Show HN: I built a task manager that separates "do" and "due" dates (apps.apple.com)
Hi HN,
I’m the founder of Zesfy, a productivity app that I’ve been developing over the past few years. It’s designed to seamlessly integrate your tasks with your calendar, allowing you to transform your to-do lists into actionable events in just seconds. Here are some of its key features:
- Task Progress: Automatically update your progress based on subtasks completed
- Step: Create step-by-step breakdown of the subtask
- Target: Organize tasks with due date
- Session: Insert multiple tasks to calendar event
- Space: Filter event from specific sets of calendars
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zesfy-planner-calendar/id64799...
82 comments
[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 145 ms ] threadI liked the on-boarding. I don't like the first screen being a pitch for a subscription, but I get that you probably need to sell hard to get subscriptions.
I've recently launched a small app on the app store and it's no where near as polished! How long have you been working on it?
I get your point about the subscription screen. It's something that I've been experimenting for a while. I found many users activate the subscription during the onboarding, that's why I keep it.
I've been working on this app for almost 5 years at this point. Also, congrats for the app. Feel free to share the link, I'd love to check it out.
I think this is the toughest part for me as a technically inclines person - selling. It's something I want to become more comfortable with.
> almost 5 years at this point
Well done persisting. That is a lot of hard work! Any tips on keeping up motivation? I've been working on my app for only a few months now and had to dig deep a few times to keep going.
> Feel free to share the link, I'd love to check it out.
Thanks, I'm still working on making it a bit more marketable, but here it is: https://dingdongdoorbell.com/
Eg it’s easy to know when something’s due, but really hard to know when to work on what —- what to do when. Saying “schedule easily” sort of buries the lede.
I wonder if a leading panel talking about the frustrating churn of planning ( implicitly trading the urgent against the important) would activate more people and also provide the right keywords for finding the app via search
I'm planning to add supports for iPad and Mac in the future, probably PWA too if there is enough demand for it.
I just keep a private repo called 'mylife' and everything goes in it, my private notes/journals/etc are just text file git commits in the same repo.
That said, if I was looking for a new system, outside of my control, I'd def. check this out.
I developed Zesfy because I needed a mobile app to manage all my work, but I couldn’t find one that met my needs. What the review process look like if you're on mobile? Are you using a specific app?
I use the actual issues system in the forgejo UX(or github.com or whatever VCS UI).
So in my forgejo instance, where most of my code is, I add projects for things even without code, if they will be a long-running project. For instance lets say I have a fabric arts(knitting,etc) hobby, I'll have a repo just for fabric arts. Issues/tasks/things I want to do will be issues in the knitting repo. I might or might not have many if any files in the git repo.
For instance, I was helping a friend with a home improvement project earlier this year, so I created a repo, gave them access to it and I documented what I was doing, etc. They could follow along or not as they saw fit and I didn't have to do anything other than document my work like I usually do.
I used to use Fossil-SCM for these things, but it's just annoying enough to setup when you have 100 fossil repo's and you can't easily tie them together with a global list,etc, so I recently moved to forgejo.
As for what I want to do today, they have due dates, so they will sort those due soon towards the top of the global issues assigned to me list. Likewise within each project. But I generally try to organize my life such that due dates for things are rare, and I can just work on whatever floats my boat that particular day. Hence why my Calendar app gets very little use.
Most of what I need the mobile apps are good enough. I don't do a LOT of mobile compute though. Mostly it's just seeing the latest errands/grocery issue(s) from my Forgejo instance while I'm in town.
If I think I'll need offline or something, I can use a git client and download repo's, but that's a very rare thing.
Maybe it's just me but I found the app controls to be way too small, too many onboarding walk through steps and way too much information density in the Task screen.
Progress, Highlight, Due Date, different lists - it's a lot.
It seems to me you wanted to pack a punch, but it's so dense and so many steps involved that it falls into the productivity fallacy for me: It's increasing my executive disfunction and makes it harder and cumbersome to add tasks instead of reducing it.
One app that really works for me, does one thing and does it well is for example Due: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/due-erinnerungen-timer/id39001...
Not affiliated in any way with the app or it's creator.
When it comes to apps like these, less is more for me.
One huge insight was a notation to keep track of blocked tasks (usually by other people) and what/whom to "poll" periodically to check the status.
Breaking down tasks into actionable steps
Separating things out that really have a firm due date from those that really need to be taken care of but not by a specific date
I also keep a maybe someday list of things that may never happen and may outlive there being a good reason to make happen. I did what I liked to refer to as a value renovation project on my house this summer and there were a number of projects whose cost and/or effort just exceeded their utility.
Ideally I would like to have git available on iPhone and Apple tablets then I could use my repo that I have notes in on laptops and android phones.
Well I am pissed by poor text editing on iPhone anyway so I will go back to android and then I can go back to text file with git on private repo.
I'd like to introduce you to Working Copy
- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/working-copy-git-client/id8966... - https://workingcopy.app
* read and write access to ALL gists
* read and write access to ALL repos, public and private
* read and write access to SSH public keys
That's a no from me.
Checklists in Apple Notes also works well for this if you’ve already bought into that ecosystem. I only wish it could track list items, so I could get basic stats on velocity.
It has never made sense to me that Apple has a separate "Reminders" app that's completely divorced from the Calendar.
I don't want stuff in multiple apps. I tend to disable notifications very aggressively because otherwise my phone is "dinging" every few minutes. I would prefer that all my notifications for tasks/due dates/appointments come from the Calendar.
I'm working on my solution to this, that I call a "process manager." You have prompts that are composed of the prompt text, a recurrence pattern, and some prefill or "carry over" state. Essentially, a human version of a Turing machine.
Each day has a list, of the prompts that are due to show up that day. You can print it from your phone, and keep the paper folded and always with you.
Processes > projects. Our life is naturally process based. If you use food as an example, it's not enough to go grocery shopping once or make a meal once. Instead, "staying fed" is a never ending process. You can subordinate those tasks to that process, though.
So processes like that need to be managed, and currently there aren't any tools for that I know of.
I launched it on Testflight yesterday if anyone wants to give a spin: https://testflight.apple.com/join/2VNkUqy9
I am planing on adding more powerful features, like the ability to script the prompt instead of having it be static text.
https://www.reddit.com/r/PromptYourself/
https://nestful.app
Nestful is built on a different but similar premise called Spontaneous Productivity:
https://blog.nestful.app/p/spontaneous-productivity
With that said, Reminders remains just a tad basic for me for full life/project management. I just need deeper nesting! Currently in "My Lists" you can only go 2-deep. A folder then a list. I need folders inside folders.
I've been playing around with Twos App (https://www.twosapp.com/) for a month which replicates Bullet Journaling. But it is too complicated I think for my needs. I don't need my notes/journals inside my todo's app.
https://culturedcode.com/things/
But I'm not interested in another rent payment, full stop.
Not saying all SaaS = bad, but for the functionality it provides, there are boatloads of cheaper options out there.
Value is relative, so maybe I'm also just too poor.
[0] https://agenda.com/
Each morning I create a daily agenda. I pull in my calendar entries. I also pull things I plan on doing from my todo list. I generally work off of my daily agenda.
When the day is over I put everything with doing back to the todo list.
Notion is great, but I too find the extra work distracting and unnecessary.
Clicking on the date or calling `org-agenda-list` which in my instance is bound to `C-c a a` will show something like this:
Unfortunately (or fortunately?) this doesn't sync my work office365 calendar. I can sync Jira tickets though :)Not affiliated, just been trying it out for a month now. Developer has been very responsive as well.
https://www.sunsama.com/blog/time-blocking
More importantly, it offers a guided daily ritual to help through it gently, and make it a habit. This is shown in the second half of the blog post.
https://amazingmarvin.com/
REM Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri SCANFROM [float(2024,10,21)] AT 08:45 MSG %"Complete that thing%"%
where float is: FSET float(y,m,d) trigger(MAX(realtoday(), date(y,m,d)))
When I finish it, I delete it, or replace the floating date with the actual date if I want to keep track of when I completed it.
https://dianne.skoll.ca/projects/remind/
That's a great distinction to make.
- do vs due date
- subproject progress view
and is just generally a super awesome app that brought me a lot of peace
They look very similar.
Also the privacy policy is great.
I don't have a problem with the subscription page being the first thing a user sees, even though I never subscribe to, well, anything personally and am against the XaaS economy. It's clear, simple, very easy to dismiss, and doesn't feel coercive or full of dark patterns like many other apps. It's also a bit different for me when it's a solo/small/indie dev instead of a megacorp. It's nice to know how much I'm in for before I start using and integrating something like this into my life. It really annoys me when that info is hard to find. I would love the option to pay a once off price, though I realise this can be challenging for funding ongoing development. One app I love (forScore) has a one off price ($30 AUD) with the option to pay a subscription ($15AUD/y) that has only a few minor benefits and extra functionality for the end user (which is explicitly stated) but is available for people who want to donate a bit on top to help fund ongoing development. I did a year or two of this subscription because it's such an amazing app I get a lot of value from and if it were made by Avid/Sibelius it'd probably cost $700+ and require a ridiculous subscription on top to use the basic features. I don't know if that model is something you'd ever consider. Either way I like the way you've clearly communicated the subscription prices.
Looks sharp though! Nice work!
I believe you should try to have case studies or some sort of Customer Archetype/Profile on the landing page.
Who is this App for?
The interface (from the screenshots) does look clean, but in my experience, apps/software that help people “get things done” are better off with more contrast colors, prominent design differences between modules, etc. The low-contrast Pantone-blushed neomorphic-ish design becomes a slippery, harder target to hit when used in tools that should do their job and get out of the way.