Experiments

Personal OS generatorYou already have a system.
This writes it down.

Everybody already has a personal operating system. It may be four apps, a notebook and a great deal of remembering, but there is a set of rules by which things get captured, decided on and looked at again — and it is running whether or not anybody has written it down.

Free, no sign-up. Worked out in your browser, nothing sent anywhere, and the result imports into EvyOS.

Start with where things actually go when they arrive.

Everything is worked out in this page and saved in this browser only. Nothing is sent anywhere.

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✦ How to use it

Three things that make it work.

1
Describe what you do, not what you intend

The system you actually run is the one worth debugging.

2
Count your capture points honestly

Notes app, inbox, paper, browser tabs, memory. Most people have four and think they have one.

3
Fix the holes in order

They are ranked by how much damage they do, and the top one is almost always the review.

The reason to write it down is that an implicit system cannot be debugged. When things start slipping, the cause is almost always one specific hole — usually the review, sometimes a second capture point nobody meant to create — and it is invisible until the whole thing is on one page.

Eight questions. The output is a description of yours plus the two holes most likely to be causing whatever prompted you to look this up.

✦ The limit

An answer is not a record.

This works something out and then forgets it. It cannot tell you whether the number moved, because it has no memory of the last time you ran it and no idea what you did in between. Every calculator on the internet has that limit, and if it has never bothered you then this one is yours for free for good.

EvyOS is the same structure with the work recorded against it. Send the result across and it becomes real goals, tasks or habits with their dates — then the next answer is computed from what actually happened rather than from what you remember typing.

Questions

Personal OS generator, answered.

The set of rules by which things get captured, decided on and looked at again. Everybody already has one — it may be four apps, a notebook and a lot of remembering — and it is running whether or not it has been written down.
Because an implicit system cannot be debugged. When things start slipping the cause is almost always one specific hole, and it stays invisible until the whole thing is on one page.
No regular review, by a distance. Capture is easy and everybody has four apps for it; the scheduled looking is what turns a pile into a system, and it is the first thing dropped because nothing visibly breaks when it goes.
One that you trust to be complete. Others can exist as long as they are emptied into it — the problem with four is not the four, it is that the review covers three of them and feels complete.
The template is the sheet you fill in and keep. This asks eight questions and diagnoses what is missing, which is the more useful starting point if something is currently going wrong.

Keep the answer.
And the record of doing it.

Goals, projects, tasks, habits and skills in one system, with the work logged against what it belonged to.

Start for free