Task Compass Manifesto
1. Respect How Our Minds Work
Prioritize by comparing two at a time
- We are not good at assigning an absolute score to individual list items.
- We’re slightly better at stack-ranking.
- We excel at comparing things.
The app asks: “Of these two tasks, which one is more important?”
This is a natural, intuitive question. It doesn’t demand a complex internal rating system; it’s a simple, honest choice.
This process offloads the moving tasks up and down the list to the app.
No need to work with lists
When you work with Task Compass, you’re not working with lists, unless you ask for it.
- If there’s prioritization work left, you’re shown two tasks at a time.
- When prioritization is complete, the app shows you your #1 priority.
- You can swipe left-right to see your #2-#5 (configurable), one at a time.
2. Do the work only once
The app remembers your choices.
If you said that A is more important than B, the app will always put A above B in the ranking, until you reassess it.
As you keep using the app, it will ask you the minimal number of pairwise choices necessary.
Note: for those algorithmically inclined, it’s not the post-hoc minimum number. It’s the minimum number given the available information.
3. Detect Resistance Automatically
There’s sometimes a gap between our intentions and our actions. We say a task is our #1 priority, but then we spend three days avoiding it. Hello, subconscious! At the end of the day, your actions speak louder than your words.
Task Compass listens to your actions. It doesn’t ask you to guess how “difficult” a task will be. It simply watches what you complete. If an important task keeps sitting undone on your list, the app recognizes this as resistance and marks it with a mountain icon — a quiet signal that something is holding you back.
It’s not a sign that something is wrong. It’s just information. It’s up to you what you do with it.