NOW AVAILABLE ON iOS & ANDROID.
The Cross-Platform Digital Wellness App Outsmarting Billion-Dollar Scrolling Habits
Paced replaces rigid digital penalties with a compassionate "Wait vs. Walk" pattern interrupt—helping busy professionals and parents turn mindless screen time into conscious daily movement.
Recent Press Highlights
« J’ai passé trois mois sur Instagram hier soir. Cette boutade vous interpelle ? Paced est pour vous. »
"I spent three months on Instagram last night. Does this joke resonate with you? Paced is for you." — Alain McKenna, La Presse
"The Paced app turns steps into screen time." — Matthew Mountjoy, MobileSyrup
Why Paced is Different : Compassion Over Punishment
"You’re not lazy. You’re just fighting a supercomputer with a human brain."
Most screen-time apps are "Digital Jailers." They punish you, block you, and shame you for having no willpower.
Paced is the world’s first "Compassionate Pattern Interrupt."
The problem isn't your willpower; it's the 'Infinite Scroll.' We don't doomscroll because we are lazy; we do it to numb out. We check our phones to avoid overwhelm, stress, or boredom, and suddenly an hour is gone.
Paced introduces healthy friction. By trading scrolling for strolling, it physically changes your state, stopping the passive consumption so you can get back to active living.
How It Works: Wait vs. Walk
Most screen-time apps lock you out entirely when your limit is up. Paced does something completely different: it interrupts your scroll, initiates a lockout timer, and gives you a choice.
You can either sit and wait out the clock, or you can walk to unlock it faster.
The Interrupt: Paced catches you when you try to open a distracting app, snapping you out of the autopilot trance.
The Timer: The app locks you out for a set duration.
The Shortcut: Don't want to wait? You can physically walk to speed up the timer and regain access.
The Golden Ratio: 100 Steps = 3 Minutes of Time.
This physical action snaps the user out of the "scrolling trance" and gives them a moment of conscious awareness to decide: "Do I really want to scroll, or should I get back to living?"
The Spark: A Facebook Post, a Podcast, and AI.
The seed for Paced was planted months before the app was ever built. In January 2025, Rhonda noticed a massive flaw in standard screen time apps: users could blow through their entire daily time limit in one sitting.
She posted a simple question to her Facebook network: "What if an app locked you out, but let you earn time back sooner if you got a minimum amount of steps?" The concept resonated immediately, proving there was a real market gap.
The Catalyst
The idea sat until July, when Rhonda listened to an episode of Mel Robbins discussing the neurobiology of phone addiction. Suddenly, the science backed up her January Facebook post: Digital locks fail because they don't require physical friction to bypass.
The Execution
That same afternoon, she walked into her local favorite, TOT Cafe in Saskatoon, opened her laptop, and went to work.
Treating AI (Google's Gemini) as her fractional C-Suite, she spent the next few hours hashing out the concept. Before she left the cafe, she had:
Verified the market gap she found in January.
Locked in the "Paced" name.
Secured the web domains and social handles.
Mapped out the core "Wait vs. Walk" mechanic for her developers.
Paced By The Numbers
Weekly Habit Rate ~ 67.2% Over 2 out of 3 monthly users return every week—proving Paced builds lasting habits instead of being deleted.
Daily Use Rate ~ 41.9% Nearly 42% of active users rely on Paced every single day to trade mindless scrolling for real-world movement.
App Reliability ~ 99.96% Crash-Free Flawless cross-platform performance on both iPhone and Android with zero battery drain.
The Founder Story: Rhonda Lavoie
"I built Paced because I realized willpower is a losing battle against billion-dollar algorithms."
Rhonda Lavoie is a top-producing real estate agent and parent in Saskatoon. She didn't build Paced because she wanted to run a tech company—she built it because she was tired of losing her afternoons to screen fatigue.
When she tried existing app blockers, she hated how restrictive they were. So, operating as a solo founder without Silicon Valley backing, she used modern AI tools to manage an international team and build Paced herself.
quiting wasn't an option because the problem was too real. Today, Paced proves that a simple, respectful idea from the Canadian prairies can help people everywhere trade endless scrolling for real life.
From the Prairies to the App Stores
Bootstrapping a Global App with AI
Paced is an independent tech success story born in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Operating as a solo, non-technical founder without venture capital funding, Rhonda Lavoie built a world-class app by combining resourcefulness with modern AI tools.
Instead of burning millions of dollars, Rhonda used AI as her executive partner to map out the app, manage an international engineering team, and launch across both iOS and Android.
Quitting was never an option because the problem of phone addiction is too big to ignore. Today, Paced proves that a solo founder operating outside traditional tech hubs can build a rock-solid, global tool that helps people trade mindless scrolling for real life.
Media Inquiries
For interviews, review copies, or high-res assets:
Rhonda Lavoie