Why a whole list works against you
When every task is on screen, each one is a small decision: this one or that one, the easy one or the important one. For a lot of people, especially people with ADHD, that pile of decisions is where the afternoon goes.
Switching has a cost too. The American Psychological Association notes that shifting between tasks can eat up as much as 40% of productive time. Single-tasking flips it around: decide once, then look at nothing else.
How it works in FocusDo
- Write your list. It can be long and messy.
- Tap Focus, or swipe right on a task to start with that one. It sits in the middle of the screen; the rest fade away.
- Scroll to bring a different task to the center if you need to.
- Swipe across to cross it off. The next one slides into place.
How to focus on one task at a time with ADHD
- Make the first task tiny. “Open the document” counts. Starting is the hard part.
- Write actions, not projects. “Plan the trip” is a project. “Look up train times” is a task.
- Choose before you start. Deciding what’s next mid-task is a switch in itself.
- Come back without judgment. You will drift. The goal is coming back sooner.
How to choose the one task
Picking is often the hardest part, so give yourself a rule instead of a debate. Take the one with a deadline today. If there isn’t one, take the one that would make the others easier. If you’ve been choosing for more than a minute, take whatever is at the top of the list and start. A good-enough choice you act on beats a perfect one you keep weighing.
One task at a time vs. a Pomodoro timer
A timer tells you how long to work. It doesn’t tell you what to work on, and for a lot of people the countdown becomes one more thing to watch. FocusDo takes the other half of the problem: it narrows the screen to a single task and leaves the clock out of it. If you like working in sprints, a timer and FocusDo sit happily side by side.
What happens to the rest of your list
Nothing is lost. The full list is waiting when you step out of Focus Mode. Older tasks can move to the archive on their own after a day or a week (you choose in Settings, or turn it off), or you can archive the whole list in one go, so the list you come back to stays short.
If long lists have never worked for you, you’re not alone. We wrote about why to-do lists often backfire with ADHD, and what helps instead.
Who it’s for
People who get pulled away easily, and anyone who has spent more time organizing a task manager than using it. If you manage projects with a team or need priorities and dependencies on every task, a full task manager like Todoist or Things will serve you better.