i've downloaded an embarrassing number of task managers over the years.
every time i'd think "okay, this is the one." and then a week goes by and i'd be staring at a fancy dashboard with projects inside workspaces inside categories inside something called a "productivity hub" and somehow still forgetting to work on my fanfiction. or my next tumblr post. or to text my friend. and it just keeps adding up and adding up.
the thing that kept happening was i'd add a task, close the app, and then completely forget the task existed. lots of apps are built like this. it's normal. you have your checklist app in one tab, and your work in the other.
but I have ADHD!!! so if something leaves my line of sight for long enough, there's a decent chance it gets completely forgotten. instead of writing my fanfic, i'll fall down a rabbithole of youtube videos in the name of "research". and i think they call this quirk object permanence (the understanding that an object continues to exist after it's gone). I guess for some of us with ADHD, we tend to just. forget the object is there. when it's gone. really cool right.
anyway so i'd plan my day, open twelve browser tabs, get sucked into youtube scrolling for four hours, and then remember there were twenty other things i meant to do. that's what pushed me into making my own task manager, because i HATE THE OTHER ONES. i hate that they DISAPPEAR. i want a checklist that stays there. and does not disappear when you click off of it.
so my entire idea started with one feature: always. on. top.
i wanted a tiny checklist that would sit on my desktop while i worked. i don't want it to ping me with 700 different notifications. i don't want it to tell me i've unlocked level 7 productivity. i don't want syncing or icloud or whatever. i just want something i can glance over and see what i was supposed to be doing.
turns out that helped a lot!
my lil program opens into a little floating panel. i add tasks. i check them off. i add more tasks. i check more off. it's great! the dopamine is flowing!!! and when i need the screen space, it collapses into a tiny little bar that hangs out at the edge of my monitor until i need it again.
every app seems to want to become an ecosystem now. every app wants a subscription, too, which is also pretty damn annoying. but not me—i wanted a checklist. one and done. nothing extra. no surveillance and no ai slop training. and no subscriptions or freemium or whatever.
that's it. i had a problem, built the thing i wanted to use, and now it's sitting in the corner of my screen doing its job! :)
isn't that rare these days? apps that actually work and aren't enshittified to the gills?
anyway if this sounds like the kind of thing you'd use too, i ended up putting it up for sale because apparently i wasn't the only person who wants a tiny checklist that doesn't disappear behind your browser windows
link's here if you want to take a look.
