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Show HN: NowDo – a free macOS todo app designed to combat procrastination

1 points by sanity ↗ HN
Hey everyone,

I'm a software architect who's wrestled with procrastination my whole life. I've tried countless apps and systems, but I found that the very features meant to aid my productivity—reorganizing tasks, categorizing them, tweaking priorities—became a source of distraction. Instead of getting things done, I'd procrastinate by micromanaging my task list.

This realization led me to develop NowDo, a todo app born out of my personal experiences, refined over two years of prototyping. NowDo is designed to be as simple as possible, helping me focus on just one task at a time without the usual bells and whistles that lead me off track.

Here's what sets NowDo apart:

- One Task Focus: NowDo encourages you to focus on one task at a time.

- Always-on-Top: It's designed to be always on top of your desktop, providing a constant but subtle reminder of your current task without being nagging or intrusive.

- 100% Keyboard-Driven: NowDo can be completely driven using just your keyboard, so you can capture tasks the moment they occur to you, allowing you to offload your thoughts and return to your work without losing focus.

- 2 Years of Prototyping: Every aspect of NowDo is crafted from my own struggles with procrastination and is intentionally built to avoid the pitfalls of conventional productivity tools.

NowDo is free, and the current features will be free forever, with a premium option planned for the future.

For Mac users interested in a more focused approach to productivity, give NowDo a try at https://nowdo.org/, I'd really appreciate any feedback.

6 comments

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pvg
Your project had a solid Show HN thread recently

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38669781

You can repost after a year (with some leeway for major rework, etc), take a look at

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsfaq.html under 'repost'

sanity
Ah, I wasn't aware that you should wait a year between reposts - although we did just release a new version that incorporated a bunch of feedback from the attention we got last time.
pvg
It's fairly loose - you can shave a month or two off and/or stretch the definition of 'major rework' a bit but 3 months and typical updates is probably too close.
sanity
Fair enough, I'll remember that for the future.
[deleted]
(comment deleted)
mklepaczewski
I won't be using your app as we created our own, and it works for us, but I can list the features our users would be missing:

  import a list of tasks separated by newlines,
  copy the task list to clipboard,
  ability to re-order tasks,
  ability to mark the current task.
Many of our users keep their task list in Asana, Trello, or other feature-rich app. Then, they create a shortlist for the day and export it to a simpler, more focus-friendly app. This is why copy/paste functionality is important. As always, YMMV.