Night Shift

Reads my project notes and my to-do list, records what got finished, and keeps the next five steps in front of me.

The curiosity

I start a lot of projects, and I am good at the first eighty percent. The last mile is where I stall: the click that publishes something, the account I have to create, the phone call, the number I need to look up. Left alone, I restart instead of finishing, and a second version of the same idea appears next to the first.

What it does

Every project I run keeps a plain text note with where I left off and what comes next. Three times a day, a program running in the cloud with my computer off reads every note, reads back what I ticked off or answered in my to-do list, records what got finished, and puts the day’s five next steps in front of me, each written out so I can do it without opening anything else. If I let something sit for a few days it nudges; if I ignore it for three weeks it parks it and says so.

The system

I answer in the to-do app with a word or two. Everything else, the bookkeeping, the log of finished things, the ordering, it does. It also wrote the “what I’m doing” column on the home page, in my words, from what I told it each morning.

What changed

Things finished. In its first week it closed rows I had been avoiding for a month. I paused it on September 1 while I decide what it should own next; the runs below are from that first week, and the pause is on purpose.

what it doesreads my project notes and my to-do list three times a day, records what I finished, and sets out the day's five next stepsstatuspaused since Sep 1, 2026schedulethree times a day (5:30am, 12:30pm, 6:30pm ET); the morning run is the full one
sentwhat it sent
Sep 1 05:460 finished, 5 next steps set
Aug 31 05:410 finished, 5 next steps set
Aug 30 05:410 finished, 5 next steps set
Aug 29 05:430 finished, 5 next steps set
Aug 28 05:362 finished, 3 next steps set
Aug 27 05:36first run, 1 next step set