“I have so much to do” is rarely about the amount. It’s about carrying it all in your head at once. Each step in Ellie takes a piece of that weight off, and each one has research behind it.
I built Ellie because I needed a simple system to organize my day. I multitask a lot, and things kept slipping my mind.
Ellie gave me one place to offload everything and plan what actually fits. It’s literally a second 🧠 for me.
My hope is that it improves your day as much as it has improved mine.
Why I built Ellie →
Chris Raroque
Ellie developer
Ellie, Amy, Luna, Mogul, and Moonjar.
Step 1
Every task, idea and errand goes into the Brain Dump the second it shows up. No dates, no decisions. It’s out of your head and waiting when you’re ready.
THE RESEARCH
Unfinished things keep tugging at you until you write a plan for them.
Psychologists call it the Zeigarnik effect: open loops stay active in the back of your mind. In a 2011 study, people who wrote a specific plan for an unfinished goal stopped having intrusive thoughts about it and did better on an unrelated task. The goal wasn’t done. It was just written down, with a plan.
Masicampo & Baumeister, “Consider it done!”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 2011
Brain dump everything
Type it in a second. Sort it out later.
Or just tell Siri
Hands full? Just say it, and it lands in your Brain Dump.
“Add task to brain dump”
What’s the task?
“Call the dentist”
Added to Brain Dump
Call the dentist
Step 2
Pull over only what today can realistically hold. Ellie adds up your time estimates, so you can see when the day is full. The rest waits in your Brain Dump, not on your conscience.
THE RESEARCH
A short list for tomorrow helps you switch off tonight.
In a Baylor sleep-lab study, people who spent five minutes before bed writing a to-do list for the next few days fell asleep about nine minutes faster than people who wrote about what they’d already done. And we all underestimate how long things take: students in a classic study expected their thesis to take 34 days. It took 56. Seeing the hours add up keeps today honest.
Scullin et al., Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 2018 · Buehler, Griffin & Ross, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1994
Step 3
Drag tasks onto your day, right beside your Google, Apple or Outlook events. Each one gets a when, so nothing is left floating.
THE RESEARCH
Deciding when and where makes it far more likely to happen.
Across 94 tests of the idea, people who decided exactly when and where they’d do something (psychologists call it an “implementation intention”) followed through markedly more often than people who only meant to. Putting a task on your calendar is that decision, made once.
Gollwitzer & Sheeran, meta-analysis, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 2006
Step 4
Meeting ran long? Drag a task to a new time or push it to tomorrow. Anything unfinished rolls over on its own, so nothing gets lost and tomorrow starts fresh.
THE RESEARCH
Going easy on yourself makes you less likely to put things off again.
Students who forgave themselves for procrastinating before one exam felt less bad afterwards and procrastinated less before the next one. In Ellie, unfinished tasks simply roll over, so tomorrow starts with a fresh plan instead of a guilt trip.
Wohl, Pychyl & Bennett, Personality and Individual Differences, 2010
SOURCES
Ellie is a planner, not a treatment. Each study above is summarized in plain language; the full papers are linked here.
Nothing is lost, only a few things are in front of you, and each one has a time.
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Web, Mac, Windows, iPhone and iPad. No credit card required.
