Spoons vs Reckon

Plan your day around the energy you actually have — not the energy you wish you had. Spoons is an energy-aware task planner built around Spoon Theory. Set your capacity for the day, give each task an energy cost, and see what you can realistically take on before you've overcommitted. Spoon theory was named by Christine Miserandino, who used a handful of spoons to explain to a friend what living with lupus felt like. The idea is simple: every task costs energy, and you only have so much to spend each day. Spoons turns that idea into a practical planner. HOW IT WORKS Each morning, tell Spoons how many spoons you have today. Rate tasks from 1 to 5 based on how much energy they take, then decide where they belong: • Today • Tomorrow • Next Day • Soon • Someday • On Hold Each bucket has a spoon cap, so you can see how much of your available energy you've committed. If you're taking on too much, Spoons gently pushes back — rebalance your day, or consciously decide that today is a bigger day than usual. Anything you don't finish rolls forward automatically. No guilt. No streaks. No shame. WHY SPOONS IS DIFFERENT • Plan around energy, not just time. See what you can realistically fit into the capacity you have today. • You stay in control. Place tasks where you want them. No algorithm decides what your day should look like. • See your limits before you hit them. Spoon caps show how full your day is. • Unfinished tasks roll forward instead of becoming another thing to feel guilty about. • Built for low-energy days. Low Energy Mode hides everything that isn't Critical or High priority when you need to simplify your day. • Projects, tags, due dates, and priorities give you the fundamentals of a task manager — without the pressure. • Light and dark themes follow your system settings. FREE FOREVER The full task manager is free. You don't need an account to use Spoons, and your tasks are stored locally on your device. There is no paywall blocking the core task-planning experience. Use Spoons for as long as you want without paying for Premium. PREMIUM When you're ready for more: • Cloud sync across iPhone, iPad, and soon the web • Recurring tasks — daily, weekly, monthly, or every X days • Full-text search across tasks, notes, and tags • Completion statistics and a yearly heatmap to see your patterns • Quick-add bar — add a task without opening a detail screen Premium is $3.99/month or $29.99/year and includes a 7-day free trial. WHO IS SPOONS FOR? • People living with chronic illness, fatigue, or pain conditions • People with ADHD who need a smaller, more realistic to-do list • Anyone recovering from burnout • Anyone who regularly plans more than they can realistically accomplish • Anyone who's tired of ending the day feeling like they "didn't do enough" Your energy isn't unlimited. Your planner shouldn't pretend that it is. PRIVACY Free users never need to sign in, and your tasks stay on your device. Spoons collects basic, anonymous usage analytics — such as app opens, daily check-ins, and task activity — tied to a private device ID rather than your name or email. This helps us understand whether Spoons is helping people and improve the app. There is no advertising, third-party analytics SDKs, ad tracking, or data brokerage. Premium cloud sync is opt-in and runs through Supabase. Subscriptions are managed through RevenueCat and Apple, which receive your purchase and subscription status. We don't sell your data. Spoons is inspired by Christine Miserandino's essay at butyoudontlooksick.com. Spoon theory belongs to the community; this app is a love letter to it. Subscription terms: Spoons Premium automatically renews until cancelled. Manage or cancel through your Apple ID subscription settings. Cancelling stops future renewals; existing paid periods are not refunded. The free trial converts to a paid subscription unless cancelled at least 24 hours before it ends.

Reckon ranks hypotheses by what hasn't been knocked down — not by what has the most support. Most decision tools let you write a long pros-and-cons list and call it analysis. That doesn't help — you can rationalize anything in prose. Reckon makes you compare every piece of evidence against every hypothesis and ranks them by Heuer's ACH technique (the method CIA analysts use): fewest refutations first, with a tiebreak on most support. WHAT YOU GET • A starter library: pick from six pre-built example boards (shortseller, founder, researcher, investigator, life decision, doctor) or describe your situation in a paragraph and let on-device AI seed the matrix for you. • Inline bias guardrails: when one hypothesis collects evidence all in the same direction, Reckon flags it. "Bears out" without "Cuts against" is the structural signature of confirmation bias. • Falsifier pre-commitment: state up front what evidence would prove a hypothesis wrong. The app reminds you whether that evidence ever showed up. • Steel-manning before ruling out: before you dismiss a hypothesis, Reckon asks for the strongest case for it. Stops you from throwing out the right answer too early. • Pre-mortem: after you reach a conclusion, the app asks you to imagine being wrong about it in a year. Catches wishful thinking that even refutation-first scoring misses. • Calibration tracking: when you finalize, set your confidence (0–100%) and a check-in date (1 week to 1 year). Come back when the date arrives, log the actual outcome, and Reckon shows your calibration curve over time. Are you actually right when you say you're 80% sure? • Strict Bayes mode (optional): set explicit priors per hypothesis and the matrix shows real Bayesian posterior probabilities updating with each rating, using likelihood ratios per Tetlock/Heuer convention. Real probability, not a heuristic. • Plain English mode: turns off the celestial vocabulary if you'd rather see "Hypotheses / Evidence / Matrix" than "Stars / Observations / Star chart." Same depth, less poetry. • Templates: save your hypothesis structure (e.g. forensic-accounting suspects, differential-diagnosis options) for reuse. Faster on your 12th board than your 1st. PRIVACY Local-only. Your boards, evidence, conclusions, and calibration history stay on your device. No server, no analytics, no ads. AI seed runs entirely on-device via Apple Intelligence — your situation never leaves your phone. WHY ACH Confirming evidence is cheap. Refuting evidence distinguishes. Most decision tools amplify confirmation bias by rewarding biggest positive sum. Reckon does the opposite. iOS 17+. AI seed and Strict Bayes posterior require iOS 26+ on Apple Intelligence-capable devices.