A reminder app for ADHD brains
You have tried the apps. Probably several, probably with real enthusiasm, and probably each one worked for about eleven days. This is such a common arc that it is almost a rite of passage, and it is worth being precise about why it happens, because the usual explanation (you did not stick with it) is both unkind and wrong.
Two things break. Capturing a thought costs more attention than you have at the moment you have the thought, and the reminder, when it finally arrives, looks exactly like the ninety other notifications you have taught yourself to clear without reading.
This page is about a setup that fails differently. It is a tool, not advice, and it is not a treatment for anything.
The capture problem
A thought arrives while you are doing something else. That is the only time they arrive. To keep it you have to unlock the phone, find the app, wait for it, pick a list, type a title, set a date, set a time, and save. Eight steps, most of them small decisions, at the exact moment your attention is already committed elsewhere.
So you do the reasonable thing and decide to remember it, because remembering feels free. It is not free, and you already know how that ends.
The fix is not more discipline. It is making capture cost about as much as the thought did. If the tool lives in an app that is already open, and the input is one sentence of ordinary English, the eight steps collapse into one and the tax disappears.
remind me to take the bins out at 7call the pharmacy back in 40 minutessend the form before 5pmThe dismissal problem
The second failure is at the other end. A push notification from a productivity app arrives in a stream with app updates, delivery pings, and a game you installed once. You have trained yourself, correctly, to clear that stream without reading it. The reminder is technically delivered and functionally invisible.
A WhatsApp message is in a different stream. It sits in the same list as your family, your landlord, and the person you owe a reply to, and that list has your attention because ignoring it has consequences. The reminder inherits that attention. It is not a trick, it is just where the message lands.
This is also why it survives the eleven-day cliff. There is no app to stop opening, because there was never an app. The habit you have to maintain is checking WhatsApp, which is not a habit you have any trouble with.
Out of sight really is out of mind
A task written down somewhere you have to remember to look is not a system, it is a second thing to remember. Notes apps, sticky pads, a list in your bag: all of them require the retrieval step that is the hard part.
The distinction worth drawing is between a bookmark and a nudge. A bookmark waits for you to come back. A nudge comes and finds you. Almost everything sold as a reminder tool is quietly a bookmark, and the one thing you needed was the finding-you part.
Our own usage data lands on this hard. Of the one-off reminders people set, 87.8% are due within twenty-four hours and half within three. Nobody is filing tasks into next month. They are getting a thought out of their head and back into their hands a few hours later, which is exactly the job working memory was failing at.
For the things that need actual nagging
Some tasks do not need one reminder, they need to be asked again. Medication, water, standing up, the form you have opened four times without filling in.
A reminder can repeat as fast as you want, including every twenty minutes, and you can bound it to your waking hours so it stops overnight and starts again in the morning. Set a window and the 2am version of the problem simply does not happen.
Be honest with yourself about the interval when you set it. A repeat you find unbearable gets cancelled on day two, and then you have nothing.
take my meds every day at 9pmstand up every 45 minutes between 10am and 6pmnudge me about the form every 2 hours between 9am and 8pmChanging your mind is a first-class action
Plans move, and a tool that punishes you for moving them stops getting used. Everything here is a conversation: send “list” to see what is pending, “cancel 2” to drop one, or just say “actually make it 7pm” and it follows.
There is no streak to break, no completion rate, no chart of how you did this week. Nothing in this is keeping score, which is deliberate. A tool that makes you feel watched is a tool you will eventually avoid opening, and avoidance is the failure mode this is trying not to have.
listcancel 2actually 7pmWhat this is not
It is not a treatment, a therapy, or a substitute for anything a doctor gives you. It is a place to put reminders that is harder to ignore than the alternatives, and that is the entire claim.
It also has no sense of whether you did the thing. A repeating reminder repeats until you cancel it; there is no “stop when it is done” condition, because nothing here can tell that it is done. If you want the nagging to stop, you type cancel.
And it will not fix the underlying thing. It moves one specific failure, forgetting a task you already knew about, off your working memory and onto a server. That is a small job. It is also the one that was costing you the most.
Questions, answered
- What makes this different from every other reminder app?
- Two things, both about friction rather than features. Capture is one sentence in a chat you already have open, so it costs almost nothing at the moment you have nothing to spare. And the reminder arrives as a WhatsApp message rather than an app notification, which lands in a stream you actually read.
- Will I stop using this after two weeks like the others?
- That is the honest risk with any tool. The difference is that there is no app to stop opening: reminders arrive in WhatsApp whether or not you have thought about the tool recently. The habit that keeps it alive is checking WhatsApp, which is probably not one you struggle with.
- Can it keep reminding me until I actually do the thing?
- It can repeat as often as you like, including every twenty minutes, and you can limit it to your waking hours so it pauses overnight. But it cannot tell whether you have done the task, so a repeating reminder runs until you cancel it. There is no automatic stop-when-done.
- Does it track my streaks or completion rate?
- No, and that is on purpose. There is no score, no chart, and nothing that tells you how you did this week. A tool that makes you feel monitored is one you eventually avoid, and avoidance is the exact failure this is trying not to have.
- Is this a medical or treatment tool?
- No. It is a reminder tool, nothing more. It does not diagnose, treat, or replace anything from a clinician. It just moves the job of remembering a task off your working memory.
- What does it cost?
- Free for 7 days, with no card and no signup: your first message is the setup. After that it is a small subscription, from ₹59/month in India.