I have ADHD. If you’ve been reading this blog for any amount of time, this is not news. What might be news is that I’ve tried approximately every to-do app ever created. Todoist. Things. OmniFocus. Remember the Milk. Apple Reminders. Google Tasks. Notion. That one app that was supposed to gamify my productivity by letting me kill monsters. I have tried them all.
And here’s the thing: they all work. For about three days. Then I forget they exist.
This is the ADHD paradox of productivity tools. I desperately need systems to function. I love the idea of systems. I will research systems for hours. I will set up elaborate systems with color-coded tags and nested projects and carefully considered contexts. And then I will never look at them again.
The Problem With Deadlines
Here’s how my brain works with deadlines:
- I set a deadline for Friday
- I immediately forget about it
- I remember on Friday at 4:47 PM that something was due
- I panic
- I somehow get it done through sheer adrenaline and self-loathing
- I collapse, wondering why I’m like this
The thing is—step 5 works. The panic actually produces results. The problem is the stress, the cortisol, the general sense that I’m always failing even when I’m technically succeeding.
Two years ago, I had a stupid idea: what if my to-do app just… lied to me?
The Original Sin: liars-todo
The first version was called liars-todo because I am nothing if not on-the-nose with naming. The concept was simple: I tell the app something is due Friday, and the app decides to tell me it’s due Thursday. I panic on Thursday. I get it done Thursday. I have a whole extra day I didn’t know about.
Authorized deception. Benevolent manipulation. My business partner has been doing this to me for years with project deadlines, and it works beautifully. I wanted to systematize it.
That first version was… not great. It was a mess of spaghetti code and half-implemented features and the kind of optimistic architecture decisions you make at 2 AM when you’re convinced you’re about to change your life. It didn’t really work. I abandoned it like I abandon most things.
But the idea stuck around.
Enter Tick
The rebrand happened when I created the mascot. Meet Tick—a little pixel art creature whose entire purpose is to deceive you for your own good. Tick has expressions. Tick has moods. Tick can be idle, smug, shocked, happy, suspicious, disappointed, scheming, and—my personal favorite—unhinged.
Creating Tick turned this from “a to-do app I was building” into “a character with personality who happens to live in a to-do app.” It’s the difference between a tool and a companion. A judgmental, lying companion who wants you to succeed even if it means manipulating your perception of time.
If you’ve ever used Carrot Weather, you know exactly what I’m going for. Carrot is a weather app with a sassy AI personality that mocks you, praises you, and occasionally threatens you depending on its mood and the weather. I love Carrot. I check the weather more than I need to because Carrot makes it entertaining.
That’s what I want Tick to be. A little chaos agent in your pocket who will absolutely lie about when your dentist* appointment is because Tick knows—TICK KNOWS—that you’ll forget and then show up an hour late and feel terrible about yourself.
The Tech Stack (For the Nerds)
For those who care about the machinery under the hood:
- React 19 with TypeScript because I’m not a monster
- Vite for the build system
- Supabase handling the backend, auth, and database because I didn’t want to think about infrastructure
- Tailwind CSS for styling because writing CSS from scratch in 2026 is a choice I refuse to make
- Vitest for testing because I’m trying to be a responsible developer even when building an app whose core feature is lying
It’s a web app—you open it in your browser, it works. There’s also PWA support baked in, so if you’re the kind of person who likes installing things to your home screen, you can do that too. But honestly, the browser works fine. The important part is that Tick is there, quietly judging you and moving your deadlines around when you’re not looking.
How the Lying Works
The deception algorithm is actually more nuanced than “subtract one day.” Different tasks deserve different lies. A dentist* appointment that’s in two weeks? Tick might tell you it’s a day earlier. A work deadline you set for next Friday? Tick might give you two days of buffer. Something due tomorrow? Tick’s not going to lie—that’s cruel even for a chaos agent.
The goal isn’t to trick you into constant panic. It’s to give you that panic moment early enough that you still have recovery time. It’s the difference between “I forgot and now I’m screwed” and “I forgot and WAIT NO I STILL HAVE TIME.”
There’s also a reveal moment. Once a task is marked complete—or once the fake deadline passes—Tick tells you the truth. Shows you the real deadline. Lets you feel that brief moment of relief when you realize you weren’t actually cutting it as close as you thought.
It’s positive reinforcement through strategic deception. My therapist would probably have thoughts about this.
Two Years of Procrastinating on an Anti-Procrastination App
Yes, I see the irony. The app designed to help me stop putting things off was itself put off for two years. In my defense, version one didn’t work, and I needed time to figure out what I actually wanted this to be.
Also—and this is the real reason—I didn’t have Tick yet. The mascot, the personality, the sassy companion energy. Without that, it was just another to-do app with a gimmick. With Tick, it’s something I actually want to use.
That’s the whole secret, isn’t it? Productivity tools only work if you use them. And you only use tools that feel good to use. Tick makes this feel good. Even when Tick is giving me a disappointed expression because I’ve been ignoring a task for three days.
The Planner Obsession
I should mention: I love planners. Physical planners, digital planners, bullet journals, weekly spreads, daily pages. I have bought so many planners. I have a drawer full of half-used Moleskines and abandoned Passion Planners and that one Hobonichi Techo I was absolutely going to fill out every day.
People with ADHD often become planner addicts because planning feels like doing. The act of organizing your life scratches an itch that actual productivity doesn’t quite reach. Setting up a beautiful system gives you the dopamine hit of accomplishment without requiring you to accomplish anything.
I built tick’d partly to break this cycle. Instead of spending three hours researching the perfect task management methodology, I built the stupidest possible solution: just lie to me about when things are due. No contexts, no GTD, no Eisenhower matrices. Just tasks, deadlines, and a pixel art gremlin who will manipulate my reality for my own benefit.
The Launch
tick’d is available now. It’s a web app—just open it up and start lying to yourself. It’s free because I built it for myself and figured other people might want it too.
Will it fix your ADHD? No. Nothing will fix your ADHD. But it might trick your ADHD into panicking at more convenient times, and honestly, that’s the best any of us can hope for.
Go meet Tick. Let a tiny pixel creature deceive you. It’s for your own good.
Want It on Your Home Screen?
If you want tick’d to feel more like a “real app” and less like “a browser tab you’ll definitely forget about,” you can install it:
On iPhone/iPad:
- Open tick’d in Safari (has to be Safari, sorry)
- Tap the Share button (the square with the arrow pointing up)
- Scroll down and tap “Add to Home Screen”
- Name it whatever you want—Tick won’t judge. Actually, Tick will definitely judge.
On Android:
- Open tick’d in Chrome
- Tap the three-dot menu
- Tap “Add to Home Screen” or “Install App”
- Accept that a pixel creature now lives on your phone
Now it launches like an app, no browser chrome, just you and Tick and your questionable relationship with deadlines.
*Don’t actually use tick’d for dentist appointments. Or any appointments, really. The lying feature is for tasks with soft deadlines—“finish that report,” “send that email,” “finally learn to play that song.” For appointments where showing up late has consequences, use a normal calendar like a normal person. Tick is chaotic, not cruel.
Stay organized (or at least organized-adjacent), trust the lying, and stay safe.