I built Coji because I needed it.
This is the story of long COVID, a brain that never stopped, and slowly learning that getting everything done isn't the same as being okay.
For most of my life, I wasn't lazy. If anything, the opposite. I was chaotic. Always moving, always starting things, always saying yes. Always, somehow, getting it done.
I could hold enormous complexity. Take on more than anyone thought possible and deliver. Hyperfocus for twelve hours straight, lose myself completely in something, and come out the other side with something brilliant and a body that had forgotten to eat, sleep, or stop.
From the outside, I looked like I was managing. And I was. I just had no idea what it was costing me. The exhaustion that came after. The days of recovery nobody saw. The way my system would eventually hit a wall I hadn't noticed building.
"I always got things done. But I got them done at my own expense, and I didn't know any other way."
Nobody had ever suggested there might be a different way to operate. So I just kept going. Like I always do.
Then I got COVID. And then I didn't really get better.
Long COVID is a strange illness. Some days I felt almost normal. Other days I couldn't walk to the kitchen without needing to lie down. The fatigue wasn't like being tired. It was a full-body shutdown. My brain stopped working the way it used to. I'd lose words mid-sentence. I'd forget things immediately after being told them. I'd try to do a simple task and just... stall. Nothing would start.
The medical system didn't really know what to do with me. I was bounced around. Told to rest. Told to pace myself. But nobody gave me tools. Nobody explained how to actually live inside a body that had become unpredictable.
I started tracking everything: energy levels, symptoms, sleep, what I managed to do and what I couldn't. Not because I was organised, but because I was desperate to find patterns. To understand what was happening to me.
What I found was that I had no consistent capacity. Some days I had 30% of my normal energy. Some days 60%. Almost never 100%. And I was still trying to live like a 100% person, and failing, and blaming myself for failing.
The concept of battery levels, of knowing exactly what you have to work with that day, started forming in my head. Not as an app idea. Just as a survival tool.
At university, I got a diagnosis: dyspraxia. I didn't really know what that meant.
It was mentioned almost in passing. A note in my file. I looked it up briefly, saw something about coordination and motor skills, and filed it away without a second thought. I was clumsy, sure. I bumped into things. My handwriting was a mess. Okay, so that's what that is. And I moved on.
I had never, at any point, thought I might have ADHD. I knew the stereotype: the hyperactive little boy who couldn't sit still in class. I was someone who got things done. I just assumed I wasn't the type.
"The dyspraxia label sat there, unused. A word I'd been given but not really handed."
So I kept going. Like I always do. The diagnosis didn't change anything, because I didn't yet understand what it was actually telling me.
Long COVID forced me to slow down enough to actually look. And when I looked, I started reading about dyspraxia properly, not the one-line definition I'd skimmed at university. Everything.
And I found that dyspraxia is so much more than coordination. It affects how the brain processes information. It affects spelling and numeracy, things I'd struggled with for years without realising, and put down to not concentrating hard enough. It affects working memory, sensory processing, spatial reasoning, fatigue. The cognitive overhead of everyday physical tasks that other people seem to do without thinking.
Through dyspraxia, I found the wider world of neurodivergence. And through that, I started reading about ADHD. Not because I thought I had it. The stereotype still had me convinced that wasn't me. But the research kept overlapping. And I'd read something and think: oh. that's me. I do that. I've always done that.
These conditions don't sit in neat separate boxes. They're intersectional. And that intersectionality is exactly why so many people go undiagnosed, or get diagnosed with only one piece of a much bigger picture.
I wasn't chaotic because I was broken. I was running a system nobody had given me the manual for, and the manual turned out to be far more layered than a single word in a student health file.
But properly sitting with the dyspraxia diagnosis was different to anything else.
Where recognising ADHD patterns had felt like an explanation for how I think, dyspraxia explained my body. The chronic fatigue that went beyond long COVID. The spatial awareness issues I'd always had but put down to being clumsy. The way my proprioception was just slightly off: always bumping into things, dropping things, misjudging distances. The exhaustion of doing things that other people seemed to do automatically, without thinking. The spelling. The numbers. The way information that should have stuck just didn't.
Dyspraxia affects motor coordination, but it goes much deeper than that. It affects how the brain and body communicate. How energy is used in movement and processing. How much cognitive overhead everyday physical tasks consume, unnoticed by anyone else.
"I had been spending enormous amounts of energy on things I didn't even know I was spending energy on. Every day. For my entire life."
Finally understanding that diagnosis didn't just explain things. It changed how I treated myself. I stopped pushing through. I started factoring in recovery time. I stopped scheduling my life as if I had the energy baseline of someone without any of these conditions.
And I started building tools that could actually hold all of that complexity, without me having to explain it to anyone, or justify why I needed to rest, or apologise for having a different rhythm.
Coji Universe came from wanting to exist somewhere that didn't demand I be a neurotypical person. Every productivity app I'd tried assumed you had consistent energy, a predictable schedule, and a brain that would do what it was told. None of them were built for the reality of my life.
I wanted an app that understood battery levels, not as a metaphor but as a genuine input that shapes what you can do today. I wanted a tool that helped me prioritise based on my actual energy, not just urgency. I wanted a companion that didn't judge me for having a bad day, or a bad week.
I wanted something that felt like it was designed for my brain.
Why Coji exists
Coji is for everyone who spent years thinking the problem was them. For every person who failed at a system not designed for their brain. For everyone whose diagnoses came late, or haven't come yet, or who is still finding the words.
It's for the late-diagnosed ADHD adults who are rebuilding their sense of self. For the long COVID community navigating unpredictable capacity. For autistic people managing sensory overwhelm. For people with chronic illness trying to have a life within real constraints. For anyone who is neurodivergent and exhausted from pretending otherwise.
The "oh, this is what I need" moments I've had, learning about my brain piece by piece, getting older and understanding myself more, are what Coji is designed to support. Every feature exists because I, or someone like me, needed it and couldn't find it anywhere.
I'm still learning. New things about my brain, new ways of working with my body, new language for things I've always experienced but couldn't name. That process doesn't stop. And Coji won't stop either.
I built this from the inside out, and I keep building it for the people who need it most.
