Everything I removed
The tool got better every time it got smaller. A field report on features I built, used, and then deleted, and why subtraction was most of the work.
Here is a list of things Deadlinewatch used to do and no longer does. I’m writing it down because the removals, not the additions, are what made the tool worth using, and that runs against every instinct you have while building.
The score
The earliest versions ranked your deadlines. Each one carried a number, and the dashboard arrived pre-sorted into the order the tool judged correct. I retired the whole apparatus and replaced it with days until due. The reasons fill their own piece, but the short one is that an order you didn’t choose and can’t verify is an order you stop trusting. The sort is chronological now. Pin lifts what matters to you above it. That’s all.
The three-level importance field
Before Pin, there was a dropdown. High, normal, low. It sat on the tool for months. When I looked at how it was actually used, the answer was stark. People marked a thing high, or they left it alone. The middle was decoration. The three-state field was a two-state field in a costume. Pin is the honest version. This matters more than its date suggests, or it doesn’t.
The disappearing Snooze
The first Snooze hid a deadline completely until its wake date. It felt clean. It was also dangerous, because people would defer something, forget the date they’d set, and lose the deadline, which is the one thing a deadline tool must never do. Snooze now dims a row to a ghost instead of hiding it. The slight clutter was the safety, and the clean version was worse for the lack of it.
The reminders I didn’t build
Not everything I removed was something I shipped. Some of it I built far enough to see it was wrong, then deleted before anyone met it. Mass reminders were the big one. It is trivial to email a user about every deadline as it nears. It is also how you teach them to ignore your emails. An inbox full of reminders for things already on the dashboard is wallpaper, and wallpaper is invisible. Email is off by default and set one deadline at a time, a deliberate act, never a flood.
What the pattern was
Adding a feature feels like progress, because you can see the new thing. Removing one feels like loss, because you are left staring at the hole where your clever idea used to be. But the tool got quieter, faster, and more trustworthy with each subtraction, and quiet, fast, and trustworthy is the whole job. The methodology page lists the lines I still hold for the same reason. Everything above is something I was briefly proud of. The tool is better for having lost all of it.