I’ve tried every productivity app. The ones with beautiful interfaces. The ones that gamify your tasks. The ones that promise to finally make “GTD” click. They all work great except that they all have the same fatal flaw: they require me to open another app.
Here’s the thing about another app: I won’t open it. Or I’ll open it, see my tasks, feel a brief moment of clarity, and then get distracted by something else before I actually do anything. The app becomes another tab I close, another icon I scroll past, another source of guilt collecting dust on my home screen. How many tabs do you have open that you haven’t looked at in a week or longer?
The problem isn’t the apps themselves. Many of them are genuinely well-designed. The problem is the context switch. Every time I have to leave what I’m doing to check my tasks, I’m introducing friction. And friction is where productivity goes to die.
The Discord Insight
I spend a lot of time in Discord. It’s where I coordinate projects, chat with friends, and stay connected to various communities. It’s already open. It’s already in my workflow.
So when I found myself suddenly juggling multiple projects and desperately needing to get organized, I didn’t reach for another productivity app. I built something that lives where I already am.
Nervous To-Do is a Discord bot. Your tasks live in channels you’re already checking. No new app to open. No separate tab to maintain. Your to-do list is just… there, in the same place you’re already spending your time.
How It Works
The core idea is simple: send a message, and it becomes a task. But I wanted it to be smarter than a basic list. When you send tasks to Nervous To-Do, AI parses your message and routes it to the appropriate project automatically. You don’t have to think about categorization or organization—you just dump what’s on your mind and the system handles the rest.
Each project gets its own channel. Tasks show up as messages you can interact with. Mark them complete, add notes, or just let them sit there reminding you they exist. The point is that you’ll actually see them because they’re in a place you’re already looking.
Building for Myself
I built this because I needed it. That’s the honest answer. I was drowning in projects and none of my existing tools were helping because I wasn’t using them. Now I have something that meets me where I am instead of demanding I go somewhere else.
Whether that’s useful to anyone else, I don’t know yet. But if you’ve ever felt the particular frustration of knowing exactly what you need to do and still not doing it because the list is in the wrong place—maybe it’ll help you too.
Nervous To-Do is available now.