Nelawa is the to-do app that skips the list.
A task app for overwhelmed parents whose brains don’t cooperate with lists. Most apps assume you can look at everything and pick what’s next. That’s the exact part that breaks.
So Nelawa skips the list. Empty your head into it, it does the sorting, and it hands you one next thing.
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There’s a pile. You know the one.
- The appointment that never got booked, humming quietly at the back of your head.
- The form that expired at the bottom of the school bag.
- Lying awake at 11pm, doing tomorrow’s maths on the ceiling.
It was never a discipline problem.
Every task app assumes you can look at everything on your plate and calmly pick the right next move.
For ADHD brains, and for any head carrying a whole household, that’s exactly the step that breaks. Ten things, all feeling equally urgent, and no way to pick. So you freeze, or you do the easy one, and the important one waits another day.
The apps call it procrastination. It isn’t. Choosing is the broken step, so Nelawa removes it.
The research calls it executive function.
The brain’s picking-and-starting machinery: what struggles in ADHD, and in any head under this much load. Nelawa is built to be that machinery for you.
Three moves. You only make the first.
Empty your head
One line at a time or the whole pile at once. Nothing gets lost. That’s the promise the rest of the app is built on.
Nelawa sorts it
It spots the school form, the bill, the real deadline: what’s due, what can wait, what’s just noise. You never file a thing.
You get one next thing
Not thirty-seven tasks. The thing that’s truly yours to do now, with its first two-minute step already worked out.
Free during the beta · your email goes nowhere else
It guards what matters. It lets the rest rest.
Fierce
Real deadlines get a calm amber edge that will not be scrolled past. Nelawa won’t let the school enrolment slide, and it won’t let you kid yourself either.
It reads the signals, dates, money, a child’s name, and guards the things with consequences.
Forgiving
Everything else can slip, silently. Dropping a task is a first-class action, and the pile rests where you can see it’s safe: never lost, never counted against you.
Come back after a bad week and it simply says: here’s one next thing.
Nothing ever turns red. No streaks. No overdue counts. Ever.
Where Nelawa sits
The other apps are good at what they’re for. This is the difference in what we’re for.
| Nelawa | Todoist | Amazing Marvin | Llama Life | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Built around | One next thing | Managing everything | Building your own system | Timing through your list |
| Who sorts the pile | Nelawa does | You do: projects, filters, labels | You do: 300+ settings, four workflows | You do: it paces you with timers |
| A normal day shows you | A few things that are truly yours today | Your lists and filtered views | The day plan you built | Your list, one timed task at a time |
| When you fall behind | Nothing turns red: no overdue counts, no streaks | Not stated | Not stated | Not stated |
| Made for ADHD heads | Yes: it removes the choosing step | Not claimed | Yes, through customisation | Yes, through timeboxing |
| Price today | Free during the beta | Free tier + paid Pro | Paid, free trial | $6/mo or $39/yr, 7-day trial |
A note from the founder
I’m Howard. I’m raising five children on my own, and the pile on my kitchen table is not a metaphor.
I tried every app. Each one made me its administrator, then counted my failures in red. So I built the thing I actually needed: something that takes the pile, guards the few things that truly matter, and at the end of the day tells me the truth: that it was enough.
It’s early, it’s small, and it gets better every week. The people who join now shape what it becomes.
— Howard
At the end of the day, Nelawa shows you what you did and says the sentence nobody else will say to you.
That was enough.
Built for parents, ADHD brains, carers, and anyone carrying a whole household in their head.
Why “Nelawa”? We made the word up. It’s built to sound like breathing out: a soft N, open vowels, nothing sharp. Its nearest echoes in old languages mean “blue rays of the sky”, “attainment”, and “a small bright light”.
Set the day down.
Free during the beta · your email goes nowhere else
Why can’t I just sign up?
Nelawa is in a small beta, so every user gets looked after properly while it grows. Leave your email and we’ll let you in as spaces open, in the order people arrived. The beta is free.
I’ve tried every to-do app. It always becomes another job.
Setting up Nelawa is one action: empty your head. No projects to build, no labels to invent, no settings homework. Nelawa does the sorting, and if you disappear for a week, nothing punishes you when you come back. It holds.
What happens when I fall behind?
Nothing turns red. Ever. No overdue counts, no streaks. Real deadlines are guarded firmly, with a calm amber edge that won’t let the school form slide, and everything else rests until you’re ready.
How is this different from Todoist or the ADHD apps?
They give you better ways to manage a list: filters, timers, three hundred settings. Nelawa’s bet is that the list itself is the problem. You dump, it sorts, you get one next thing.
An AI reads my brain dump and my letters. Where does it all go?
Anything you hand Nelawa (typed thoughts, a voice note, a photo of the doctor’s letter) travels over an encrypted connection through our own server to the AI that does the sorting (Anthropic’s Claude), and what comes back is tasks. Nelawa keeps the tasks, not the letter: there is no file storage on our servers at all. Nothing you send is used to train AI models, never sold, never shown ads. Your tasks live in your account and on your device, and you can delete everything, any time. The full detail is in our privacy policy.
Is there anything behind this, or is it just a nice idea?
There’s real research underneath. The skill Nelawa replaces has a name, executive function: the brain’s picking-and-starting machinery. It’s what struggles in ADHD, and in any head under heavy load. Psychologists have also shown that unfinished tasks keep tugging at attention until they’re written somewhere trusted, and that the more equally-urgent options you face, the harder starting becomes. Nelawa is those findings built into a mechanic: everything out of your head, the choosing done for you, one next thing in front of you.
Do I need an ADHD diagnosis for this to be for me?
No. If your head is full, it’s for you.
What does it cost?
Nothing during the beta. When Nelawa grows up there will be paid plans, and beta users get looked after, and we’ll say clearly before anything changes.
Does it work on my phone?
Yes: Nelawa runs in the browser on any phone or computer. Add it to your home screen and it behaves like an app, reminders included.
Free during the beta · your email goes nowhere else