Who writes this blog
Dave Faliskie
I'm a solo founder and mobile developer, and I built Stress Less. I write everything on this blog from my own experience tracking stress, and I cite real experts for anything medical.
Why I write about stress
I shipped the first version of Stress Less in 2019, shortly after being laid off, while dealing with the stress of that situation myself. The app came out of a fairly specific frustration: everything I found either wanted twenty quiet minutes I didn't have, or it let me record how bad I felt without ever helping me do anything about it.
Seven years later people were still opening it, and new people were still downloading a version built in 2019. That was the signal that brought me back. I rebuilt it from scratch around Apple's Foundation Models, so the personalization runs on your phone and your stress data stays there.
I still check in most days, and the examples in these posts come from my own logs. A couple of things I only worked out by looking back: I assumed my worst days were the ones I launched updates to my apps on, and they turned out to be the two or three days afterward. I'd also have told you a car ride was the least stressful part of traveling, right up until my own entries said otherwise.
What I build
I build independently as 1ManStartup, from Virginia and while traveling. I started programming in 2015 and began building mobile apps in 2019, and I've shipped a shelf of them since. There's a fuller picture of that work, including the apps that have nothing to do with stress, on 1manstartup.com.
How these posts are made
Stress is a health topic, so it's worth being direct about what I am and what I'm not.
- I'm not a clinician. I have no medical or psychological training. What I can offer is experience: building a stress app and tracking my own stress for years.
- Anything medical gets a real source. Claims about your body link out to places like NIH, CDC, APA, or peer-reviewed research, and every source is checked against the claim before it goes in. If a claim can't be supported, it comes out rather than getting softened into something vague.
- I say when the evidence is mixed. Some popular advice is shakier than it's usually presented. Where that's true, I say so in the post instead of picking whichever study agrees with me.
- AI helps with research and editing. The experience and the opinions are mine. A note at the end of each post says the same thing.
- No borrowed statistics. Stress Less keeps data on your device, which means I have no aggregate user data and will never quote any. When I cite numbers from logs, they're my own.
Nothing here is medical advice. If stress is affecting your health, talk to a doctor or a licensed therapist. In the US, the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline takes calls and texts around the clock.
Recent writing
Get in touch
If something here is wrong, or a source doesn't say what I claimed it says, I want to know. Email me at dave@stresslessdaily.com.