Why doesn’t the today view in to-do apps usually work?

Almost every to-do app has one: a view for today. It gathers everything due on this day, plus whatever is overdue from yesterday and the day before, maybe the appointments from your calendar too. A place where you see in the morning what lies ahead. That sounds sensible. In everyday life, it often doesn’t work.

You open the app and it overwhelms you

The list is full before the day has begun. Twelve entries, three of them red because they have been overdue for days. Your first thought is not “What will I do today?” but “How am I supposed to get all of this done?”

That is not because you plan badly. It is because nobody put this list together for this day. It is the sum of many small decisions from the past: a due date set here, something entered “for Thursday” there, back when Thursday was still far away.

You don’t choose, you receive

The today view takes away exactly the step that matters: the choice. A date decides what is due today, not you. Yet in the morning you know far better than two weeks ago how much time and energy this day has. An appointment came up, your child is sick, or it is simply a tired day.

A list you receive feels different from one you write yourself. One is a demand, the other an intention.

And often it is simply too much

Due dates know nothing about each other. Each one was realistic on its own; together they add up to a fourteen-hour day. The app shows it anyway, without objection. You start, and in the evening you stop with the feeling that you didn’t finish again – even though you got a lot done.

Over time it becomes a jumble

Whatever is left today is back tomorrow. And the day after. The today view turns into the place for everything that really ought to get done: the email you don’t feel like writing, the doctor’s appointment, the basement. Things that matter, just not today. Or that were never as important as they seemed back then.

You get used to looking past them. And once you look past part of the list, you soon stop taking the whole list seriously. At some point it is simply too much, and you no longer like opening the app – or stop opening it at all.

Choosing anew every day

Heute goes the other way. Every day begins with a blank sheet. Nothing lands on it by itself, no due date, no import. What stayed open yesterday appears in a small note at the top, and you bring each entry in one by one – or let it go.

That takes a few minutes in the morning. In return, the list only holds what you set out to do on this day. Usually that is less than a today view would have served you. And enough to get it done.

The other lists can stay, as storage for everything that is due some day. What is due today, you decide.