u/J_Gilley

I've been a paper guy my whole life. Every morning I'd write out what I needed to get done, cross things off, tear it up at the end of the day. Except I'd lose the sheet. Or have to rewrite the same recurring stuff for the 400th time.

Every app I tried felt like too much. Tried Trello, tried all the usual stuff. Still too much noise for something that should be dead simple.

Then I came across the story of Trent Dyrsmid. You might know it from Atomic Habits.

23 year old rookie broker. Small bank in Canada. Nobody expected much.

Two jars on his desk. One filled with 120 paperclips. One empty.

Every sales call he made, he moved one over. Didn't stop until the jar was empty.

18 months later he'd brought in $5 million.

No secret sauce. No system. Just a jar and a rule: don't stop until it's empty.

He didn't track results. He tracked the work. Simple idea. Somehow that was the one that actually landed.

So I took the concept and threw it into Notion. Not Trello, not anything with features baked in. Just three columns I built myself. Tasks on the left. In progress in the middle. Done on the right. Move each one across until they're all gone. First time anything productivity related actually stuck for me.

Started using it with friends and colleagues and suddenly everyone was using the same system.

But I just wanted to watch the pile get smaller. That visual of tasks moving across until there's nothing left. Notion could do it but it wasn't built for it.

So I built a proper version.

Called it Marbles.

Same idea, just swapped the paperclips for marbles. Trello, Notion, every other board app is built around projects and workflows. This is just built around one feeling: emptying the jar.

Three columns. Not Started. In Progress. Done. Recurring tasks stick around so you're not rewriting the same thing every morning.

Anyone else gone down this road? Happy to drop the link if anyone wants to try it.

I have a graveyard of productivity apps on my phone.

Todoist. Notion. Things. Apple Reminders. A $40 paper planner I used for three days. A whiteboard. Sticky notes. Time blocking. GTD. The Ivy Lee method.

Every single one failed me the same way. I'd open it at 2pm, see a list of 47 tasks, feel nothing but dread, and close it.

The problem was never the system. The problem was I was tracking the wrong thing.

Then I came across the story of Trent Dyrsmid. You might know it from Atomic Habits.

1993. He's 23. Rookie broker at a small bank in Abbotsford, Canada. Nobody expects much.

He puts two jars on his desk. Fills one with 120 paperclips. Leaves the other empty.

Every sales call he makes, he moves one over. He doesn't stop until the jar is empty.

Within 18 months he's brought in $5 million to the firm.

No secret sauce. No system. Just a jar and one rule: don't stop until it's empty.

He didn't track results. He tracked the work.

That line broke something open for me. Every app I'd ever used was tracking results. Tasks completed. Goals hit. Streaks maintained. No wonder it felt like dread. I was measuring outcomes I couldn't fully control.

Dyrsmid just moved a paperclip. That he could control.

We liked that idea. We just swapped the paperclips for marbles.

So I built a simple web app around that idea. Called it Marbles. Three columns. Not Started. In Progress. Done. You move tasks across as you work. Goal is to empty the jar before the day ends.

Something about physically moving something across a board makes progress feel real in a way a checkbox never did. First productivity thing that's actually stuck for me in years.

Curious if anyone else has tried building something simple after giving up on the big systems. What actually worked for you?