Comment by arscan
1 day ago
I think this could be useful for the type of person that uses uses todo lists to help them tackle lots of small tasks that they intend to do immediately but somehow get distracted mid-action from and never finish (and then forget about altogether). As described in this blog post that front-paged hn some time ago:
> When I notice a micro-task like this, my instinct is not to do it, but to put it in the todo list. Then I try to do it immediately. And if I get distracted halfway through, it’s still there, in the todo list.
https://borretti.me/article/notes-on-managing-adhd
The problem with this approach is that recording tasks become a good amount of relative overhead compared to the 'micro-task' if it involves pulling out your phone, and pulling out your phone also introduces a potential distraction. So, having something that is single purpose and as low-friction as possible is appealing.
I'm skeptical that this is actually any better than using a smart watch that you can dictate to though.
> small tasks that they intend to do immediately but somehow get distracted mid-action from and never finish (and then forget about altogether).
That’s the idea, but now it creates a secondary burden of having to act on those notes to translate them into actions.
When it’s time to process your 20 different 3-second thoughts from throughout the day, is the easily distracted person actually going to sit down and work through all 20 of them at the end of the day without also getting distracted?
In my experience, the people who accumulate a lot of micro tasks because they’re too distracted to follow up on them in the moment are the same people who abandon their todo lists after they accumulate 50 items that weren’t important enough to prioritize at the time.
If someone is taking 20 notes a day, that’s over 100 notes in a week. I’m having a hard time squaring the processing of these notes with the idea that it’s for someone who is easily distracted mid task.
> When it’s time to process your 20 different 3-second thoughts from throughout the day, is the easily distracted person actually going to sit down and work through all 20 of them at the end of the day without also getting distracted?
I think the idea is that the person would be happy to circle back and finish the first thing they started, but simply forget about it altogether, so they think they are done with tasks and go on to other ("unproductive") stuff. If they can inject the habit of always checking stuff off a list when finishing things, they'll see they never finished the first thing they started, and then take care of that.
Checking off things from the list is much more satisfactory than adding things to a list, so it makes sense to have input be as low friction as possible, while checking off can be a bit more work (pulling out a phone which has the list).
I'm skeptical about the effectiveness of this in reality. Just a thought.
As someone with ADHD that’s me. I don’t think this product is for me, but I have to immediately write a thing down or do it. Otherwise it’s lost. Importance is irrelevant.
Funny enough I have a pebble core 2 duo from this team. There’s a simple voice app that jots down a short note quickly on the watch, it can support 10 notes total. I love it. I only use it when I really need to throw something down immediately and I can’t clutter it up with nonsense. It also means I check it every day because it’s not daunting.