Accomplishing More with Accomplist

New Interview with Accomplist App Creator Jen Anderson

I am always on a quest for productivity and I have tried all the systems: paper planners, bullet journaling, Trello, Asana, TeuxDeux, Notion, and Todoist. While I have used them all - I find there to be limitations with them all for some reason which is why I was happy to find Jen Anderson, co-founder of Accomplist in the Ladies Get Paid Slack Group. Jen announced that she had just created a new app, Accomplist, that would be coming out in the fall.

Accomplist starts with the assumption that you're going to try to do too much. We don't put yesterday's unfinished tasks on today's list. You get to decide when you're going to be able to get to it.

I got a chance to speak with Jen about the app. Read below and make sure to visit the website and to download the app when available this September.

As a person obsessed with productivity, I’m always trying different tasks managers and systems which is why I was so excited to see your promote your new app on Ladies Get Paid. Can you tell readers a little about Accomplist and what inspired you to create it?

Accomplist is a to-do app for people who need to stop trying to do too much. I'm one of those people, and that's one of the main reasons I couldn't find any app or system that worked the way I wanted it to — so I designed an app that does. In Accomplist, if you assign a due date to a task and then don't complete it on that day, the app doesn't carry it over to the next day. A task can be Open or Completed, but you can also mark a task Skipped to make it go away.

I like to see an accurate view of my to-do list for the coming week. If a task takes several days, you can have the app display it on every day when you want to work on it instead of just on the due date. You can also spin subtasks out into separate tasks and repeating tasks appear as separate tasks.

What I like about your app is that it seems that it rewards you for what you do vs. not what you don’t. For you with creating Accomplist, why was this intentional?

I get migraines so my workload changes every day depending on how I feel. It's bad enough working through that migraine hangover haze without being faced with a load of overdue tasks. And all that stress, pressure, shame, and guilt take up energy that I can’t spare.

Giving up perfectionism has improved my mental and physical health. We spend so much time beating ourselves up that it distracts us from enjoying life. We can start to feel worthless because we don't measure up to some unachievable ideal when in reality we're complete badasses who accomplish great things every day.

I hope that Accomplist can nudge people towards seeing how amazing they are.

I remember reading a book that said your to-do-list should be on a sticky note. The logic was that if you can’t fit all your tasks on the sticky note, more than likely you won’t be able to accomplish all the tasks in one day. Do you have any tips about how people should be thinking of their to-do list especially in the times we are living in today?

I think that your daily to-do list should be long and comprehensive. We forget how much we have to do to simply survive. Doing laundry while working from home is convenient, but it does take you away from doing other things. If doing the laundry isn't on your to-do list, you'll put too many other things on your list and then wonder why you didn't get to it all.

Thanks to all this [distractions], it's difficult to concentrate and everything takes more time and energy than it used to. That includes making dinner, writing simple emails, and checking social media to see how all your best and dearest are doing. More than likely, you’re going to put too many things on your to-do list and it’s easier to perform triage when absolutely everything is on your list.

Your app also has a habit tracker. Are there any interesting habits you have been tracking during this unprecedented time?

Great question! I've added drinking kava tea to my habit tracker. I'm more tightly wound than usual, and the kava helps me relax a little. But before I added it to my habit tracker, I kept forgetting that kava tea exists despite owning 6 boxes of it.

The other thing I've added is tidying. In The Before Times, my husband and I would have friends over every month or so to force ourselves to deal with all our clutter. Since we can't do that, our apartment is in a bit of a state so I'm trying to put things in order a little bit every day.

Lastly, Accomplist is going to be released in September. How can people get on the list for the launch? Also, what is the price point for the app?

Accomplist will be available to download in mid-September. You can sign up at Accomplist.app and we'll email you once the app is in the App Store and Google Play store. You get a 45-day free trial, and then it's $20 a year. While you're waiting, you can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Connect with Jen and Accomplist on Social Media:
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