What matters today?

The limit isn't arbitrary — it's the core design decision. Research on implementation intentions consistently shows that choosing specific, limited tasks dramatically increases the chance of completing them. When your Today list has 12 items, your brain registers it as impossible before you start. With 5, you can picture completing it.

The cap forces the most valuable question in productivity: if I can only do five things today, which five actually matter? Most people never ask this question. The limit makes you answer it every morning.

The MIT is the single task that, if you complete nothing else today, still makes the day a success. It sits above everything else, set apart. Every day has one. Pick it in the morning and protect it.

The concept comes from productivity writer Leo Babauta. The idea is that most people fill their days with easy, low-value tasks — emails, tidying, minor updates — while avoiding the one thing that actually moves the needle. The MIT forces the uncomfortable question: what is the one thing that matters most today?

When you complete your MIT, you'll see a brief message acknowledging it. That's intentional — it's different from ticking off an ordinary task.

Someday is your parking lot — ideas, tasks, and intentions you don't want to forget but can't schedule right now. The key is that it's a decision-deferred zone, not a graveyard.

Tasks that sit in Someday for more than 30 days get an aging indicator and appear in a "Needs decision" section. The decision is always one of three things: move it to Upcoming (with a due date), move it to Today, or delete it. A task that you've been ignoring for 30 days is either wrong for you or just not that important — either way, it deserves a conscious decision, not indefinite delay.

Use the Brain dump button to capture everything on your mind at once. Don't filter. Sort later. Getting things out of your head and into Someday is itself productive — it closes the open loops that drain working memory.

They stay in Today until you decide what to do with them. The tool doesn't auto-move or auto-delete anything. The next morning, you'll see a carryover banner listing unfinished tasks from yesterday. It asks you to make a decision: move to Upcoming (with a due date), move to Someday (park it), or delete it.

This is deliberate. Silently rolling unfinished tasks forward is how to-do lists become irrelevant. Every task needs a conscious decision, not just a delay. The carryover banner is the moment you make that decision rather than avoiding it.

A context tag (#work, #home, #calls, #health) lets you mentally sort tasks by the situation you need to be in to do them. The idea comes from GTD (Getting Things Done): a task like "call the dentist" can only be done when you're near a phone and have a few minutes. Grouping by context rather than project makes it easy to act on the right tasks in the right moment.

Tags are optional and intentionally simple — one tag per task, no hierarchy. Keep them broad: #work, #home, #errand, #finance covers most situations.

Absolutely. The To-Do Tracker is a fully standalone tool. If you use the StrategyFirst Engine, the ↗ Link to goal tracker button lets you import tasks directly from your pillar items. They'll show their goal and phase context on each card, and marking them done here syncs back to the Engine. But none of that is required — the tool works entirely on its own.

When you open the app and have unfinished tasks from yesterday's Today list, you'll see a gentle amber banner at the top. It's not a guilt trip — it's a decision prompt. Each task in the banner needs one of three fates: schedule it (move to Upcoming with a due date), park it (move to Someday), or let it go (delete).