Built with ADHD brains in mind
A list that ends on Sunday.
Mustard is a task manager built with ADHD brains in mind. Not a system to adopt or a philosophy to believe in. A shape: short weeks, small estimates, and a list that stops growing at some point.
Get early accessIt won't reorganize your life and it has no opinions about your mornings. It's a task manager whose defaults assume that an endless list is a problem rather than a feature, and that an app which makes you feel bad is an app you will stop opening.
- You close the week, so it actually ends.
- Unfinished work rolls forward without shame.
- Mustard nudges once, then never nags.
The infinite list
A list with no end becomes a guilt machine
Work from one week, not an infinite record of unfinished things.
Most task apps only add. Every capture lengthens the list, while only finishing removes anything. The count at the top keeps climbing.
Soon it is a record of what you have not done, sorted by how long you have not done it. Opening it costs something. So you open it less, find a lovely new app, and repeat five weeks later.
Mustard separates capture from work. Put every thought in the backlog, frictionlessly. Then work from the current cycle, which holds one week.
Weeks that end
The week ends, and you close it, finished or not
Close the week manually, finished or not.
A cycle has a start and an end. When the date arrives, you close it manually, done or not. Whatever is left rolls into next week or returns to the backlog.
An endless list has no “done for now.” A week does. Closing it is a small ritual: what you committed, what you finished, chapter over. The next week starts at zero committed, not at “everything, still.”
Seven days is a container you can hold in your head on Wednesday.
Plan the week once. Let it end on time.
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Unfinished work moves forward. That's all it does.
Unfinished tasks move on without becoming a verdict.
Unfinished tasks move into the next cycle, or back to the backlog if there is no next cycle yet. They are not overdue, red, or counted against you.
A task that did not happen says how big the week was, not who you are. Its points return to next week's arithmetic, and Mustard says nothing else about it.
There is no streak to break. Miss a week and you return to no catch-up screen, damage report, or cheerful note about how long it has been.
Estimates
Small numbers instead of guessing at hours
Relative size beats pretending you can predict every hour.
“That will take twenty minutes.” Four hours later, you are still in it. Plenty of sensible plans die in the gap between those numbers.
Points ask a simpler question: “Is this about the size of that thing last week?” Relative size is easier than predicting minutes. The task avoided for nine days can still be two points.
After two or three cycles, velocity shows you finish about 12 points a week, based on finished work. Be consistent about size and Mustard handles the arithmetic.
Advisory, always
It nudges. It doesn't nag.
You get one useful warning, then the choice stays yours.
Plan 23 points against a velocity of 12 and Mustard says so once, beside the number.“You usually finish 12 points. You've planned 23.”
Then it lets you continue. No dialog, warning colour, scorekeeping badge, or morning notification telling you that you are behind.
You get useful information at the useful moment. Ignoring it remains yours to choose, and sometimes that is the right call.
Done should feel done
Finishing ought to feel like something
Eleven finished and two rolled forward still counts as a finished week.
Check off a task and a disco ball spins briefly. It is deliberately silly and visibly there. It also respects reduced-motion settings.
Done and not done should not look the same. If completion only slides the next item into place, nothing feels finished. That is how a full week starts looking like no work at all.
Closing a cycle works one size up: 11 of 13 points finished, 2 rolling forward, week over. Small, concrete, and countable.
Early access
Next Monday shows up either way. Show up to it planned.
Join the list and two things happen today, not at launch. You get the week-shaped method in your inbox (it works on paper, before the app exists). And you're first in when it opens, while we're still two people who read every reply.
One email now with the method. One at launch, maybe two if something big lands. No newsletter.