Handful - Daily Task Planner

I kept adding tasks to my to-do list and completing maybe three of them. Then I'd move the rest to tomorrow, where they'd pile up with a new batch. Rinse and repeat until the whole list felt like a guilt trip.

So I built Handful. It gives you five task slots per day. That's the cap. You can't add a sixth. The constraint sounds annoying until you realize it forces the only decision that actually matters: what's worth doing today?

Every morning, you fill your slots and pick one as your Most Important Task. It gets pinned to the top. The rest fall in line. If you don't get to something, park it. The Parking Lot holds tasks that matter but not today, and tomorrow's setup offers them back to you.

HERE'S HOW THE DAY WORKS

• Morning Setup. Fill your five slots. Pick your MIT. The app walks you through it in about 30 seconds.

• During the day. Work your list. Tap to complete. If you left an empty slot, you can lock in a new task anytime.

• Evening Reflection. The app nudges you at night to write down three wins, however small. Then you deal with anything left over: park it for later or let it go.

That's the whole rhythm. Morning setup, focused day, evening reflection.

THE PARKING LOT

Anything you park goes here. It doesn't disappear, but it doesn't nag you either. If something sits parked for too long, the app asks a simple question: is this still important to you? Honest answer only.

THE TO-DON'T LIST

Most task apps only track what you'll do. Handful also tracks what you won't. "Check email first thing." "Doom scroll at lunch." "Say yes to that meeting." Writing down what steals your focus helps you protect it.

WHAT'S INCLUDED

• Hard cap of 5 daily tasks (this is the feature, not a limitation)
• Most Important Task; picked each morning, pinned to top
• Parking Lot for tasks that matter but not today
• To-Don't List for things you commit to not doing
• Evening reflection with three daily wins
• Morning setup flow to start each day with intention
• Home screen and lock screen widgets
• Morning setup and evening reflection reminders (each optional)
• Stale task detection in the Parking Lot
• Journal of past reflections, wins, and the things you chose to let go
• A quiet nudge toward your most important task first, and a break once it's done
• Private iCloud sync across your devices
• Export your journal as a Markdown file anytime
• Dark mode support

You pay once. There's no subscription, no ads and no tracking. Your data syncs privately through your own iCloud account and never touches our servers.

I use this app every morning. Five tasks is plenty when they're the right five. If you want a project manager with subtasks and labels and dependencies, this isn't that. If you want something that makes you pick what actually matters today, this is it.