buy fruit

Hey my Beanie Buddies,

Some people ask me if these are written by AI, or do I write them myself. My answer is yes, of course, by which I mean no, I don’t use AI. Meaning yes, I do write them myself. Unless I specifically tell you I used AI, in which case, no, I didn’t write it myself, but still probably changed most of it. So, to answer your question, maybe?

I actually kind of resent AI. Since early in my IT career, one of my “under the radar” skills was that I could take average copy and edit it to the point that it was so polished your retinas would burn if you looked directly at it. Now, I feel like I almost have to take a bit of the polish off to stay one step ahead of the machine, while popping in some tidbit of information so completely random even the loneliest spork in the universe could not have spit it out from its token inference engine. By the way, “the loneliest spork in the universe” would be a good title for my upcoming, still-in-concept phase sci-fi novel series.

Anyway, I feel like I was about to tell you something. Right. To-dos.

I talk a lot about the craziness of managing a large family and raising 3 little boys with my wife through their schoolwork, sports practices, activities, lessons, and just remembering when and where to pick them up. Through all this, I realized that family financial planning is cool, but what’s cooler is not forgetting to pick up your 7-year-old son from his soccer practice, then having to listen to him complain for the next 8 hours about how you don’t love him as much as his older and younger brothers (this can normally be fixed with ice cream).

So let me introduce you to my little friends: to-dos and someday/maybes.

A to-do on beanies.family is not just something you’d like to do at some point. A to-do is anything you have to do today, or on a certain date, or something you’d like your partner to do, or something we decide you have to do, or maybe even some other stuff that I’m forgetting right now, because I never set a to-do for it. (See what I did there?)

When you assign yourself or a family member pick-up or drop-off duty for an activity - that’s a to-do. When you add an activity for yourself on a specific date - that’s a to-do. When you create a to-do item for yourself, or somebody assigns a to-do item to you - you better believe that’s a to-do.

The someday/maybe list is broader (and more fun, in my opinion). The concept of a someday/maybe list was made popular by David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done, and it’s just like it sounds - something you’d like to do, or need to do, or really want to do, at some point in the future. There’s a lot of thoughts around how to use a someday/maybe list, but the great thing is that you can use it (or not use it) any way you’d like!

Simply open a to-do item and flip it to “someday/maybe”, and boom! It’s on your someday/maybe list.

there’s a great chance this “someday/maybe” becomes a “never”

There is nothing new or revolutionary about to-dos. Just about every planning app in the world has them in some form. What makes to-dos amazing (aside from how fun it is to say “to-do”) is when they work.

We’ve been beanies.family’s first official pilot family for a few weeks now. Getting my wife on board was a challenge - my oldest son was a much easier sell. But I knew I was on the right track when I glanced down at my app the other day. My mouth hung open as I stared incredulously upon a to-do item from my wife, assigned to me, which said, simply: “buy fruit”.

Dramatic recreation of a true, real-life event. This actually happened.

My name, a due date, and a simple message. Not cluttered up or lost forever in a sea of text chains and spam messages.

Simple, yet life changing. (And yes, I bought fruit on the way home.)

The first thing you see when you open the family nook on beanies.family is a warm, welcoming orange square. We (well, I) call this the daily briefing. At the top there is a little beanie quote that you may or may not recognize as being taken and mangled from some silly movie that I liked when I was 16. But below that is what counts: A personal, customized list of everything you (and only you) need to do today.

To-dos are not just a part of the beanies.family app, they are the app. Your family’s chores, activities, ad-hoc plans, grocery runs, pick-ups and drop-offs, and all that stuff that makes up life is front and center. beanies.family revolves around the little things. And we treat those little things the way they should be treated - big (and colorful).

Luckily, to-dos and someday/maybes aren’t the only things beanies.family can do (but they’re a cool place to start!).

If you’re one of those families where everything is in order, and you’re under total control of your life, you can safely ignore this message. But if you’re like the rest of us, then who knows, beanies.family to-dos and someday/maybes, used right, might help your family life become just a little bit less crazy. Just a little.

Because every little bit of less crazy helps. Wishing my beans peace.

greg