The planner I needed didn't exist, so I built it
And it's live on the App Store
I’ve been posting about Cadencia on Substack Notes for the past week and somehow forgot to write the actual newsletter about it.
Very on brand 🙄
I’ve had a graveyard of planners.
Paper ones. Digital ones. The expensive ones with the leather covers. The apps with 47 settings and the promise that this one is different. Notion templates, Clickup spaces, Obsidian systems…
Every time one stopped working, I did the thing I always do: I figured it was my fault. Other people use these systems. Other people have consistent morning routines and colour-coded weeks. I’d just try harder next time, pick a better system, get more organised about being organised.
Here’s what I’ve understood, slowly and with some embarrassment: most planners are built for neurotypical brains. Not in a malicious way. Just, that’s who built them, that’s who they imagined using them. They assume consistency is a character trait rather than a neurological condition. They assume seeing everything you haven’t done yet is motivating rather than paralyzing. They assume you’ll check in reliably even when the novelty wears off and the dopamine has packed its bags.
If that’s not how your brain works, the planner isn’t broken. The planner just wasn’t designed for you.
I’m AuDHD, not officially diagnosed, but it’d be a surprising twist at this point if I weren’t. I’ve known for a while that standard advice doesn’t map to how I actually function. I’ve been writing about this a little. But building a tool for it? That felt like a leap.
About 10 months ago I started anyway.
Cadencia is live on the App Store.
It’s a daily planner for ADHD brains (but any brain can use it!).
Visual timeline. Colour-coded projects. You can see time passing on your tasks, visually. For a brain that needs to see progress to stay engaged, watching time passing is the feedback loop that keeps the thing alive.
It’s simple on purpose. Not because simplicity is fashionable, but because the planners I’ve abandoned were all too complicated to open on a bad brain day. Cadencia has to be easy enough to open at 9pm when everything feels like too much.
It’s free to start. No account, no card, no time limit on the free tier. There’s a Pro upgrade for unlimited projects and more customisation, routines, but you don’t need it to get value from the start.
Today I’m working on widgets, so you can see your timeline right from the home screen without opening the app. Still building. That’s the honest version.
If you try it and it helps, I’d love to know. If it doesn’t work for you, I’d love to know that too, I’m still building and that’s genuinely useful.
And if you’re someone who’s also got a graveyard of planners: I made this for you, specifically. I hope it fits.
With love,
Frank
P.S. — If you want to follow the build more closely, I’ve been posting short updates in Substack Notes. That’s where the real-time stuff lives. The newsletter is for the bigger picture.