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Unresolved

Your to-do list remembers everything. Unresolved is for the few things you’re actually going to deal with.

It holds a handful at a time, sorted by how long each one has been waiting, and the only way to make room is to finish one or let it go.

Free for five tasks, or $9.99 once for ten.

  1. Email Dana
  2. Renew passport
  3. Back up laptop
  4. Cancel gym
  5. Return jacket
  6. Call insurer
  7. Fix gate latch
  8. Q3 taxes
  9. Read lease
  10. Book physical
  11. Sort garage
  12. and nineteen more
9:41
Unresolved5 of 5
Renew passport
47 days
M1/3
Cancel gym
31 days
M0/0
Call insurer
19 days
M1/2
Q3 taxes
9 days
M3/5
Book physical
3 days
M0/0

Try me.

  1. Email Dana
  2. Renew passport
  3. Cancel gym
  4. Call insurer
  5. Fix gate latch
  6. Q3 taxes
  7. Book physical
  8. and nineteen more

The things that need doing keep carrying over to tomorrow.

If you’re anything like me, the to-do list goes something like this: every morning you write down everything, thirty-odd things if you’re being honest, cross-reference it against yesterday’s to make sure nothing got dropped, and then circle the two or three you actually feel like doing. Everything else carries over to tomorrow, where you’ll write it down again.

What gets left behind is usually the last part of something: the follow-up email, the form, the receipt, the phone call you’ve been putting off, the part where the interesting work is over and what’s left is administrative or repetitive or slightly awkward.

The oldest stays on top.

Each task shows how many days it’s been on the list, so the one you keep skipping is the first thing you see.

When it’s full, something has to go.

There are five slots, or ten with Pro, and nothing new goes on until you finish or close something.

Complete it, or close it on purpose.

Most days I tap Complete. Some days, more than I’d like, I tap Close, and I’ve stopped feeling bad about that, because closing something on purpose turns out to be a lot healthier than rewriting it every morning for a year.

I built this for myself.

I’m one of the thirty-item-morning-list people, so I built an app that only lets me keep a handful, and then I let the app sit unreleased for months because releasing it turned out to be one of the things I was avoiding, which is a little awkward given that I named it Unresolved.

I wrote more about it in The Final Twenty Percent.

Stephen

Try it with five.

  1. Open whatever list you use now.

  2. Circle five things you’ve been carrying for too long.

  3. Put those in Unresolved and leave the rest where it is.

Free for five tasks, or $9.99 once for ten.

There’s no account and no sync, and I never see your tasks.