Philosophy

Applying learnings to build your own to-do list.

Lane Shackleton

Oh Hello 👋,

Over the years, I've tried dozens of to-do list apps and approaches.

Eventually, and inspired by

Warren Buffet's 'Not Do List,⁠

' I created this doc for four reasons:

Simplicity ー I don't need all the bells and whistles. I just need to know what to focus on right now and what's up next. Like many things in product design, I had to go through complexity in order to return to refreshing simplicity.

Focus ー I found most to-do list apps treat to-do items equally. Or worse, they have some awkward system for priority that doesn't match how I work. For me it's simple, in the

To-Do List⁠

section, I only work on a single item that is marked 'Now' which I've bolded to remind me to focus. I try to only keep one item in the 'Now' bucket. Everything else gets out of the way.

Scratchpad ー to-do's don't always fit nicely into a form field in an app. Sometimes, I want to write some quick thoughts in a new section, knowing that later this may become a series of to-do's. No more switching between my writing app and my to-do app, it's all in one place.

Custom ー most of all, it's mine. I'm the type of person that has strong opinions on how an app helps or hinders my work. That means it's important that I'm in control of how this to-do list works and you should be too :) So morph it to however you work!

To get started, just hit 'Copy doc' in the top right corner.

Hope it gives you inspiration and you can make your own! ✌️

Cheers,

Lane

⁠

Coda⁠

⁠

Twitter (@lshackleton)⁠

⁠

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