Welcome to Tuck. It’s your brain, after all.

Hey, I’m Jer. Welcome to my corner.

I’ve been in tech for more than 25 years, and I love creating things. In July 2024, I had the idea that would become Tuck because I was running into a problem that probably sounds familiar: I had plenty of tools to help me stay organized, and keeping up with all of them was becoming a job of its own. A job with no salary and a surprisingly aggressive notification policy.

Reflect, Apple Notes, Todoist, Notion, IFTTT, Pocket, Zoom. Each had some little piece of my life: a thought, a task, a meeting, something I wanted to read, something I absolutely needed to remember. My personal context was scattered across all of them, and the cognitive load of switching between apps, inboxes, and notification queues was overwhelming. My second brain apparently had several mailing addresses, and I was responsible for checking the mail at all of them.

I wanted a place where my thoughts and the things I needed to do could live together, with quick ways to capture something wherever I happened to be. I also wanted enough structure to help me get started without having to adopt someone else’s entire philosophy of being a person. That became the starting point for Tuck.

Thoughts and tasks already live together in our heads

One experience helped make the problem clear. The note-taking app I used at the time added basic to-dos, which made perfect sense to me. I was already writing down thoughts, and some of those thoughts involved things I needed to do. But recurring tasks were a firm no. For those, the recommendation was to use a separate task manager.

I understand that products need boundaries. After more than 25 years in tech, I’m sympathetic to the fact that “could you just add…” can conceal approximately six months of work. Still, this particular boundary landed right in the middle of how my brain works.

Tasks come from thoughts. A meeting produces an idea, a question, and something to follow up on. A note about a project contains both what we’re thinking and what we need to do next. They sit side by side in our heads, so moving the action into another system feels like physically disconnecting it from the context that gave it meaning. Then we get to bounce between the two and remember how they fit together, which is a slightly inconvenient assignment for a system intended to help us remember things.

I wanted tasks to be a full part of Tuck from the beginning. They belong alongside the thoughts that created them, with enough context that you can come back later and understand what you meant.

Mildly opinionated, like a helpful friend

Finding the right amount of structure is another part of this. I’ve used tools with such strong opinions about how they should work that I couldn’t make them fit me. I’ve also used tools with so much freedom that figuring out how to use them became its own project. Craft and Notion have felt that way for me: lots of possibilities, but also lots of decisions before I could get on with the thing I originally came there to do.

That’s a personal reaction, not a verdict on those tools. What feels overwhelming to me might be exactly what someone else loves. Some people see a blank canvas and feel inspired. Sometimes I would appreciate the canvas suggesting where the first thing goes.

With Tuck, I’m aiming for something mildly opinionated: enough structure to make the first step clear, with enough flexibility to find your own way after that. I have ideas about what makes a useful second brain, obviously. Building an app would be a peculiar way to express having no opinions. But I want those ideas to help you get going while leaving room for how you actually think.

It’s your brain, after all.

Catch the thought before it leaves the building

Quick capture has been part of the idea since the beginning because thoughts have very little respect for whether we’re sitting at a desk with the correct app open. They show up when they show up, and “I’ll remember that later” is an arrangement with some questionable terms and conditions.

I was walking down the street without my phone and had something I wanted to capture. I could use the Tuck Apple Watch app to get it down right there and keep walking. It was a small moment, but those small moments are a big part of why I’m building this. Capturing a thought should fit into what you’re doing without becoming a whole separate activity.

Another example: I captured a meeting with my Pocket, it synced to Tuck, and the to-dos automatically showed up. I didn’t have to go into another tool and approve or review them separately before they became part of my flow. The meeting and the things I needed to do afterward were connected without another round of administrative housekeeping.

Those are the kinds of connections I care about building. Each one removes a little effort between having something worth remembering and being able to use it later.

There’s a person behind this

I’m a bit neurospicy, with a side of mental health challenges, and that shapes my experience of trying to stay organized. A wide range of apps and surfaces, each with its own inbox and notifications, can be a lot for me to manage. The cognitive overload that led me to start Tuck was real, and adding another place to check wasn’t going to solve it.

That’s why I care so much about the details: how many places you have to look, how much work it takes to capture something, and whether a system gives you somewhere clear to begin. My experience won’t be everyone’s experience, though, and I want to leave room for that both in the app and in the conversations we have here.

Building Tuck means making choices, and listening to the people using it helps me understand whether those choices are actually helping. If you have something to share, whether it’s a question, a frustration, or a little thing that made your day easier, email me at chatwithme@tuckthis.app. I’d love to hear how your brain works and what you need from Tuck. You don’t need to arrive with a neatly organized feature request. That would feel a little against the spirit of the exercise.

What you’ll find in this corner

Jer’s Corner will be a place to talk about thoughts, notes, tasks, remembering things, and the systems we build to support ourselves. I’ll share what I’m learning while building Tuck, along with my perspective on attention, mental health, and the sometimes messy business of getting a thought out of your head and doing something with it. Sometimes that will connect directly to the app; sometimes a useful idea will deserve a post of its own.

I love creating, and I care about the people who choose to make something I’ve built part of their lives. I want Tuck to earn that place by being useful, and I want this corner to feel like somewhere we can talk openly about what helps, what gets in the way, and what we’re still figuring out.

Welcome to Tuck. I’m glad you’re here.

Jer ❤️