✦ An essay, not a feature list
We built a room
with one chair,
one light,
and a door that
locks from the inside.
This page is the why. If you've read three lines and you're already nodding, the app is downstairs.
▸ The math
Ninety-nine things want you. Ninety-eight can wait. The trick is not seeing them while they do.
✦ The attention ledger
You spend it whether you mean to or not.
Most apps profit from the negative lines. We try not to.
The todo app, as a category, has quietly become the enemy of the work it was invented to serve. Open one. Count the items. Notice how few of them you'll touch today. Notice how each one is, in some small way, asking.
We mistook organising for doing. We made beautiful, sortable, colour-coded museums of our own avoidance. The dashboard became the deliverable.
A list you keep tidy is a list you don't have to finish.
So we removed the list. Not from existence — your things still live somewhere — but from the screen. One at a time, in the centre, lit. The rest is in orbit, dimmed, patient. It will wait. It is very good at waiting.
✦ Noise / signal
One clean tone
beats a hundred pings.
Other tools are an FM dial between stations. We're the station.
✦ Promises we'll keep, even when it hurts
The five things we won't do.
- 01We will not ping you. Not once.
- 02We will not count your streaks.
- 03We will not show your progress to anyone, including you, unless you ask.
- 04We will not add a feature because a louder app has it.
- 05We will lose users who want a louder app. On purpose.
Signed
The people building it.
That's the philosophy.
Now finish one thing.