The 5 AM Miracle: Healthy Productivity for High Achievers Optimized Productivity and To-Do Lists with Austin Blake from the Stuff App
Dec 15, 2025
Austin Blake, a self-taught indie iOS developer and founder of the Stuff app, dives into the world of productivity and tech. He shares his journey from Apple retail to coding, inspired by frustrations with existing to-do apps. Austin discusses the power of writing tasks down to ease mental stress and highlights Stuff's unique dependency feature. He offers insights on intentional year planning, integrating AI thoughtfully, and the importance of maintaining focus through rules and habits. Discover how habits sustain his long-term projects!
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Simple Yet Powerful To‑Do Design
- Stuff balances extreme simplicity with deep power so both nontechnical and advanced users can manage tasks.
- Austin built features like dependencies to keep large backlogs useful instead of overwhelming.
Capture First, Decide Later
- When ideas crowd your mind, capture them immediately to remove mental stress and delegate memory to a system.
- Use a trusted tool so you can relax knowing the system will surface the right next action later.
Use Dependencies To Avoid False Urgency
- Create dependent tasks so non‑actionable big goals don't repeatedly show up as urgent.
- Add prerequisite tasks (e.g., buy wood glue) and hide later steps until prerequisites are done.
