jasnoo was built to solve my own problems. I was always doing a lot, but I haven't yet achieved what I want. I did a decently goals were external, but I always struggled prioritizing on my own goals. It's easy to say "I'm doing X", then random Tuesday morning comes and there are 3 other things to do that seem equally important. I've tried many other tools for personal productivity, but all of them were either too complicated, too rigid and not actually helping me focus on what matters. I've created over the years 4 different versions of jasnoo, but none of them adressed the issue either. So I gave up on all 4 versions and never released them. Core problem was always that I needed a way to prioritize my goals, but I could never see the big picture. In 2023 I completely gave up on digital tools, and used just pen and paper while I was travelling. That is where idea for current version was born outside of confines of lists. Current version is my humble attempt at helping other people struggling with the same problem.
Like it says on the home page - help people focus on what matters to them. That's it. There is no SaaS business model here, no plans to build a big company, no plans to add latest AI trend to make you even more distracted, no arbitrage to grab your attention and your data, no plans for taking investors, no plans for making a big exit. jasnoo is built to last. It's just me doing the work, delivering simple software and tools that honestly try to provide value to peoples lives.
Compared to a lot of other productivity applications, jasnoo is opinionated. jasnoo lacks a lot of popular features. You don't need notifications. You don't need collaboration. You don't need AI. You don't need any more tasks being added to your plate. All those things can be useful, but more often than not, they are simply distractions. It is my firm belief that the hardest thing when trying to be productive is to figure out what exactly should be done and what should not. Once you have these 2 things, everything else is trivial. All these productivity tools should serve you, instead of being elaborate time wasters that make you feel like you are making progress, when you are actually procrastinating. In another way, you could say that jasnoo wants to help people get out of their own way.
In one of my earlier prototypes of jasnoo, there was a mobile app and full cloud support. But I've decided to remove it. I've worked on SaaS products and once you deploy them, there is no going back. Servers, someone to take care of the servers, customer service, development and product management cost money. Which means the app has to bring consistent revenue to justify all that effort. So you bring marketing and sales people to address that. And now they need money and things to do. That brings strong incentive for everyone involved to do more things to justify the costs. I'm sure you have seen the effect of this with some of your favorite software. After a lot of consideration, and yes, by breaking it down with jasnoo, it became clear to me that this isn't something I want to do. So I'm staying true to the mission - help people focus on what matters. That means releasing this as a desktop app for now.
If jasnoo proves useful to people that aren't me, and mobile version & sync contributes to focusing on what matters, that version will be created. If you think I'm stupid for not doing it yet, please tell me all about it. In the end, what actually helps people focus will be implemented.
In theory you could make your grand plans on the computer, and then use some software or physically written lists for your daily driving. For quickly capturing stuff to inbox, you can use some other software. Or you can skip using jasnoo all together if it doesn't work for you. If you think I'm stupid writing previous sentence tell me here.
I highly recommend everyone to try out Todoist and Obsidan. There is a ocean of software out there that can help you, and in my humble opinion those two are the best out there. I use Obsidian daily for all of my writing, and I used Todoist before I created jasnoo.
jasnoo just saves one file to your disk that you can backup easily. Easiest way is to install some kind of backup cloud storage options. There is a bunch of them, so pick you favorite. I think it's a good idea to add some kind of encryption software before syncing your jasnoo files (wink wink). You save jasnoo files into encrypted vault, and then sync encrypted vault with cloud storage provider.
Anyone who has a desktop computer can use it. But best results can be expected by people that spend a significant time at their computer. People who have a lot of complex projects that they need to breakdown. People who work on open ended goals that aren't clearly defined in advance. People who struggle with too many ideas and thoughts will definitely feel the benefit of getting it all out on the canvas. People who feel overwhelmed and unfocused. People who are annoyed with complicated productivity tools that don't actually help them.
People who want to fiddle with productivity apps to feel productive. People who want distractions of notifications and "collaboration" features. People who think AI, not your original thinking is useful. People who have clear tasks set for them by someone else.
In Croatian jasno means clear. As in "Is that clear?". Extra o is there simply to differentiate it for SEO purposes. It is what it is. I like the name because of how simple it is, and explains perfectly what I want to help with - clarity. Clarity put in action is focus. I do hope it isn't a bad word in some language.
