Why Addeeze?

Hi everyone!

Let me start by introducing myself: my name is Edgar van Oostrum. I’m 54 years old, and I’ve been struggling with “ADD” my whole life.

That’s really just a medical label, of course, but in practice it means that I often have trouble planning, get distracted easily and suffer from chronic procrastination, which meant I only ever managed to finish projects through a lot of endless slogging.

I’ve learned to live with it, and I’ve tried a thousand and one tricks and tools. Yoga, medication, mindfulness, lists, exercise, and so on and so forth. All very useful, and it all works, but only a little bit. As someone with ADD you never get truly complete control over your scatterbrained mind and your motivation, and it’s mainly in the combination of aids and tools that you have to find your salvation. Every person with ADD is unique in that respect.

Because I spend a lot of time at my PC every day (I work in IT), I regularly created a little text file in which I briefly noted which tasks I had to do, what I especially shouldn’t forget, and, above all, which tasks really had to get done. That emptied my head, and that gave me peace of mind.

But not for long: two days later I would repeat the ritual. So I created a new text file containing 95% of the tasks I had already put in an earlier text file. That way my desktop steadily filled up with text files, all with wonderfully imaginative titles: TODO.txt, TODOTODO.txt, DOTODAY.txt, DOITNOWYOUIDIOT!!!.txt and so on …

Then I thought: wouldn’t it be handy to have one big, empty white space, an “overview” of everything, where I can note each task just once? And next to it a single focus list, where I can “drag” tasks from the overview and rearrange them into a different order? Then I’d never have to create text files again, and all my tasks would be conveniently gathered in one place.

Well, long story short, I built just such a solution. At first it was for myself, but when friends, family and colleagues told me, “Hey, that would be really handy for my son/husband/father/cousin/neighbor/colleague!”, I made an online version that anyone can now use.

And, in keeping with the “eat your own dogfood” principle (which forces software developers to use their own software to experience for themselves how handy or buggy it is), I used that solution to keep developing that very same solution. In other words: I used the same planning tool to plan the completion of this project.

The planning tool is now finished and, well, I’m actually quite proud of it. So: do you also struggle with ADD or ADHD, or are you simply a chronic procrastinator? Then see whether Addeeze is something for you.

Addeeze can turn out to be a particularly good fit for people who work in an office environment, because it really comes into its own on a desktop (although the mobile version of course works very well too!).

A quick disclaimer: I built Addeeze to help other wandering souls improve their quality of life as well. Living with AD(H)D is a real challenge, and every unique person who has been “saddled” with this condition (or perhaps sometimes blessed?) is on a lifelong search for better ways to deal with their chaotic brain. Not every solution works equally well for everyone (because everyone is different), but I truly hope the solution I’ve made works for you too.

I only ask a small periodic fee for my effort (and mainly to cover the server costs). But even there you’re not immediately locked in: try Addeeze completely free, for nothing, for 14 days!