I think that being paid is part of the thrust. If you ignore Kiki which you have bought to ruthlessly force you to stay focused, you feel bad for squandering the money. Kiki is for people so desperate that they explicitly asked for a strict master and no escape hatch anywhere.

> Will KIKI judge me for my poor time management?

> Yes. That's part of why it works.

Sunk cost reasoning only goes so far. See all the people who buy gym memberships or things they promise they're surely going to use, before quickly forgetting about them in spite of the large upfront costs.

It's frustrating to me how often sales pitches try to obscure or dance around the nature of money in a fashion similar to your argument - thinking of so many alternate explanations for why something has a high pricetag or a recurring payment tied to it while profusely ignoring the "we want as much money as possible and we think this is the most you'll give us" reason. As if these businesses are our friends or something.