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Comment by n8cpdx | Hacker News Reader

As an ADHD person, this app looks like a repackaging (with nice design) of all the stuff I’ve built up over years - habit tracking, daily/weekly/yearly reflection, detailed task management, etc.

This isn’t for me (because I’ve already built a system that works), but this looks like something that would be very useful. For the target user who does feel stuck and hasn’t successfully built their system, this looks like a phenomenal product.

I appreciate the emphasis on self-reflection and perhaps the implied focus on continuous improvement.

Over the last few years I implemented a weekly self-review + planning practice (think solo agile retrospective), and my life has been on a steady trajectory of improvement since.

Edit: commenting on the product concept, not the company, pricing, or concerning tracking practices.

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Glad to hear you've built a system that works for you! We've also heard from a lot of our beta users that they've tried to cobble together something similar, and a lot of their feedback and ideas is what we used to build this initial version (in collaboration with our Research Lab to integrate the latest methods too). Many of them weren't able to push their self-built systems over the finish line or maintain it, due to ADHD challenges though. Our goal is to build a flexible enough system that it can be adapted for various learning styles (in practice we're still far off from where we want to be) and continue building agents on top of it that make science-backed exercises and methods more accessible. A lot of the best practices are currently gated behind long textbooks and scattered PDF worksheets so I'm really excited about making this more accessible. For example, this week we're working on an "energy accounting" agent that's widely used (in varying formats) across ADHD practitioners that many ADHDers know they want to do theoretically but haven't found the way to follow through on it.

I love the weekly self review and planning practice you mention; I do a similar one with myself and my co-founder each week and have started moving that process into Indy recently!

Do you mind sharing your system that worked for you in detail or re-direct any good posts that detail them? Appreciate it.

Here is my template from obsidian that I use for my weekly reflection - customize reflection based on your values and priorities. I have goals to improve work-life balance, social connections (social isolation was a factor driving poor outcomes, and through deliberate consistent effort I have solved this problem).

Hyper scheduling: https://dev.to/maxpatiiuk/series/32301 (I stumbled upon this and implemented a form of it, although mostly I just like the colors in my calendar)

Yearly reflection: https://yearcompass.com/

Weekly reflection:

```md ## Preparation

- [ ] Review year compass - [ ] Review journal entries from the week - [ ] Review last week's reflection

## Quick summary

> *Headline for the week*:

## Basic planning

- [ ] Set up outline of the week in Outlook - [ ] Plan a fun weekend activity: - [ ] Plan to visit one new restaurant: - [ ] Plan one meet up or social activity:

## Values-based reflection

1. Health: - 2. Resilience: - 3. Social connection: - 4. Mindfulness: - 5. Adventure: -

## Retrospective

1. Went Well - 2. To improve - 3. Plan to improve/action items -

## Other notes

- ```

Daily reflection/journal:

```md

_Created: {{date}} {{time}}_ ({{date:DDD}}/365)

Gratitude (I am for three items):

Healthy Living Plan:

- Diet: - Exercise: - Work+Learning:

Daily reflection:

- Overall wellbeing (1-10): - Career: - Lifestyle hygiene: - Rose and thorn:

Journal:

```

I use TickTick because of the habit-tracking feature. Used to be todoist loyalist but it sucks for habits. https://help.ticktick.com/articles/7055781878401335296

Key habits I track:

- meditation (I combine with a fancy LED face mask to help reinforce the habit via my desire to combat wrinkles and acne - the cryoglow is better at acne than wrinkles so far) - exercise (you can add notes) - evening leisure time (if I don’t have dedicated leisure time, I end up revenge bedtime procrastinating/doomscrolling) - stretching (there are two simple band stretching exercises that solved what I thought would be life-long neck and shoulder pain)

When I really struggle with productivity, I find the pomodoro system is a good bootstrap, and TickTick makes it easy to start. I like seeing the pomos on the built-in calendar.

I have a ton of respect for your approach. That said, as someone without ADHD, it seems somewhat odd that an inability to kick off executive function would be well addressed by adding an additional activity that requires executive function. Like, if I had to plan my day out with this document before doing things, I think I'd grow to dread the process, and be even more stymied - i.e. if it was hard to go clean the kitchen, why wouldn't it be hard to go write my dayplan?

Yet, I do hear this sort of thing works for people. I'd love to know more about what you experience and why this helps.

TickTick gives me reminders to do some of these things - daily reflection is a “habit” and weekly reflection is a recurring task. That helps me not forget. There’s still value in doing the daily plan regardless of whether I do it right after I wake up (things are going well) or if I do it many hours later when I realize my day has not gone well and I want to get back on track.

The calendars and checklists really help with not forgetting things, and getting back on task once distracted. I can have 100 adhd moments; the system can’t prevent that, but it can help me find my way back to shore when I’m lost at sea.

I don’t really struggle with kitchen cleaning, but sometimes I do set out to clean the kitchen and end up folding laundry or scrolling instead. I can do that but if I haven’t checked off “clean the kitchen”, I know to come back to it.

The weekly reflection is a chore but I set aside time for it, and I keep doing it because it works. I can spend an hour doing deep reflection, or I can rush through it, there is value either way. It is really just a check list, and check lists are very ADHD friendly.

Separately, I find that physical and mental health improve performance regardless - so a system that improves these factors _is_ a system that helps with ADHD. Getting to bed on time, and building the system that produces that outcome, is an ADHD-friendly system. I struggle with this, but I try to get better over time by experimenting and adjusting.

The reality is that the system will not solve ADHD problems, the system is just a tool - you still have to do the work. Same for the app that is being shared.

I have ADHD & use a very similar kind of daily notes template. I think the reason that it works for me at least is that it shortcuts some of the "not knowing where to start" executive function issues at the start of the day. I only need to remember one thing: open a new daily notes template. The checklist itself chains other good habits off the back of that, reminding me to e.g. make sure I've taken my meds, make coffee, put music on, think about what I've done recently & if there's anything to pick up again or dive back into & what I'm going to do for the day etc.

Yes, it can feel like a chore at times (especially forcing myself to do more in-depth periodic reflections) but without a system like this, I quickly find myself completely rudderless & my mental health & productivity both collapse pretty quickly.

You'll actually hear quite frequently that people diagnosed relatively late in life went under the radar for so long exactly because we developed our own massively over compensating systems like this & can appear (externally at least) to almost have the exact opposite of "executive function issues"!

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