04 / PERSONAL TOOL
● IN PERSONAL TESTING
I built a productivity app.
Then it became a project.
ThomasOS is my personal dashboard for ideas, priorities, projects and experiments. A way to make sense of everything I’m making without turning every passing thought into something I have to finish.
Made with Lovable. Tested on myself. A demanding first customer.
PROJECTS & EXPERIMENTS
Including, somewhat inconveniently, ThomasOS itself.
01 / THE PROBLEM
A lot of ideas. Not always the same as a plan.
I have several projects happening at once. Websites, videos, business experiments, a podcast, things I’m learning and ideas that tend to arrive at inconvenient moments.
The problem wasn’t coming up with things to do. Quite the opposite.
I wanted one place to collect the ideas, decide what actually matters today, keep projects moving and look back at what happened. Without making everything feel equally urgent.
And since I was curious about building software with AI, I decided to make that system myself.
THE MOST IMPORTANT RULE
An idea is not a commitment.
I can be excited about seventeen things without putting all seventeen on tomorrow’s to-do list.
A surprisingly difficult distinction to maintain.
01 / CAPTURE
Keep the idea.
Give interesting thoughts somewhere to live, even if I don’t act on them today.
02 / CHOOSE
Three things that matter.
Make a small number of actual commitments instead of a heroic list of thirty-seven.
03 / CONNECT
See the bigger picture.
Keep track of what I’m building, testing, learning and occasionally abandoning.
02 / INSIDE THE SYSTEM
A small system for a very busy brain.
The screens are deliberately simple. Ideas have their own space. Projects have context. Today is for actually choosing what gets done.
IDEAS / THE CAPTURE SPACE
A place for everything that might become something. Or might not.
THE IDEA INBOX
Permission to have an idea and do absolutely nothing with it.
I can quickly capture a thought and find it again through categories, statuses, sources and tags.
That means a video idea can stay a video idea. It doesn’t automatically become a task due tomorrow.
Frankly, my future self deserves that kindness.
03 / FROM IDEAS TO ACTION
Today is not the whole universe.
The daily and weekly views are about choosing a realistic amount of work and being able to see what is already planned.
TODAY / THREE THINGS THAT MATTER
No more than three main priorities. Other tasks can exist without taking over the day.
WEEK / THE REALITY CHECK
A week at a glance, so plans don’t disappear into separate lists.
04 / PROJECTS & EXPERIMENTS
Not everything needs to become a business.
Some things are projects. Others are experiments to find out whether an idea deserves more time.
ThomasOS lets me keep the purpose, success criteria and next actions together. It’s not just a list of things I’m working on; it’s a reminder of why I started them.
A SLIGHT COMPLICATION
ThomasOS is now one of the experiments in ThomasOS.
I’m sure there’s a very sensible explanation for this.
05 / BUILDING THE THING
I wanted to learn how to build software. So I built something I actually needed.
ThomasOS is also a learning experiment. I’m using Lovable, its cloud backend and GitHub to turn a personal problem into a working application, one feature and one test at a time.
01
Build small.
Start with the screens and the behaviours I genuinely need, rather than a hundred imaginary features.
02
Protect the data.
Backups, imports, duplicates and historical records matter once the app contains real plans and ideas.
03
Use it for real.
A nice interface is one thing. A system that survives an actual workweek is quite another.
06 / A LESSON ALREADY
I built my own productivity app. Then I had less time to be productive.
There’s a real temptation to keep improving the tool instead of using it. Another screen, another feature, another idea for making everything more efficient.
So the next test is straightforward: use it during normal life, record the friction, and only build what genuinely helps.
CURRENTLY / IN PERSONAL TESTING
Less organising the work.
More doing the work.
The next step is actual daily use, honest feedback and a little restraint about adding new features. A future connection to ChatGPT is on the ideas list too.
MORE OF THE THINGS I’M MAKING
ThomasOS is one experiment in a growing collection of websites, tools, videos and creative ideas.
