The Daily Story
A planner that holds the whole day
- Web app
- Daily planner
- Personal
Skills
- Vite
Focus mode
A digital diary and planner built around four modes, so the day has somewhere to go whether you are focusing, dreaming, writing or tracking.
Challenge
Planners tend to assume one posture. Either they are a task list, which has nowhere to put a half-formed idea, or they are a journal, which has nowhere to put a deadline. A real day moves between those postures constantly, and switching apps to follow it is what makes people abandon both.
Action
I designed the app around four modes, Focus, Vision, Write and Track, reached from one control rather than four destinations. Work is separated by how it behaves rather than by when it is due: dailies are their own thing, Daily Do's hold routines and rituals, and Ongoing holds long-running work that has no deadline and therefore fits in no time bucket. A zap control promotes anything to now, and a braindump write mode takes thoughts before they have a shape.
Result
Separating work by how it behaves rather than by when it is due is the decision the app stands or falls on, and it holds: a routine, a deadline and a half-formed idea each have somewhere obvious to go, so nothing accumulates in a catch-all list. Reaching the four modes from one control rather than four destinations is what keeps moving between postures cheap enough to actually do mid-day.