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Ask HN: I'm building to-do app for ADHD, what would you want in a ToDo app?

5 pointsby tntpreneurabout 2 months ago
I have ADHD, and sometimes I spend too much time deciding what to do next. I have lots of things to do, but making decisions bores me. So I decided to create a to-do app that will calculate a score based on time until a deadline, the value of completing tasks, and difficulty parameters. And I&#x27;ll do that first item by calculated score.<p>This is the basic idea, but I would like to hear from you: What would you expect from a to-do app?

11 comments

ferguess_kabout 2 months ago
I want something that keeps bugging me until the task is marked as done. And I want that something to verify that I provide some sort of proofs every time, like a screenshot or something.<p>Oh BTW maybe give my wife&#x27;s voice to it.
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annie_mussabout 2 months ago
I don&#x27;t want an ADHD todo list app. I want something that to help manage my emotions while completing tasks.<p>For me there are three major emotions that get in the way of task completion: excitement, boredom and anxiety.<p>Excitement is usually for some other task. I&#x27;m working on my tax return and I think about upgrading my washer&#x2F;drying. Suddenly I&#x27;m researching all the different types, the best deal on one, the history of the washer&#x2F;dryer. It might be a task on my to do list somewhere, but I was driven to do it by the excitement.<p>Anxiety is a tricky one. If I&#x27;m writing something like an email anxiety often gets the better of me. What if this isn&#x27;t the right way to do it? What if it comes off as rude. This ties in to perfectionism too.<p>Boredom is usually overtaken by one of the other emotions, but sometimes it appears on its own. I&#x27;ve got to input these numbers into some old, janky piece of software. It&#x27;s probably not that hard or long of a task, but it feels so pointless. I&#x27;m just wasting so much time doing this task when I could be doing something more efficient and more meaningful.<p>If you can solve these emotional issues then pretty much any todo list app (or just a notebook) will be fine.
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hayst4ckabout 2 months ago
Sounds an awful lot like Pavlok. If you have the willpower to hit the shock yourself device, why don&#x27;t you have the willpower to not do the action that merits shocking yourself?<p>If you can manage your attention&#x2F;motivation well enough to make detailed to do lists, why can&#x27;t that be applied to the urgent task at hand, <i>to completion.</i><p>If you do the ADHD questionnaire one of the major indicators is how many projects are 99% complete.<p>A TODO list just catalogues these 99% complete problems until they become cognitively crushing to think about resulting in a need to escape&#x2F;avoid the list, resulting in eventual burnout.<p>&gt; time until a deadline<p>This is stress based motivation, and stress tolerance is a depletable resource that once depleted results in devastation.<p>I am suspicious of anything mental health that doesn&#x27;t market itself as evidence based. Do you have any evidential basis behind the TODO app? Are any of your ideas evidence informed?<p>Why not read through several ADHD help&#x2F;workbooks or read through treatment protocols and try to app-ify them?
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anh690136about 2 months ago
Hi, I&#x27;m also building a Todolist app with an AI that prioritizes tasks based on urgency, importance &amp; bugs you until you finish :) I go a step further to integrate information sources into it like emails, slack, notes etc cause managing information is also a struggle for me Feel free to check it out at <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;saner.ai&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;saner.ai&#x2F;</a>
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ActorNightlyabout 2 months ago
Personally, as someone who has struggled with ADHD, getting on meds removed the need for any such app in my life. Like its not a bad idea, but its a bandaid and not gonna work for everyone. The key thing to understand about ADHD is that its pretty much seratonin deficiency, and there is no way to fix that externally, much in the same way that I cant just make you like the same things I like.
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VaibhavKalraabout 2 months ago
This sounds great! A couple of things I’d love in a to-do app are flexible prioritization (so I can tweak things easily), visual cues to track progress, and the ability to break big tasks into smaller steps. It’d also be awesome if it had time-blocking or Pomodoro options to keep me focused. Looking forward to seeing how it turns out!
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pavel_lishinabout 2 months ago
I have a great todo app, but the one thing I wish it could do is have two parallel lists - one for things I <i>have</i> to do, and one for things I <i>want</i> to do.
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muzaniabout 2 months ago
Hey, I&#x27;m doing the exact same thing. Drop me an email and I can share you a doc I wrote up for it, with some business models as well as feature details.
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austin-cheneyabout 2 months ago
Here is my list:<p>* Put my shit away.<p>That&#x27;s it. The number one issue I see with ADHD, and this only really applies to extreme ADHD, is a complete inability to remember to either put things away or to remember to take your things with you. Consider it casual unintentional abandonment of everything you own one item at a time.
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uncomplexity_about 2 months ago
the most important feature is to remember it and to remidn and gaslight the user into using it
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jktzesabout 2 months ago
I don&#x27;t think a to-do app that could effectively help ADHDers ever existed. Never heard of one, probably never will. If such a tool exists you will def see it in r&#x2F;ADHD or similar communities. When you have no competitor in a market probably the problem is the market. I don&#x27;t think a niche market for ADHD todo apps exists. Because the problem is not solvable by a todo app. Just like you can&#x27;t effectively help austic people by offering social manner courses.
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