I build an ADHD planner called Recordo. The most useful thing I’ve learned had nothing to do with software.
For years I thought I was bad at to-do lists. Wrong diagnosis. The lists were fine. What killed me was everything that never reached one, because the thought turned up when writing it down wasn’t possible, and thirty seconds later it was gone.
Getting it out of your head has to cost nothing. The thought arrives while you’re driving, mid-conversation, at 11pm with the light off. If catching it means unlocking a phone, finding an app and picking a project, it doesn’t get caught, and you never find out what you lost. I ran the whole system on paper for a year and that’s exactly where paper failed: it wants your hands at the moment you have neither.
There’s no one right tone. The you-can-do-this voice that gets one person moving makes another put the phone face down. I need blunt. Plenty of people need patient or they shut down. Most apps pick one register and assume it’s universal, and when it’s the wrong one the app is unusable however good the features are.
Starting is a separate skill from planning. Knowing what the task is has never once got me into it. Having the first move already broken out, small enough to feel silly, and everything else hidden while I do it, does.
If an app talked to you the way you actually wanted, what would that sound like? I don’t know whether people fall into a few recognisable camps or whether everyone’s is different.