Minus 5 vs ADHD Matrix

Minus 5 is a daily to-do list with one rule: five things. That's it. Every other task app gives you infinite room, and infinite room is how you end up with a 40-item list you're too tired to look at. Minus 5 gives you five slots. Most to-do lists count up forever. This one counts down to zero. If you open your task manager, feel your stomach drop, and close it again — this is built for you. — THE RING — One neon progress ring is the entire interface. The big number in the middle is what's LEFT, not what you've done. When it hits zero: "you've earned the day." Close the app. Go outside. — FIVE SLOTS, ON PURPOSE — The cap isn't a limitation, it's the product. Five is roughly what a person actually finishes in a day. Everything beyond five is a wish list pretending to be a plan. — STREAKS THAT DON'T PUNISH YOU — Finish at least one thing a day and your streak grows. Miss a day and a Streak Freeze covers you automatically — you earn one every 10 days and can bank two. No shattered-streak animation, no guilt trip, nothing to buy back. A day off isn't a character flaw, it's a Tuesday. An optional evening nudge (off by default, at a time you pick) tells you what's still open before midnight. — AGE BADGES — Anything you don't finish carries into tomorrow with a small 1d / 4d / 2w tag, warming from grey to red the longer it sits. A nudge, not a punishment — delete what's not going to happen. You'll feel better. — LEVELS — Consistency unlocks capacity. Start at 5 slots. Clear your whole list seven days in a row and the next level opens: 7 slots at Level 2, 11 at Level 3, and up. The app rewards follow-through, not list-making. — RECURRING THINGS — Daily, weekly, monthly, or custom-day things that appear on schedule, with reminders that say exactly what — no generic "tackle your things." Stretch every morning. Pay rent on the 1st. Gym Mon/Wed/Fri. — PROGRESS — A 30-day curve, your weekly rhythm, and a consistency grid where each square is one week of the year. Best streak, active days, and how many days you cleared all five. Honest numbers, no dashboards. — RANKINGS (optional) — See how your streak stands against everyone else's, worldwide and in your own country. Free, and off until you switch it on. You get a made-up name like "Bright Otter" plus a few digits of your own — no real names, no accounts, no email. — WIDGETS & LOCK SCREEN — Home Screen (small and medium), and all three Lock Screen styles — circular, rectangular, and inline. Your ring, glanceable, without opening anything. — SIRI & SHORTCUTS — "Hey Siri, add a thing to Minus 5." Works from the Lock Screen, AirPods, CarPlay, anywhere Siri lives. — APPLE WATCH — A real Watch app and complication. Check things off from your wrist. — EXPORT — Copy your list as Markdown, share it, or send things straight to Things 3 or Reminders. Your data is portable. — CALENDAR MIRROR (optional) — Pull today's events in as read-only one-liners ("Meeting · 6–8pm"). They don't count toward your five and don't carry over — just context. — iCLOUD SYNC — Your things sync privately across your devices through your own iCloud account. No accounts, no tracking, no telemetry, no analytics. The only thing that ever leaves your iCloud is a streak number — and only if you turn on Rankings. — THEME & ACCESSIBILITY — Light, Dark, or System. Nine neon accent colors with automatic contrast. Text size override (Default / Large / Larger / Huge). Full VoiceOver support. — MINUS 5 PRO — The five things stay free, forever. Pro is a one-time unlock — bought once, not rented — adding progress stats and streak history, the Apple Watch app and complication, the calendar mirror, unlimited recurring templates, and custom reminder times. Widgets, Siri, export, Rankings and iCloud sync stay free for everyone. No ads. No subscription. No analytics. No tags. No projects. Just five things.

I made this for myself. I have ADHD, and one long to-do list just freezes me. I can't tell what's actually on fire and what can wait, so I end up doing nothing. So I built the thing I needed, and figured some of you might need it too. Here's how it works. You write a task down before it leaves your head, then you put it in one of four buckets: - Do Now - Plan - Handle Soon - Later Four buckets. Not twenty lists, not folders inside folders. Just four places for a thing to go. What's in it: - Quick capture, so writing a task down isn't its own little chore - An Inbox for everything you haven't sorted yet - Recurring tasks: Daily, Weekdays, Weekly, or Monthly. You can also type a tag like @daily when you capture - Drag tasks into the order you want in Inbox and the Matrix - A Completed list, so finished stuff goes somewhere instead of staring at you - Siri and App Shortcuts, if you'd rather just say it out loud - Home Screen widgets, so your matrix stays visible without opening anything - Five curated color themes plus one custom palette. Curated themes stay contrast-checked in light and dark; a custom palette can keep the colors you pick even when contrast is low - Rename the four buckets to whatever your brain actually calls them - Optional private iCloud sync, so your tasks can show up on your iPhone and iPad - German, Spanish, Italian, and Simplified Chinese, with English as the fallback About your data: it lives on your device. You don't make an account, you don't sign in, and I don't run analytics or hand your stuff to anyone. The sync is your own iCloud, between your own Apple devices. It's free. No subscription, no ads. iPhone and iPad, iOS 18 and up. One honest note: this won't fix your brain, and I'd be lying if I said it would. It's just a small, quiet place to put your tasks that didn't make me feel worse to use. I built it by myself, around how my own brain actually works. That was the whole goal.