TeuxDeux Helps Manage Overwhelm.

I have suddenly found myself in a very busy and demanding job and working fulltime after years of "not quite full time". More time in work and less time at home, and weekends suddenly feel more precious. It’s my time to rest and restore and to be ready for the week ahead.

Lately, I had found myself waking in the night, my brain suddenly remembering forgotten tasks. Trying to hold all that in my head and remembering so many details had become impossible.

When I recently started using Microsoft ToDo at work I was stunned at how many tasks I added across the first few days as I "dumped" everything that was being held in my head, into the app. I started to feel much better but needed a solution for home life as well.

I wanted an app to help record all my home tasks, appointments and birthdays etc, but I didn't want it to feel like work. It had to be a joy to use, something I wanted to do. Experiments with an app called Todoist quickly resulted in a headache and a feeling of overwhelm. Not exactly what I was looking for.

Lately I have been using Copilot AI at work and found it really helpful but do not really like Copilot for home use. At home I have tried ChatGPT, Lumo and Gemini but more recently have been using Claude AI. So I described my dilemma to Claude giving it a list of software I liked to use, plus some of my habits, likes and dislikes, in the hope that it might steer me in the right direction.

That's how I learned about an app called TeuxDeux, it does not send reminders but uses a daily digest instead, an email sent the same time each day. That suits me very well, and I realized the randomly delivered email and phone alerts of Todoist was contributing to my overwhelm and creating noise that I didn't need.

TeuxDeux's interface is beautifully clean. It was built by people who thought about what we need rather than trying to deliver what we want. It's the app I was looking for, my headache was gone and the search was over.

I like that it only has a web app and phone app. There is no desktop app. I have gotten used to only using web apps at work and hardly use desktop apps anymore. There is a 7 day free trial that does not require a credit card, and after that there is a modest monthly or yearly fee.

Spending some time and effort finding technology that can help us in life is something worth doing. The wrong technology adds to the noise, drains our wallets and quite literally gives us a headache. The good stuff turns an unbearable task into something manageable, even joyful.

It’s important that I show up for work on Monday mornings feeling refreshed and not overwhelmed by trying to keep track of what needs doing at home. I’m glad there is a software developer who takes this seriously, people who think past the obvious and take things to a whole new level. It’s probably not the best software for work but for home it’s perfect.

TeuxDeux doesn’t integrate with Claude the way Todoist does, but who cares? Managing todo lists is probably not the best use for AI anyway. It’s a beautiful little app that helps restore and nourish rather than take more away.