This page explores the design philosophy, principles, and evolution of Task Compass. For the core explanation of how it works, see the main Task Compass page.
Task Compass does one thing exceptionally well: learning what you’re avoiding so you can address it strategically.
No feature bloat. No time tracking, dependencies, or project hierarchies. No manual categorization, effort estimation, or explicit difficulty scoring. Just intelligent prioritization that respects how your mind works and learns from task completion patterns.
This radical simplicity is intentional. The apps that win their category do so by doing one thing exceptionally well, not by doing everything adequately. Task Compass’s one thing is learning from what you actually complete.
Most productivity apps are feature lists dressed up as solutions. They add Gantt charts, time tracking, dependencies, subtasks, tags, and custom fields. They give you more ways to organize. More ways to categorize. More decisions to make.
Task Compass goes the opposite direction. It eliminates decisions by making them automatically based on task completion patterns.
You never manually categorize tasks. You never estimate difficulty. You never track time. You answer one simple question repeatedly: “Which task is more important?” The system handles everything else.
The Eisenhower Matrix is there—the quadrants exist—but you never see them explicitly. The categorization emerges from your importance rankings and task completion patterns, not from manual sorting. The intelligence is invisible. The experience feels effortless.
This is the difference between stated preference (“I think this will be hard”) and revealed preference (“I’ve been avoiding this for three days”).
Respect human cognition. Design around how minds actually work, not how productivity gurus think they should work.
Learn from what gets done. Which tasks you finish reveals more than difficulty estimates. Notice completion patterns, spot resistance, adapt automatically.
Minimize cognitive load. Every decision you make is energy spent. Automate everything that can be automated. Ask only what must be asked.
Integrate seamlessly. Don’t create a parallel system. Work with Apple Reminders. Add intelligence on top of what users already have.
Stay focused. One thing done exceptionally well beats many things done adequately. The focus is learning from completion patterns. Everything else is out of scope.
Task Compass continues to get smarter:
The focus remains constant. No feature bloat. No complexity creep. Just increasingly sophisticated intelligence about what you’re avoiding and why.
This is task management that aligns with human cognition rather than fighting against it.
©2025 Maciej Bliziński