Blog
Notes on ADHD, productivity, and building a todo app that works with your brain.
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I walked into the kitchen and forgot why. The doorway effect is a working-memory bug you can design around.
Walking into a room and forgetting why you came is called the doorway effect: crossing a threshold acts as an event boundary and files the previous room's plan away. For ADHD brains, whose working memory is already near capacity, the effect shows up harder. The fix isn't a better memory. It's writing the intention down before you cross the door.
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Task switching is the bill your todo app doesn't itemize
Every time you switch tasks, your todo app makes you re-triage the whole list. That re-triage is the largest hidden cost in ADHD productivity, and almost no app optimizes for it. Here's the research, and the design move that does.
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Todo apps aren't built for ADHD brains. Here's the specific way each one fails.
The todo-app category is architected on six assumptions that break for ADHD brains. A founder's breakdown of each failure mode, and what an app that doesn't make those assumptions looks like.
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The shower problem: why a ten-minute task feels structurally impossible
Showering is short, free, and important, and ADHD adults still don't do it for days at a time. The reason isn't laziness or depression alone. It's a stacking of five small executive-function failures that all converge on the same task, and software that pretends hygiene is a normal todo will keep losing to it.
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The 2-minute door opener: why the 'first step' field is the only one that matters
Most todo apps treat sub-tasks as an optional feature. Make the first 2-minute step required and you've built the only executive-function lever that actually works for ADHD brains.
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The wall of awful: why a five-minute task can feel physically impossible
The thing stopping you from starting a tiny task often isn't the task. It's an emotional wall built from years of failure and shame, and ADHD brains build it faster and higher. Here's the research behind it and why shrinking a task to one concrete first action is the move that gets you over it.
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Time blindness is a visual problem. A timer on a cluttered list won't fix it.
ADHD time blindness doesn't get fixed by adding a timer to a list of 23 tasks. It gets fixed by clearing the surface around the timer. Here's why one task on screen is the lever, and where Ikoi's Focus mode fits.
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A wedge of color is a better clock than a number that ticks down
Digital countdowns ask an ADHD brain to do arithmetic on a moving target. An analog visual timer (Time Timer style, a shrinking colored wedge) converts the question 'how much time is left' into a shape, which is the kind of question the brain answers in milliseconds. Here's the research behind why, the story of how the Time Timer got invented at a kitchen table in 1987, and what a screen-based app has to do to mimic the effect.
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Keep a done list: the to-do list is a running tally of your failures
A to-do list only ever shows you what you haven't done, and an ADHD brain reads that leftover as proof you failed, even on a good day. Writing down what you actually did (a done list) gives back the dopamine and the evidence of progress that the unfinished list quietly erases.
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Why I built task decay: the case against keeping every todo forever
Every todo app brags about infinite capture. For ADHD brains, the backlog graveyard is actively harmful. Here's the research on unfinished goals, why guilt compounds, and the product decision Todoist can't ship.
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The 9am version of you keeps scheduling work for the 3pm version
Calendars assume every hour holds the same amount of you. ADHD research says otherwise: most ADHD brains run on a delayed, steeper rhythm, and performance tracks that rhythm more than the clock. Planning by energy state beats planning by hour, and it's why Ikoi asks how your battery is before it shows you a list.
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Five productivity strategies that don't survive an ADHD brain
Inbox zero, time blocking, Eisenhower, streaks, Pomodoro. Five strategies that sound obviously right and collapse the first time an ADHD brain hits a bad day. The specific failure mode for each.
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The todo apps I deleted before I built Ikoi
Five named apps, the exact moment each one stopped working, and the structural pattern that connects them. A founder's pre-history before building yet another todo app.
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'Not today' is a feature, not a failure
Most todo apps make deferral feel like failure. Red 'overdue' tags, snooze buttons, missed-streak guilt. Building a defer button that respects the user's choice instead of punishing it.