Dashboard
Work through the list without touching the mouse
An overdue list of forty items is not forty decisions, it is one decision you keep declining to make. Focus mode shows you one at a time, takes a keypress, and moves on — the app calls it knocking it out.
Why a long list stops moving
A list you can see all of is a list you are constantly comparing against itself. Every item you look at is judged against the thirty-nine others visible around it, and the honest answer is almost always that something else on the screen is more urgent. So you scroll, you re-read, you reorganise, and forty minutes later the count has not changed.
This is not laziness and it is not a planning failure. It is what happens when the interface asks you to choose rather than to act. Choosing is expensive; doing the thing in front of you is usually cheap. Most of an overdue list is made of two-minute items that have been waiting three weeks for a decision they never needed.
Focus mode removes the comparison. It takes whatever list you are looking at and shows you the first item on its own, with nothing else on screen. There is no ranking to do, because there is nothing to rank it against. You deal with it, or you skip it, and the next one appears.
How a run goes
It is keyboard driven from start to finish, which is the point — the moment you reach for the mouse you are browsing again rather than clearing.
Filter first
Focus works on whatever you are currently looking at. Filter to Overdue, or to a single category, or to your high priority items, and the run is scoped to that.
Enter focus
The list is replaced by one reminder. Not the top of a list with the rest greyed out — one item, with the detail you attached to it.
Enter marks it done
The commonest outcome, and it is one key. The item goes to history and the next one is already in front of you.
S skips it
For the ones that genuinely cannot be dealt with right now. Skipping is a legitimate move; deciding in front of the whole list is what was expensive.
Esc leaves
Stop whenever you like. It counts what you cleared as you go and tells you the number, and when the list is empty it says all knocked out.
Built for the fifteen minutes before you leave
There is a particular window that most task apps are bad at: you have a quarter of an hour, you are not going to start anything substantial, and you would like the list to be shorter than it was. Reorganising expands to fill that window perfectly and produces nothing.
Focus mode is what that window is for. A run through the overdue bucket usually turns up a dozen things that were finished weeks ago and never ticked, three that take a keystroke, and two that genuinely need a new date. The count at the end is real, and the list you come back to on Monday is one you can read.
- Scoped to the filter you are already on
- Enter to complete, S to skip, Esc to exit
- Counts what you cleared during the run
- Nothing else on screen to compare against
Runs that are worth doing
- The overdue bucket, on a Friday afternoon, with nothing else open
- One category at a time when work and home have grown into each other
- Your urgent and high items first thing, before the day makes the decision for you
- Everything tagged for a project that has just finished
- The list after a week away, where most of it has resolved itself without you
- Ten minutes before a planning session, so you are planning against a real list
Focus mode is a keyboard feature, so it lives on the web
The run is driven by Enter, S and Esc, which means it belongs where there is a keyboard: the Timelee web dashboard. Everything you clear in a run is the same data as everywhere else, so the list on your phone is shorter the moment you finish. This is the pattern across Timelee — set up and tidy at a desk, get reached on your phone.
Most of an overdue list is not hard. It is just visible all at once.
Show one item and the decision costs nothing. Show forty and the decision is the whole job.
Clear the backlog in one run rather than one scroll at a time
Filter to overdue, enter focus, and see what the count says at the end of a quarter of an hour.
Keep reading
- Quick addThe other half: capture that never stalls.
- Tasks and to-do listsA to-do list where the items chase you.
- Reminder prioritiesWhat to run through first.
- Timelee on the webWhere the keyboard workflow lives.
- How to prioritise your to-do listDeciding the order before you start the run.
- Planning the dayA morning pass over the buckets, then clearing it in Focus mode.