The Miri Manifesto

From the creator

For years I carried a to-do list in my pocket. It was with me in the morning, when I opened my eyes. It waited in the evening, as I went to bed. The list held everything — important and unimportant, urgent and forgotten, true ambitions and things I didn't want to do but felt I should. It grew faster than items left it.

After a few years I understood that the list wasn't organizing me.

The list was judging me.

The problem with productivity

Most self-management tools assume your problem is a lack of efficiency. That you need a better system. A better priority matrix. A better way to slice your day into blocks. That if you just "process your inputs" properly — you'll finally feel calm.

That's not true.

The real problem doesn't lie in the system. It lies in the metaphor we've unknowingly adopted. For years, apps taught us to treat the task list like a debt to repay. Every unchecked item is an arrear. Every released task is a failure. Every evening with a non-empty list is proof that you didn't try hard enough.

Oliver Burkeman, author of Four Thousand Weeks, observed that becoming more efficient doesn't bring peace — it only makes the list grow faster. And the Stoic philosophers knew it all along: suffering is born not of unfinished tasks, but of the belief that finishing them defines our worth.

Miri was created because that metaphor is false — and it does real harm.

And here's what we decided to do differently.

The list isn't a debt. The list is you.

Imagine that your task list isn't a register of arrears. That it's something deeper — a mirror of what you care about. An expression of who you want to be.

The gift for your mom you want to choose thoughtfully. The guitar your thoughts have been returning to for months. An evening ritual with someone close. A dream waiting only for its first step.

These things aren't a debt. They're you.

James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, wrote that the most effective behavior change starts with identity — not with goals or habits, but with the question: who do I want to be? Every small action is a vote cast for that person. Every mission you write down is a declaration about yourself.

That's why in Miri there are no "tasks to complete". There are missions — intentions written in the first person, in the future tense. Not "call your dad", but "I'll call my dad". Not an order issued from outside. A promise made to yourself, from within.

It's a subtle but real difference. A mission belongs to you. It belongs only to you.

Just naming something a mission changes its weight. It's not another item to check off — it's something important enough that you want to remember it. But your head isn't for remembering. It's for thinking, for creating, for being present. Leave the remembering to Miri.

Letting go is a skill

The bravest thing Miri does is treat letting go as an act of maturity, not as failure.

Research by Carsten Wrosch and his colleagues showed something no productivity app dares to say out loud: the ability to give up unattainable goals is linked to better health, lower cortisol levels and a deeper sense of well-being. Holding on to a goal that has stopped being yours isn't perseverance. It's hurting yourself.

Miri doesn't delete released missions. It keeps them — quietly, without judgment. Because "not now" is not the same as "never". Maybe in a year you'll return to something you're setting aside today. Maybe that return will be different, more mature, more right. Miri will remember.

Conscious letting go isn't failure. It's maturity.

Rituals that define you

There's a difference between a habit and a ritual — and it matters more than it might seem.

A habit is an automatism. A ritual is an act with intention. You can brush your teeth out of habit — without thought, without attention. But an evening dance with your wife in the kitchen, ten pages of a book before sleep, a moment with your journal before you fall asleep — those are rituals. They carry meaning. They define how you live your day. They define who you are.

In Miri, rituals aren't "recurring tasks". You don't create them where you create missions — because they're not part of a to-do list. They're part of who you want to be. You define them from a place of identity.

And there's something other apps will never tell you: the goal of a ritual is for you to eventually stop needing to check it off. For it to simply become who you are.

Your space. Working together.

Life doesn't happen in solitude. You have people close to you, people you share the everyday with — and the need regularly comes up to remind each other of something, entrust something, ask for something.

But every attempt at collaboration through a shared board ends the same way: one person feels their list is on display, with someone holding them to account for it. The other, without meaning to, becomes the supervisor of someone else's arrears. A system that was meant to help starts to divide.

Miri proposes something different. Each person lives in their own Miri — in their own space, with their own style, their own voice, their own sense of aesthetics. There are no shared lists disorganizing everyone. There's a request that becomes someone's mission. Simple and human.

And when you want to know what's going on — you simply look in. You see how your shared matters stand and when the other person plans to get to them. It's like asking them in person whether they've managed — only faster, and without interrupting their day. A shared board watches for you, constantly. In Miri, you decide when to look. And over time it leaves a history — a record of how many things you've helped each other with, from big ambitions to the small everyday matters.

A husband can be a pedantic power user. A wife — someone for whom this is the first app of its kind. A daughter — a sweet little one with a pink manta ray. Each of them has their own Miri. And each of them can work together — each on their own terms.

Your life and the lives of the people you love can meet. None of them has to change for it.

Miri doesn't fight for your attention

Every app on your phone wants one thing: for you to come back. Now. With a notification, a badge, a red dot. Attention has become a currency — and you pay with it all day long, piece by piece.

Miri doesn't play that game. It doesn't interrupt your day to remind you it exists. A new request from someone close doesn't have to mean a notification — if it's not for right now, it will wait quietly until you look in yourself. And Miri keeps watch over the deadlines that matter — continuously, ahead of time and with an understanding of priorities — instead of staying silent for weeks and shouting at the very end.

Because lightness is also this: calm, while everything else is clamoring for your attention. Miri is there when you need it — when you yourself want to check what's waiting. In an overloaded world, you need a place that is quiet.

What Miri promises

Miri doesn't promise you'll be more productive.

It promises you'll feel lighter.

That what you care about won't drown in the noise of urgent matters. That the missions you write down will truly be yours — not someone else's orders to carry out. That the rituals you build will, over time, become part of who you are. That letting something go won't come with shame. That working with the people you love won't require them to become someone else. And that no one will fight for your attention.

The current of life flows anyway. Miri helps you use it.

The creator of Miri spent years testing Todoist, Things, TickTick, Clear, Structured and many others. He was looking for a place where his life and the lives of the people close to him could meet — each on their own terms. He didn't find one. So he built it.