The problem that kept coming back
I read a lot. Or at least, I save a lot.
Articles, newsletters, links from friends. All saved with good intent.
Most of them untouched.
My reading list kept growing, quietly judging me from the side. Every link was something I wanted to read. Something useful. Something I believed would make me better at my work.
But the truth was simple: reading needed time I didn't have in the moments I actually lived.
The quiet guilt of "later"
I tried to be sensible about it.
Read-later apps. Bookmarks. Neat folders with names like Important or Weekend.
None of them helped.
They all assumed the same thing: that one day I would sit down, open a screen, and read.
That day rarely came.
What I felt wasn't laziness. It was a mismatch. Reading asked for focus at the exact times my life was already full.
When the real issue became clear
The problem wasn't the content. And it wasn't discipline.
It was format.
Reading competes with work, family, and energy. Listening fits around them.
I already listened to podcasts while walking, commuting, or doing chores. Those moments existed every day. Reading never reached them.
That's when the thought landed:
What if the content I already save could meet me there instead?
The first rough version
The first version of Speasy was basic.
Paste a link. Get audio.
No polish. No real design. Just enough to test the idea.
I sent articles to it and added the audio to my podcast app. Then I went for a walk.
For the first time, my backlog started shrinking.
Not because I tried harder. But because it finally fit into my life.
Zooming in: making it actually work
The early version proved the idea, but it also broke in obvious ways.
Turning a web page into audio is easy. Turning an article into audio is not.
Design decision 1: defining what counts as an article
Many pages look like articles, but aren't.
They include:
- Navigation
- Related links
- Promos
- Comments
- Paywalls
Early versions read everything. It sounded clumsy and unfocused.
So the question became: what should Speasy refuse to read?
The answer wasn't "everything we can parse". It was "only what someone would choose to listen to".
That meant:
- Stripping aggressively
- Rejecting pages that didn't meet a quality bar
- Accepting failure as a valid outcome
Some links simply don't belong in audio form. Letting them through would erode trust faster than saying no.
Design decision 2: where listening should happen
Once audio quality improved, a bigger choice emerged.
I could build a player inside the app. Most products do.
But I already had a listening habit, and it didn't live there.
It lived in my podcast app.
So Speasy sends audio out instead of pulling attention in.
Each article becomes an episode. Each user gets a private feed.
This removed entire layers of friction:
- No new player to learn
- No separate queue to manage
- No need to remember to come back
It also imposed a constraint: once the audio leaves the app, it has to stand on its own.
Design decision 3: designing a queue that doesn't rush you
That constraint showed up quickly.
What happens when you don't finish an article?
Early attempts tried to help:
- Progress tracking
- Suggestions
- Nudges
They added weight.
So the behaviour was simplified:
- Finished items move on
- Unfinished items wait
- Nothing asks for attention
The queue doesn't care if you fall behind. It just stays ready.
This changed the tone of the whole product.
Learning from use
Living with Speasy surfaced patterns I didn't expect.
I listened more when walking than sitting. Short pieces worked better than long ones. Progress mattered more than completion.
Friends who tried it didn't ask for features. They asked when it would be available again.
The private feed was the thing people remembered.
None of this came from planning. It came from letting the system run.
Where it landed
Speasy turns saved articles into audio you can listen to like a podcast.
But more importantly, it treats attention as limited and energy as uneven.
It doesn't try to motivate. It doesn't try to optimise every moment.
It sets up a structure that works quietly in the background.
Once the audio leaves the app, I can't guide behaviour step by step. That forced me to design with defaults, not prompts. With patience, not pressure.
Speasy isn't finished.
But it already does the one thing I needed most:
It gives time back, without asking for more.