Show HN: LazyMeter is the only to-do list you'll finish every day (lazymeter.com)
By helping you focus on one day at a time, LazyMeter ensures you know what to do and – more importantly – when you’re done. A visual meter shows your progress throughout the day, and the drag-and-drop interface makes it easy to prioritize and reschedule while you work. The simple design offers subtle feedback so users are more motivated and less likely to procrastinate.
LazyMeter is the only to-do list you’ll finish every day. In addition to allowing you to check off a task, it also gives you a pause button, which pushes a task to tomorrow. The goal is to process your day, either checking off or pausing your tasks. When today’s list is empty, your work is done, and you’re free to enjoy the rest of the day without worrying that you’ve forgotten something.
Like pen and paper, all you need to add a task is a title. Tell LazyMeter when you want to think about something again, and it will ensure you remember. A task can have multiple reminders, so you can check it off when today’s work is done, and continue it later.
55 comments
[ 3.6 ms ] story [ 429 ms ] threadhttp://blog.lazymeter.com/2011/07/31/lazymeter-not-another-t...
seems to do a good job of explaining the philosophy of the service.
Make the to-do list items in the list (graphic to the right) atomic and immediately actionable, following GTD priciples. Why? As a GTD/Vitamin-R/Pomodoro/Wunderkinder addict, the graphic communicates to me a to-do list set up for failure. Instead, I'd like to see something more like:
1. Send proposal for website redesign to Company X 2. Project Y: Devise a clearer method for moderators to invite members to private chat 3. Project Z: Contact 10 choreography bloggers to see if they're interested in cross-promotion
A to-do list like this would communicate to me that this service is developed by people who've studied GTD principles carefully and have something new to offer here. Take a look at the Vitamin R help docs - it reads more like a self-help book than a software manual, which I really appreciated. It won my trust by showing me that this guy had done the research, and really devised a productivity strategy that works.
On that note, it would be helpful to have a clearer message of how this is different than other to-do lists. I'm not quite sure yet...
Anywho, definitely glad to see another attempt at better productivity, and good luck to you! I look forward to learning more about LazyMeter. (:
In fact, your tagline is almost identical to mine. Instead of "Your To-Do List, One Day At A Time" mine is "Helping You Get Things Done, One Day At A Time."
It's not a surprise, and clearly your execution was better. Your landing page is great, as is the tour. The design does a great job of being simple and staying out of the way. I had a similar problem as you of most to-do list applications being really intrusive.
I also like the Productivity Stats, which is something I had not seen many other systems do. My program has very similar functionality. I also coded in the ability to estimate how long a time will take and track your actual time spent on it, giving one more data point to analyze.
Kudos to you for a great product and for launching! I'm definitely going to play with it for awhile, if nothing else than to get some inspiration to finish off my app. ;)
1. Have a huge whiteboard on your wall so you can't not look at it
2. Write down all your tasks for the day
3. Estimate how many pomodoros each task will take
4. Cross off every task as it's done
This seems to work mostly because it's impossible to hide the TODO. It's not an app you close, it's not a website that gets buried in tabs, it's not a notebook you flip to a different page.
It's just simply always there. Judging you. Encouraging you.
Plus it's really really satisfying when you get to cross off an item and even moreso when you get to see the whole whiteboard crossed off at the end of the day.
My problem is just that if my todo isn't Right Up In My Face (tm) I forget about it.
That is to say, I need triggers. If your app can provide those (like sending me a notification every time it notices I'm moving around the room to get tea or whatever) that would be bloody epic.
Perhaps more usefully, projectors and reasonably big TVs are cheap these days and getting cheaper.
How about some photochromic paint, and a scanning laser? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UoUU7KEgdoc
It'd be easy enough to write my own TODO app and just have the tablet display that webpage with auto-refresh and have big text and buttons like 'complete' or 'snooze' a task.
I've also been developing my own sensor network around the apartment, so it'd be nice to display that. No more needing to look at the small master display or check webpage on computer.
Like most people, I struggle to stick with one method and revert to pen and paper more often than not. One app I've had some success with is http://teuxdeux.com
Other key differentiators are the pause button, so you clear your to-do list each day, and the ability to add multiple reminders, so you can check something off for today and continue it on another day (most tasks aren't simply to-do versus done).
Now, I'm going to have monitoring status and the like on it as well, so if there was some sort of 'overview' that would take 5"x5" or so on the monitor, that'd be a great feature for those of us with electronic wall displays (I don't remember exactly, but I think it's approaching 40" diag.)
Now I've got to get off my lazy ass and turn on my PC to even see what the hubbub is about.
Please consider giving mobile visitors an option.
P.S. You better be pretty freakin awesome to make me switch from Nozbe.
You'll find us very different from Nozbe. Nozbe follows Getting Things Done, while we have developed a totally new workflow. LazyMeter isn't just a tool, it's an alternative to GTD. Our workflow is intended to be much closer to how the mind naturally processes tasks.
One thing i noticed: I would maybe put a "Sign up" button at the top with Home, Tour, etc. My first though was to look for it there because i didn't see it down below.
The stop sign stands for "save" and "unscheduled"? Pause is "planned" and "scheduled"? Huh?
I just need a simple daily to-do list, and http://teuxdeux.com works for me because it is really simple and clear. I like the direction LazyMeter is going in, but I don't like having to learn and remember all sorts of symbols and what they do.
We're using an analogy to a music player. A playing task means you have to think about it today. A paused task means it's scheduled for the future. A stopped task means it's saved for "one day". This analogy is what enables us to make task management so fast.
It's like a to-do list/task manager software, but allows you to create "relations" between each task, the whole dependency is a Directed Acyclic Graph, then the app automatically do a topology sort and tell me where to start, tell me the most important task node, and find the optimal route. A Gantt chart is a plus
Both desktop/web app would be OK. TIA
During the first SaaS I put together I was convinced that forcing the user to register was providing some value. But ultimately it lead to a huge bounce rate. I probably could have had more registrations if I didn't have the main product behind a login and forced registration later on in the process.
I haven't actually tested the app—but you've really got to take a second look at your marketing site. It's a huge turn-off for me. A big let down.
I've found it to be much more effective as a console application than many of the GUI to-do applications I've seen. Adding a new task is as simple as 'task add "Do foobar"', and marking one as done is as simple as 'task X done' (where X is the task ID number). I'm even using it on Windows machines at work with Cygwin. It also has the benefit of being easy to share my tasks with colleagues - 'task > tasks.txt'.
Also - a nitpick - the progress meter overlapping the vertical stripe at the left of the task list is driving a piece of my brain crazy. I expect it's a deliberate part of the design, but it looks incongruous to me (this is not /nearly/ as important to me as my first point - just thought I'd mention it too).