A Student Founder Tackling ADHD With a Mood-Based To-Do App
Have you ever sat at your desk, heart racing a litte, knowing exactly what matters but not quite able to start? Today I met with someone who’s turning that moment into momentum.
Alex is a brilliant 23-year-old entrepreneur in Western Washington University’s Entrepreneurship program. His new task and priority app is built for people with ADHD who want to lower stress, gain clarity, and get more of the right things done. Like many meaningful offerings, it started with his own story.
Working with WWU students is a privilege I deeply appreciate. Their creativity, commitment, and willingness to do the hard work re-energize me. Sometimes when we give, we get even more back—insight, partnership, and renewed purpose. Meeting with Alex was exactly that.
Why Alex Built It
As a lead developer with ADHD in a small company, Alex noticed that what many neurotypical colleagues found routine—task initiation, organization, and staying on topic—could feel like swimming upstream. So he did what strong founders do: he turned pain into a project.
- He interviewed working professionals with ADHD to spot patterns across experiences.
- He identified task initiation as the keystone challenge—the hinge that swings the door of the day.
- He designed a mood-based to-do list app that aligns work with current emotional and cognitive state, helping users start and sustain effort.
If you’ve coached leaders or built teams, you’ve seen a version of this: the difference between knowing and starting, between intention and traction. The bridge is design—of tools, of habits, and of supportive systems. As Steve Jobs said, “Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” Alex is designing for how brains with ADHD work under real-world conditions.
What Stood Out in Our Conversation
1) Start where the brain actually is
Many productivity tools assume a uniform state of mind. Real life doesn’t. Energy, mood, and context shift hour to hour. A mood-based list acknowledges that some tasks are better suited for high-energy windows and others for lower-focus periods. Matching task to state reduces friction and improves follow-through.
2) Task initiation is the bottleneck
In leadership and in life, the costliest delays often happen before we take the first bite. Research on ADHD and executive function consistently highlights initiation and prioritization as pinch points; once started, many people with ADHD can hyper-focus and sprint. The design challenge is therefore to make starting easier and more rewarding.
3) Data + empathy beats dogma
Alex didn’t jump straight to code. He listened. He gathered stories, looked for common threads, and built from the ground up. That blend—evidence plus empathy—is the source of real product-market fit and real human fit.
4) Simplicity builds momentum
When tools become overbuilt, users disengage—especially under stress. Alex’s approach trims the interface to the bones that matter: “What’s my state right now?” and “What’s the next doable move?” Clear prompts reduce cognitive load, restore a sense of control, and create momentum.
A Personal Reflection: Giving That Gives Back
I started my current business later in life. Naivety and grit had to be re-learned, and “the best trajectory” had to give way to “a good trajectory, consistently.” Meeting founders like Alex returns me to that beginner’s flame—focused, practical, and deeply human. The WWU community has a knack for reminding me that progress is a partnership: students bring energy and fresh eyes; mentors bring pattern recognition and care. Together, we gain clarity and speed.
What This Means for Leaders and Teams
Even if you don’t have ADHD, you lead and collaborate with people whose brains are wired differently. High-performing teams design for those differences.
- Design the runway, not just the destination. Support starting: shorter kickoff tasks, clear first steps, and “default” next actions reduce friction.
- Allow mood-task matching. Offer a menu: deep-focus tasks for high-energy windows, administrative or relational tasks for lower-focus times.
- Measure momentum, not just output. Track “starts per day” alongside completed tasks. Starting is the leading indicator of progress.
- Normalize variability. Avoid moral judgments about attention. Treat focus like a resource to allocate, not a character trait to fix.
- Co-create rituals. Two-minute standups, body-doubling sessions, or “10-minute ignition blocks” can lift the heaviest part of the work: beginning.
When teams adopt these practices, productivity rises and stress falls. People feel seen, and that sense of belonging accelerates performance without sliding into enmeshment. Clear agreements, compassionate flexibility, and simple structures—that’s the sweet spot.
Micro-Experiments You Can Try This Week
Choose one or two. Keep them small. Notice what changes.
- The 5-Minute IgnitionPick a task you’ve delayed. Set a timer for five minutes and only commit to starting. When the timer ends, choose to continue or stop. Either way, you’ve banked a “start,” which builds momentum.
- Mood-Match Your ListTag your tasks with two labels: High-Focus or Low-Focus. In the morning, honestly assess your state and pick from the matching bucket. Watch your completion rates rise without white-knuckling your willpower.
- Body-Double a BlockInvite a colleague to a 30-minute “focus cowork.” Cameras on, mics off. Share the one task you’ll start. This light accountability helps bypass initiation drag.
- Shrink the First StepRewrite any sticky task as a one-inch version. “Draft client proposal” becomes “Open past proposal template” or “List 3 bullet points I want to cover.” The goal is to remove the cliff at the edge of starting.
- Celebrate StartsAt the end of the day, list three things you began. Starting is a meaningful win; naming it trains your brain to initiate more often.
For Founders: Build With, Not Just For
Alex’s process is a model:
- Listen before you build. Interviews surfaced task initiation as the true bottleneck.
- Design for real states. Mood-based flows meet users where they actually are.
- Keep the surface simple. Fewer taps, fewer decisions, clearer cues.
- Iterate with live feedback. Ship, watch, learn, refine—momentum through cycles.
If you’re building anything—software, a team, a new service—start with the human edge cases. The “edge of chaos” is where innovation lives, and the best products make that edge feel safer and more navigable.
A Closing Word—and an Invitation
There’s a line I return to often with clients: Progress loves clarity, and clarity loves small starts. Alex’s story embodies that. He turned a personal friction point into a tool that may help thousands reduce stress and move with more momentum through their day.
If ADHD has shaped your work—or if you lead people who navigate it—keep an eye on this space. Better yet, help shape it. Alex is expanding testing and feedback for his app. If you’d like to talk with him about it, here’s his profile:
Or sign up to beta test at: https://www.vibechecklist.com/sign-up-beta
Which micro-experiment will you pilot tomorrow—and who might you invite to try it with you?
#ADHDTips #ADHDHelp #ADHDSolutions #GetStarted #ADHDProductivity#ADHD
