Articles

Starting, and why it is the hard part

• ADHD and getting started Most advice about focus assumes the hard part is staying with a task. For a lot of people it is the thirty seconds before it, standing in front of something they know how to do and not doing it. That is a different problem and it wants a different answer.
• What to do when you have too much to do Pick one task by a rule rather than by how you feel, make its first step small enough to start in a minute, and write everything else down so it can wait. The feeling of too much is usually the cost of holding every task in your head at once, not of doing them.
• A planner without streaks A planner without streaks keeps no count of consecutive days, so a day off costs nothing and there is no number to rebuild. Sailyn is one: it rewards starting instead, and measures a week rather than an unbroken run of days.
• Body doubling Body doubling is doing your own work while another person is present, in the room or on a call, so that starting and staying on task is easier. Many people with ADHD use it because the other person's presence gives the task a start time and a reason to keep going.
• Coming back after a gap The hardest session is the first one after a gap, and most of the difficulty is not the work. It is everything the gap now seems to say. Start with something small, start today, and do not pay back the missed days first.
• How to stop procrastinating Procrastination is putting off something you intend to do, even though you expect the delay to leave you worse off. It has less to do with laziness or time management than with how the task feels right now, which is why the fixes that work change the task rather than your character.

Everyday executive function and wellbeing

• Time blindness Time blindness is losing track of how much time has passed and how much is left. An hour feels like ten minutes, or a task meant for twenty takes the whole afternoon. It is common in ADHD and it is not a matter of trying harder: time that cannot be seen is hard to judge.
• Why transitions are hard A transition is the moment between two things: stopping one task, getting ready, and starting the next. It takes more effort than it looks, because part of your attention stays with what you just left. For many neurodivergent people the transition, not the task, is the hardest part of the day.
• Forgetting to eat Forgetting to eat is easy when you are deep in something: hunger is a quiet signal, and absorbed attention does not hear quiet signals well. Many people with ADHD or autism describe whole days where a meal simply did not happen. What works is less about willpower than about putting meals into the day where they cannot be overlooked.
• Planning around burnout Burnout is long-term exhaustion, often with a sense of distance from your work and of doing less of it well. A better plan does not end it. What a plan can do is ask less of you while you recover, and keep the few things that matter from slipping.
• Rest is part of the work Rest is not the time left over after the work. It is part of what makes the work possible: a break that really steps away from the task leaves you more able to start the next one. The kind of break matters more than its length.
• Sensory load and focus Sensory load is everything your senses are taking in at once: noise, light, movement, the feel of clothes or a chair. Most of it goes unnoticed until it adds up. For many autistic and ADHD people the threshold comes sooner, and focus is often the first thing to go.

Studying and focus sessions

• How long should a focus session be? Long enough to get into the work and short enough that you will agree to start. For most people that begins at around 25 minutes. The right length is the one you will actually start, and it can grow from there.
• How to plan exam revision A good revision plan does three things: it works back from the exam date, it spreads each subject over several days instead of one, and it spends most of the time testing what you know rather than rereading it. And it has to fit the days you actually have.

Who it is for

• Sailyn for under-18s School hands you a timetable and a pile of homework and leaves the order to you. Sailyn takes the order off your hands: one thing to start on now, and the rest of the week laid out around your lessons.
• Sailyn for students with ADHD Sailyn is built first for university students with ADHD: people who know exactly what is due and still cannot get started on it. A term is a strange shape, almost nothing due for six weeks and then four things due in one, so Sailyn counts the days that are left, gives you one thing to start, and replans when the week goes differently.
• Sailyn for adults A lot of adult life is small things with no deadline until they suddenly have one: the form, the call, the appointment, the shop. Sailyn is built for the gap between knowing you should and actually starting.
• Sailyn for working professionals A calendar says where you have to be. It says nothing about the four hours of real work between the meetings, which is the part that slips. Sailyn is the other half: it takes the work, looks at what the calendar already spent, and puts the work in what is left.
• Sailyn for seniors Sailyn does not ask you to learn a system. It shows one thing to do now, reminds you when something is coming up, and keeps everything else out of the way until it matters.
• Sailyn for ADHD and neurodivergent minds Sailyn was built by somebody who kept abandoning planners, so four design decisions were made against the way most of them work. None of them is a claim about a condition. They are choices about what a screen shows you and what happens when a day goes badly.

Beside the apps people try first

• Sailyn vs Forest Forest is a focus timer: a tree grows while you stay on task and dies if you leave. Sailyn is a planner that also runs focus sessions: it decides which task comes next and plans your week, then holds distractions shut while you work.
• Sailyn vs Habitica Habitica turns your habits and to-dos into a role-playing game: you level up and earn gold as you succeed, and lose health as you fail. Sailyn is a planner in which a day off costs nothing: it picks your next task, pays you for starting and plans the week.
• Sailyn vs Motion Motion schedules your tasks, projects and meetings into your calendar automatically, for individuals and teams of any size. Sailyn plans one person's week too, but its focus is the moment after the plan: it shows one task, pays you for starting and runs the session.
• Forest alternatives Forest grows a tree while you stay off your phone and blocks other apps while you focus. If you want something like it, the right alternative depends on which part you need: the tree, the blocking, another person, or somebody to decide what to work on.
• Habitica alternatives Habitica turns habits and to-dos into a role-playing game in which missed Dailies cost health. People look for an alternative for two opposite reasons: they want a different game, or they want no penalty at all. This list covers both.
• Motion alternatives Motion schedules tasks, projects and meetings onto your calendar automatically, for one person or a whole team. The alternatives below differ in how much they decide for you, from rearranging your calendar on their own to handing you a list and leaving the rest to you.

Sailyn is a planner and a focus timer. It is not a medical device, it treats nothing, and nothing on these pages is advice about a condition.

Know what you need to do, but can't get started? Sailyn gives you one next step, a plan that adapts, and no penalty for difficult days.

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