I made this for myself. My problem isn't doing tasks, it's choosing between them. Given a list I'll stall on the choice and drift off to something else. This removes the decision: you add tasks to a jar and it picks one at random, which you either do or skip. It works for me, and it might work for a few other people wired the same way.
The concept isn't novel. Simone Giertz's 3D-printed task picker [1] was the inspiration, and it turns out random task selection is a small genre I was unaware of when I started.
Build notes: it's Go, HTMX and SQLite, heavily AI-assisted. As a rule I try to build things small and decoupled enough that I don't mind throwing them away and starting again. It lets me move fast and experiment before things eventually crystallise, and AI-assisted development fits neatly with that because it reduces the cost of binning stuff off. The initial version took a couple of days, and I've spent longer since then using it daily and refining it.
You can use it with an ephemeral session, or sign in with an emailed magic link if you want your jar to persist and sync across devices. It also supports things like daily recurring tasks. It runs on a k3s cluster under my desk (a Turing Pi 2 with four RK1 nodes, if anyone's interested) and is exposed to the web with a Cloudflare tunnel.
Eventually I'd like to make a physical version. I do embedded hardware for a living, and a desk device that shows your next task at the press of a button appeals to me. This was the cheap way to test whether the mechanic sticks before committing to that.
This is neat, I would love to see a UI where you actually have a pickle jar that you shake and get one so it'll give me the happy emotions when getting the task rather than just text.
Thanks! that's certainly my plan for the physical version (I'm thinking an OLED display in a murky jar) and I probably will dress up the UI for this web version at some point but for now I wanted to keep things simple... otherwise I'll procrastinate doing the tasks I need to get done by endlessly fiddling with this!
I made this for myself. My problem isn't doing tasks, it's choosing between them. Given a list I'll stall on the choice and drift off to something else. This removes the decision: you add tasks to a jar and it picks one at random, which you either do or skip. It works for me, and it might work for a few other people wired the same way.
The concept isn't novel. Simone Giertz's 3D-printed task picker [1] was the inspiration, and it turns out random task selection is a small genre I was unaware of when I started.
Build notes: it's Go, HTMX and SQLite, heavily AI-assisted. As a rule I try to build things small and decoupled enough that I don't mind throwing them away and starting again. It lets me move fast and experiment before things eventually crystallise, and AI-assisted development fits neatly with that because it reduces the cost of binning stuff off. The initial version took a couple of days, and I've spent longer since then using it daily and refining it.
You can use it with an ephemeral session, or sign in with an emailed magic link if you want your jar to persist and sync across devices. It also supports things like daily recurring tasks. It runs on a k3s cluster under my desk (a Turing Pi 2 with four RK1 nodes, if anyone's interested) and is exposed to the web with a Cloudflare tunnel.
Eventually I'd like to make a physical version. I do embedded hardware for a living, and a desk device that shows your next task at the press of a button appeals to me. This was the cheap way to test whether the mechanic sticks before committing to that.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNfgQ-KqHR4
This is neat, I would love to see a UI where you actually have a pickle jar that you shake and get one so it'll give me the happy emotions when getting the task rather than just text.
Thanks! that's certainly my plan for the physical version (I'm thinking an OLED display in a murky jar) and I probably will dress up the UI for this web version at some point but for now I wanted to keep things simple... otherwise I'll procrastinate doing the tasks I need to get done by endlessly fiddling with this!