Mood

Success doesn’t lead to feeling good. Feeling good leads to success.

No matter how organized you try to be, life is messy and often wildly unpredictable. Events and actions can cause fleeting emotions or daily moods that either ruin your day or boost your productivity. Keeping a log of your emotions and moods can help you identify patterns and reflect on what impacts your state of mind. Providing detailed context in your log will help you understand which factors affect you the most.

When we're in a positive mood, we consider a broader range of actions, are more open to new experiences, and better integrate the information we receive. In other words, feeling good boosts our creativity and productivity.

Context

Throughout my design career, whether working as a contractor or a full-time team member, I've adhered to a mandatory routine: daily reports detailing what's on my plate, how much I've accomplished, and what went wrong, all without a strict structure. This brings clarity to my process, reduces unnecessary meetings, and helps me maintain sharp focus on my responsibilities.

I am constantly looking for ways to improve and structure it better, but it always ends the same. Todoist, Things, and similar apps are great planners but useless for my framework.

Plus minus next

Recently, I read a brilliant book by Anne-Laure Le Cunff — Tiny Experiments: How to Live Freely in a Goal-Obsessed World. If you are learning new skills, building something, or experimenting, I highly recommend this book. In it, Anne-Laure explains a great tool for tracking your daily responsibilities called Plus Minus Next.

It consists of three lists:

• positive observations go in the first list (Plus)
• negative observations in the second list (Minus)
• plans (todos) for what’s next in the last list (Next).

This framework gives my reports structure while adding emotional context, making them truly valuable. Now I can understand my productivity on a deeper level, and I can easily use it in my professional and personal projects. Great!

Idea

Okay, now I have a structured framework for daily reports: today's tasks, mood tracking (positives and negatives), and a to-do list for the following day. Why don’t I give my new framework a reality test? Let’s design and build my productivity tool!

Name

Anode the positively charged electrode by which the electrons leave an electrical device. or Anod – another day. Another day to create something great!

Choosing a name for a productivity app is tricky for me. The main requirements are that it be energetic, short, and positive. I won't describe the entire process and all the candidates, just the winner: Anod.

Functionality

Now you can manage responsibilities, capture thoughts and ideas, and track emotions all in one place, making your daily organization more natural and effective. I always capture my ideas along with my reports, but they often get lost in past reports and are extremely hard to find. So for ideas special attention, going further.

Ideas

During a project, many ideas sparked in my mind, and some probably had potential. However, capturing and retrieving them was inconvenient, as they often got lost in past reports. It didn’t take much effort to optimize Anod to properly capture, store, and retrieve my ideas.

All captured ideas are now stored in one place, making them easy to observe and manage—affordable and powerful! Ready to use as is, and for scaling and improvements in future, nice.

AI integration

Building a new app today without AI support is quite unusual. Yes, AI integration will be supported. You can optionally bring your own API key (OpenAI or Anthropic—it's not yet decided which will come first) and use Anod freely, forever!

Role for AI: summarize your progress, recap your weekly or monthly reports, and chat (RAG) to communicate directly with your projects. Anod will transform chaotic habits and rigid routines into resilient, high-leverage growth frameworks.

WIP