This is not the greatest To Do list. And that's the point!

There's a reason you wake up at 3 am thinking about that email you didn't send.

It's not anxiety or a poor sleep ethic; it's your brain doing what it was designed to do, keeping open loops alive until resolved. Except 10,000 years ago, life was simpler, with fewer tasks.

Psychologists call it the Zeigarnik Effect.

[In the 1920s, Lithuanian-Soviet researcher Bluma Zeigarnik noticed something unusual about waiters in a busy café. They could hold extraordinarily complex unpaid orders in their heads, who had what, who wanted sauce on the side, with flawless accuracy. But the moment the bill was settled and the task was complete, the details vanished instantly. I note there is debate on this research.]

The brain treats "open" tasks like open browser tabs. They run in the background, consuming processing power and memory, even when you're not actively looking at them. 

The cost

Your working memory, the mental workspace where you hold and juggle active information. To-do lists can help.

[A 2021 study in the Journal of Occupational Health Psychology confirmed what most of us already suspect: people who used organisational tools like to-do lists and task management apps reported significantly lower levels of work-related stress than those who didn't.]

You don't need to finish the task. Just get it down.

In 2011, Masicampo and Baumeister published a study showing that you don't have to complete a task to get the mental relief of completion. You just have to write it down with a clear plan.

The act of capturing a task, parking it somewhere you trust, produces cognitive closure effects remarkably similar to actually finishing the job. The open loop closes, at least temporarily. And your attention frees up for whatever you're doing right now.

This is the philosophy behind our To Do Parking Stacker.

Why we built it.

• After trying many for the years, we found them over-engineered. Like WORD, I just want to type stuff, bold some of it, and save; I don't need the other 50 million functionalities every day.
• Privacy of data
• Cost
• The admin required just to manage it.

The To Do Parking Stacker - Our answer

• Better than Notes on your iPhone
• Data to stay on your phone, no cloud storage
• Type and hit enter
• Move to WIP (Work in progress) or done. Done items are deleted after 30 days.
• Re-order at your pleasure.
• Free
• No tracking

Why Free with no Tracking?

Because we wanted to use it, had the ability to do it, and decided, at least initially anyway, to make it free, let's see how we go. We also didn't want any privacy hassles or the management of user data, data storage, or data tracking.

We have also continued to use it, unlike many other complicated paid apps.  

Type it. Park it. Move on.

That's it. No accounts. No cloud. No login screen. No subscription. No notifications. No priority matrices, Kanban columns, or weekly reviews. Just a place to put things so they stop taking up space in your head.

How it works?

• The To Do Parking Stacker has three states: To Do, WIP (Work in Progress), and Done.
• You type your task — or use voice input if you're on the go and it appears in your list.
• When you start something, move it to WIP. When you finish it, move it to Done. Items marked as done are automatically deleted after 30 days, so the list stays clean without you having to manage it.
• You can reorder items, with priorities at the top of the list.
• There is a Stats page so you can see your progress across the three stages. And that's genuinely all there is. No other screens. No categories. No setup required.
• Everything lives on your phone. Nothing leaves it. No internet connection required, no server infrastructure, which means no subscription to maintain it. What's on your phone is yours, private, local, and permanent until you choose otherwise.
• Once you have it free, it remains free for life, even if we later add a small fee.

Done is the point

Each completion event triggers a neurochemical response in the brain, including dopamine activity associated with reward and forward progress.

Breaking your day into smaller, independently completeable tasks gives your brain regular moments of closure, which builds motivation and prevents the cognitive overload that comes from carrying too many open loops at once.

The Done column in the Parking Stacker isn't a graveyard for finished tasks. It's evidence that you showed up, moved things forward, and made progress. That signal matters more than most people realise.

Who is it for?

1. If you've ever reached for your phone at midnight to write something down before you forgot it, this is for you.
2. If you're using Notes on your iPhone, this is for you.
3. If you've ever sat in a meeting while your brain quietly rehearsed three other things you needed to do, this is for you.
4. If you've tried to-do apps before and abandoned them because they required more work than the tasks themselves, this is especially for you.

The To Do Parking Stacker is free, iPhone only, available now on the Apple App Store. No tracking. No catch. Your data stays on your device.

Park the thought. Clear the space. Get back to your life.

To Do Parking Stacker is a free app by Old Bull Health, available on the Apple App Store. All data lives on your device — no cloud, no accounts, no subscription.