How to stop forgetting what you meant (or have) to do: An ADHD-friendly system

A thought has to survive five gates to become a useful, remembered thing. Forgetting is one or more gates failing. These gates are the following: Encoding (the thought evaporates before it's recorded), Retrieval (it got recorded but you can't find it again), Resurfacing (it's stored, but doesn't come back at the moment it's actionable), Time Blindness (not realizing how much time has actually passed), and Avoidance (the system fills with overdue items, blame, and warnings, so you stop opening it).

Before I started developing Focuser, I read The Checklist Manifesto, by Atul Gawande. Actually I listened to the audio book and liked it so much I needed a physical copy that I could come back to more easily, and reference often. He believed that expert work fails not from lack of skill, but because working memory is finite. He used pre-flight checklists and operating-room procedure checklists as prime examples of how a system can offload memory, freeing a person's attention for the parts that actually need it. A system remembers, so you don't. Focuser is built on that idea: self-managing checklists that hold the routine so I don't have to.

A friend of mine keeps planners and notebooks stashed around the house. She's got one in her room, in the living room, in her car (she might actually have two in her car), and one at work. She always needs one close because it's how she writes down ideas and inspiration, and tracks todos. If she can't, then her ADHD will guarantee those things are lost. I could relate. I have ADHD too, and I've learned that if I don't commit a thought to something persistent, it's gone.

I knew a system that could work for me had to make the recording of my thoughts, wants, and obligations painless, frictionless, and quick. Focuser has a number of different ways of recording these different shapes. Reminders and Checklist Items use a balanced, pleasant modal that, while powerful in options and details, allows for rapid creation through few required fields, and few required clicks. Notes are easily created using a large-form rich text editor as easy to use as any text editor. All that's required for Reminders and Checklist Items is a title and a destination. All that's required for a note is a title. The modals themselves are carefully laid out, balanced, with no distracting choices, making them frictionless to use.

One of the first digital systems I tried was a combination of Apple Reminders and Apple Notes. I set up notes as checklists as an early system using the Checklist Manifesto as a guide. I tried to create reminder checklists that could organize repeatable things to remind myself. Questions to ask in interviews, steps to take while troubleshooting code, keybindings in Rubymine. I kept notes as checklists that detailed different recipes I tried (classic case of a read-do checklist from Gawande's book). The problem was I couldn't often remember the organization structure that made sense at the time, but became esoteric even for me. I couldn't find the note I had made for this interview, or that concept. Or which recipes I had created and tried, and which I had created and hadn't. I couldn't surface the stored information because the system I had cobbled together was not my own, wasn't built for my needs, and eventually became something I avoided entirely. More on that later.

What I needed was a system that could make the retrieval easy because everything important was already immediately visible. Reminders are categorized using dedicated Checklists, and are searchable through quick filters, tags, or a robust search form. Notes are searchable through a simple input that powers keyword or tag searches. Checklist Items are always visible, and if associated with a Focus, immediately scannable due to color-coding, and highlighted when hovering over the Focus title in the footer.

I know in my own life there are countless times where something I had to do fails because I forgot to remember before it was too late. Forgetting to wish a friend happy birthday, to call the doctor's office before they closed for the day (3pm, really‽), or to show up for lunch until everyone had already eaten. Human memory is fallible and a thought that doesn't resurface in a timely fashion isn't doing any good.

Focuser was designed to make primary resurfacing easy. It shows Reminders, Notes, and Stories on a persistent sidebar, with the rest of the screen devoted to the nine primary Checklists that form the planner. Items on the Checklists are either time-slotted, showing up for specific times, or split between recurring and non-recurring items. It's immediately clear what is coming. Push notifications for myself come every hour that tell me what my Daily, Today, and Hourly Checklists have for this hour, so I'm always aware, and the web app shows me what's coming up constantly, so I'm always remembering.

Having ADHD, I can easily get hyperfocused on something, and without external systems, it's impossible to tell how much time has passed, or what time it is now. A watch is only as good as when it's viewed. Being focused on something engaging like a woodworking project means time just flies. Even developing Focuser, I'd often forget to actually use Focuser. Certainly in the early days, before I added ways of stopping myself from cranking out code.

One system I installed for myself was a simple hourly chime (I bought a pomodoro timer off Amazon which I thought would be tremendous but it sorta broke the first day and it's now just itself a reminder of a failed system), on the footer of the page, that would sound a pleasant sound at the top of every hour. When I developed push notifications, I added one to mark the passing of each hour, eventually giving it rich content. It's a lot, but it absolutely helps break me out of spending my days with little heed to how much time has actually passed, and lets me review what's happening now and what's coming up, making remembering all the easier.

A system is no good if you don't use it. My little pomodoro, broken too soon, was an aspirational system. I'd like to think I'll still make use of it, broken as it is (it doesn't consistently work, and the actual tick marks don't line up as they should so it doesn't feel like "real" time), so I keep it around. But it's a bright red tomato shaped paperweight that is a shameful signal that I'm not doing things I "should" be doing, because I'm not using the thing I bought, ostensibly to make my life more organized and performant.

One of the things I wanted out of my system was a self-managing dashboard. One where non-recurring items would migrate forward through time. An item created on the Weekly Checklist would become a Today Checklist Item in seven days. But what happens if it's not finished? Silent carry-over. Whatever time that item was scheduled for will simply have that item again the next day. There is no indication that it's carried over, no shame that it was missed, no judgmental warnings or reports that say I failed. It slightly impacts the Focus Metrics if it's assigned to a Focus, but finishing the item counts double so that dip is just a historical signal that something happened, not that there's anything wrong with that.

Graceful carry-over means there's nothing to feel ashamed of, so nothing to avoid. Instead, it simply shows up as a new opportunity for a new day, and that to me is engaging.

A mind can't hold everything. That isn't a flaw to fix; it's where all five gates come from, and it's the problem Gawande named: the work fails not for lack of skill, but because working memory is finite. Focuser is my answer to that, one system built to carry what my head can't. It gets a thought down, keeps it findable, brings it back when it matters, mitigates time blindness, and gracefully carries over unfinished items so nothing is ever truly forgotten. A system remembers, so I can forget.

You don't have to start from an empty screen. Focuser has two builders that let you shape your setup before you even make an account.

The first is the Focuses builder. It asks which pillars make your life successful, and lets you pick from a word cloud of common ones like Career, Health, Family, Wealth, and Social, or add your own. It shows how your picks line up against what everyone else chose, and gives you a verdict at the end. It's quick and a little bit fun, and whatever you land on becomes the Focuses your whole framework is built around.

The second is the Daily routine builder. You set when your day starts and ends, choose how finely to slice it (30-minute blocks by default, but anywhere from 15 minutes to a few hours), and add what you do across morning, afternoon, and evening. If you built your Focuses first, you can tag each item to one. When you sign up, those become real recurring items on your Daily Checklist. Morning items are laid down from your start time, afternoon from noon, evening from five, each assigned to its Focus. Do both builders and you arrive at a dashboard that's already yours: Focuses defined, a daily routine in place, nothing blank to stare at.

If you're on iOS, Focuser integrates with both Apple and Google, in both directions. Your reminders, tasks, and calendar events get pulled in and stay in sync, so the things already scattered across Apple Reminders and Google Tasks land in one place, each still showing where it came from. This integration currently lives in the iOS app.

The Android app is in closed beta. If you want in, email [email protected] and I'll add you.

Every plan comes with a 30-day free trial, no credit card required. You can start at lifefocuser.com.