We were spending more time keeping our task apps in shape than doing the work inside them.
We'd been practicing GTD for years, and we'd built a private system on top of the app we used. It came down to three things:
- TodayUpcoming
- The app's two biggest views, both driven entirely by dates. A task without a date was a task you would not see again.
- #state_nextdue: today
- A saved filter, or a date we made up so the task would show up at all. We were using dates to escape dates.
- #home
- A tag that stood in for a context.
Every workaround made sense on its own. Together they became a second job. The setup needed care every week, and none of that care moved any actual work forward. We wrote about that cost separately, in where task apps fail at the job they were built for.
We tried the apps that leave dates out. We wanted them to work. Some got the idea right and lost us somewhere else: features we'd never use that still wanted our attention, a view we couldn't shape, a screen we didn't look forward to opening. An app you open every morning has to feel better than that.
Criticizing other people's work is easy. Whether you can do better only shows when you try it yourself. So we wrote down what we wanted.
An app that opens with the things you can actually do, in the place where you are. Capture in two seconds, a title and nothing more. Dates only when a date is real. One quiet hour a week to look at everything, so the other days stay calm. Everything we'd been faking with workarounds, built in as the normal way to work.
And a second list, of things that wouldn't be there at all. No today list. No subtasks. No pomodoro timers. Not because they're hard to build, but because something you never use still asks for attention every time you open the app.
Subtasks were the one we thought about longest. A task with steps under it is a project, so that is what it becomes: its own next action, its own place in the weekly review, and nothing hidden one level down.
Then we built it. Evenings, weekends, and we used it ourselves from the first rough version.
The moment we knew it worked wasn't a feature. It came months later, when we could open the app and start working. Nothing to clear first, nothing to tidy up. What we noticed wasn't something new, it was the absence of friction.
That took time. We were in no hurry, and we were the only users we could disappoint. The public version came only when we would have picked it over anything else we'd used.
It's still a side project, and that's on purpose. Nobody's waiting for us to grow. We don't have to copy a feature because another tool has it, or invent a reason for you to open the app more often. We build what we'd want to use ourselves, and leave the rest out.
A task list is not where most of the work arrives. It comes by email, in chat, on calls, and from whoever walks over with a quick question. The list is the quietest part of the day, and the only part you can shape. When we built our own, we did not want it to be one more thing shouting.
Ting means thing in Danish and Norwegian, and it's also the sound of a small bell, one tone. Things, done, without spelling it out.
That's the one thing we can promise you: tingdo will stay quiet.