autonomy. The goal is to help users develop internal capacities, not to make them dependent on our tool forever.

The Uncomfortable Business Reality

I won't pretend this is easy. VCs don't get excited when you say, "our success metric is whether users eventually don't need us anymore." Traditional SaaS wisdom says make your product sticky. Make switching costs high. Lock them in.

But I think that model is slowly dying. Users are getting smarter about manipulation. The apps that will win long-term are the ones that genuinely serve human flourishing instead of exploiting human weakness.

We might be wrong. This might be a terrible business strategy. But I'd rather fail doing something I believe in than succeed building something I'm ashamed of.