We didn't build another way
to do more.
We built a place to hold the questions a list or a calendar can't.
Finding out what to do was taking too much time and effort. We often wanted to do something but felt stuck and exhausted deciding what. Calendars filled with everything from tasks to reminders and focus blocks left little room for actual appointments, and no amount of colour-coding could help it. Todo apps were not much better. Just another endless pit of things to do, and yet another admin surface to maintain.
Keeping everything in check was bending under everyday commitment pressure. The days were going by and what we could do with the little time we had was left to chance.
One day we figured out that often we're not only asking "what could I do?", but also "what else do I need to remember?", "is everything urgent done or noted down?", "why did I commit to that when I'm already exhausted?", "what's on for tomorrow?", "when was the last time I practiced guitar?"
We realised it wasn't only execution or planning. There was more to balance.
Every app we tried was happy to help us do more. None asked whether the things on the list were ours to begin with, or whether we were in the right mindset to act on a plan. None made room for the rest: writing down what to decide on later, limiting what's in progress, looking back across days.
So we built a place that makes space to ask more questions and separate commitment stages.
“What do I do next?” was never the only question.Commitments move through stages with a different focus at each, and we made space for them.
Lumberjack is made by ilovemeerkats, a small independent studio. We build the tools we wished existed, for problems we hit over and over, and we use every one of them. If it isn't good enough for us, it doesn't leave the drawing board. We use Lumberjack ourselves, every day.
We're not funded by venture capital, so we answer to the people who use our tools, not to whatever grows fastest. Nothing here is built to be hard to leave.