Why I Stopped Using Every Productivity App and Built My Own
The day Alexa forgot my life.
January 2026
The Moment Everything Broke
I still remember the day I found out. Alexa's integration with Todoist was being discontinued. For most people, this was a minor inconvenience. For me, it was like losing a limb.
"Alexa, add milk to my shopping list."
"Alexa, remind me to call mom tomorrow."
"Alexa, add 'schedule dentist appointment' to my to-do list."
These weren't just commands. They were how I survived. With ADHD, if a thought doesn't get captured in the moment, it's gone. Poof. Never existed. The Alexa and Todoist combo was my external brain, and suddenly Amazon decided to pull the plug.
Why Speech Matters
Here's what most productivity gurus don't understand: the friction of opening an app, typing a task, and categorizing it is enough to kill the thought entirely.
By the time I pull out my phone, unlock it, find the app, wait for it to load, type the task, and decide what project it belongs to... I've forgotten what I was going to add. Or I've talked myself out of it. Or I've gotten distracted by a notification.
Speech eliminates all of that. The thought goes directly from my brain to the system. No friction. No loss.
The Year of Making Do
"Fine," I thought. "I'll just use Siri with Apple Reminders."
I made it work. For over a year, I lived in Apple's ecosystem and adapted to its limitations. But the friction was always there. Siri is fine for basic reminders, but the moment you need tasks organized by project, recurring schedules with any complexity, or integration with how you actually think? You hit walls.
I kept wishing the system would just understand me.
What I Actually Needed
The more I thought about it, the more I realized my problem wasn't just tasks. I needed a system that understood:
Task management, yes. But also calendar integration. Contact access. Note capture for random thoughts that aren't tasks yet. Project tracking for the big picture stuff. Finance awareness for bills, payments, and money coming in. Family coordination across everyone's schedules. And all of it talking to each other.
No single app does this well. And no app lets you talk to it naturally and have it just figure out what you mean.
So after a year of making do, I started building my own.
Building Clarineffable
I'm not a developer. Let me be clear about that. I can't write code from scratch.
But I can describe what I want. I can explain how I think. And with Claude as my coding partner, that turned out to be enough.
Four months into my Claude Code subscription, Clarineffable (finding Clarity in the ineffable) became real. I've been using it fully for half that time now. It manages my entire life.
The key moment when I knew this would work? Every time I didn't like something, I just told Claude "I don't like this," and we'd iterate together on fixing it. Watching my own vision come to life, shaped by my own preferences and patterns, was powerful in a way I didn't expect.
This wasn't adopting someone else's system. This was building something that thinks the way I think.
How It Works Now
Clarineffable is a task management and project management system built on the PARA framework. It handles my projects, my life areas, my resources, and archives things I might need later.
On any given day, it understands what's happening across every part of my life.
Finances
It knows when bills are due. It tracks money I'm expecting from family and money I need to pay out. Because it connects to my email, it knows when I've been Venmoed and can automatically update tasks when people pay me.
Destination Imagination
It tracks all nine teams I manage and their various states through registration for both Instant Challenge Day and Tournament. It reminds me when I need to reach out to team managers. When payments come in, it automatically moves teams to the next stage in the reservation process.
Household
Today it told me I need to vacuum the stairs and dust my office. It remembers that every other week includes recycling, so the trash task automatically updates to "take out trash and recycling" on the right weeks.
Life Logistics
Birthdays. Holidays. Putting up Valentine's Day decorations. Coordinating my father's upcoming birthday. Doctor's appointments. Vet visits. Dog grooming.
If something touches my life, Clarineffable has a task for it.
The Unexpected Benefit
Building my own system forced me to understand how I actually work. Not how productivity books say I should work. How I actually work.
Turns out I need voice input or nothing gets captured. I reschedule things constantly, and that's okay. My areas of life don't fit into neat app categories. I need one system, not five apps pretending to talk to each other.
When you build something yourself, you stop fighting your own patterns and start designing around them.
Is This For Everyone?
No. Absolutely not.
If you're happy with Todoist or Things or Notion, keep using them. Seriously. The best system is the one you'll actually use.
But if you've tried everything and nothing sticks? If you feel like your brain just works differently? Maybe the answer isn't finding the right app. Maybe it's building something that actually fits.
What I've Learned
AI can make your life better. That's the simple truth I keep coming back to.
The more time I put in, the more I learn. And the more AI helps me automate, the more time I have for what actually matters: spending time with my family, learning new things, pursuing what interests me, and growing.
Clarineffable started as a solution to my own problem. It became something that understands my life in a way no off the shelf app ever could. Whether that journey leads somewhere bigger or stays exactly what it is today, the lesson remains the same:
Sometimes the right tool doesn't exist yet. And sometimes you're the one who needs to build it.
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