So I've been trying to use todo apps for organizing my life. While it seems like a nice idea it doesn't work for me. In this post I'd like to tell you why and possible solutions.

The root of the problem

So I have adhd and it's been hard for me to actually use todo apps as they are usually designed in a similar way.
You have a list of tasks for today all at once, all the tasks you've missed on the above and a big sidebar with a lot of elements. You also usually have the amount of tasks for today and all tasks you have planned somewhere visible. This really overwhelms me (and a lot of people with adhd I think)

That's no good. Just dumping all of my tasks on me and going "go figure it out" won't work. I will just look at them and be frustrated. This is especially bad when you have like 70 tasks (as I plan for a long time), repeating tasks, etc.

You can see todoist UI in the screenshot below.

Notice how it has all those priorities, overdue, processes NLP, advertises premium features? That's no good for me.

We need to go deeper

Todoist didn't work (surprisingly, it was the highest recommended app). Let's look for alternatives.
Now I've actually read some reviews from adhd people about todo apps. I tried not to use blogs from todo apps themselfs as they would probably be biased.

TickTick

Firstly, let me say that TickTick is a chinese company so I didn't trust them very much with my data and went to try it for a few days. And guess what - it wasn't better! It still gave you the same screen for all tasks. Just listing all tasks for today at once. I wouldn't write a lot here as it was essentially same as Todoist. I think It's highly recommended because Todoist also works for a lot of people. But not for me...

Forest

Forest is good. It was a very good app to use, probably due to gamification aspect. It was great but lacked some functionality I liked, especially having it as a website and not a browser extension. To add, their privacy policy isn't really the best... I'd say it's bad. They collect a lot of unnecessary data. I've also had some sync issues but that wasn't very bad. Overall I think this was due to the gamification aspect.

A lot of other apps

A lot of other apps such as "Remember the Milk", "Sunsama" and others were similar to Todoist in that they show you all tasks for the day at once. I want to tell you about Sunsama further as they have this time blocks style of tasking. While it seems cool, there is a new problem though. I can't estimate time to do the task very well. There is still an issue of showing everything at once, now coupled with time blocking. The stuff I liked was the calendar view (good to plan for a long time). What I didn't like was a progress bar, as progress bars are even worse than numbers - I just can't comprehend how much I've actually done.
Not to mention, it is a paid app. While I'm ready to pay for a good app, it certanly wasn't the app I was looking for.

Is... Is this the app?

Let me introduce you to todorant, the app that I really liked. The main reason being that it did not show you all tasks at once. FINALLY! I loved it. Creating todos was easy with a lot of advanced settings and ability to add it to the top if it's urgent. Sure, there are problems. For example, it shows you the amount of tasks left and what you've done for today. Not that good. But I can live with that.

Wait, what's that? A frog?

You might be familiar with "eat the frog first" concept. Frog being the hard task and the concept implies that you have to complete it the first (hence, eat the frog) in the morning to feel good and be productive. Guess what? While it seems logical it doesn't work for me!
And it's not only me. A lot of people say that they just stare at the frog and don't complete it for a long time. Sure, I could just not use frog tasks... And I did.
It all seemed well... until

But there is another problem

See, there is a "Stats" tab with a graph of your completed tasks and... frogs. It's not good. I don't like staring into the graph of the tasks I've made realising how many tasks there actually is to do.

Sure, there is a gamification element but it's very subtle and I didnt notice it until a few days of usage, so... not really good.

Moreover, the app is paid. It costs 5 dollars a month but why pay for something that's not really that good when you're a developer? You guessed it right.

I'm making my own todo app

Well, I couldn't find any todo apps that fully work for me, so here it is. I knew it would probably end up like that. I'm making this app with kinzoku, the app is called Mentalitet. It's already quite usable but I wouldn't call it good. It's constantly getting better though (as it's the app I use daily and rely on) so expect a lot of improvements in the upcoming weeks.

If you want to support the development or try out the app yourself - here is our discord. The app itself is here (I will add main page soon, it's still kinda alpha)