The way that my brain works, whatever is visible is what should be acted upon; conversely, whatever is invisible shouldn't be acted upon. This relationship with my surroundings influences many of the actions I perform, but is especially noticeable when I use to-do list apps.

Practically all to-do list apps rely on a hierarchical structure, wherein tasks have several places where they might be. The intention behind this kind of to-do list information architecture seems to be that users open their to-do list apps with a clear idea of what they want to do with them. While this may very well be the case for many to-do list users, it is not the case for me.

When I open a to-do list app, I hope to gain a sense of clarity concerning my agenda for the day. Unfortunately, all to-do list apps I've used fail to consistently provide this sense of clarity, largely because of all the different pockets where tasks could be tucked. For instance, take Things 3.

This app has a good initial workflow, wherein users are intended to dump all of their tasks into an Inbox. However, this workflow quickly falls apart after this step, as users are intended to figure out where to permanently store these tasks. Sure, users could create a series of areas to move their tasks to, as well as some projects to store tasks that all work towards some greater objective, but what then? Which project should be worked on first? What about tasks that don't belong to a project? What about tasks for which multiple areas are logical places to store them? Those who are already good at prioritization may make these decisions somewhat subconsciously, meaning they may not view the need to make these decisions as a problem. However, for someone like myself, this need to figure out where every task goes is labor-intensive. Consequently, I struggle to maintain my to-do list when the tool I use to do so does not help me do so. 

What I need is an app with less crevices for tasks to live and where there is only one place I need to look to determine which tasks require my attention and in what order. Sort Stack is my attempt at creating such an app.

Original Date: November 25, 2022