Why WhatsApp Beats "Productivity Apps" for ADHD Capture

If you have ADHD, your phone is likely a graveyard of productivity apps. Todoist, Things, Notion, Trello, TickTick—you've downloaded them all. For the first 48 hours, they felt like magic. You organized your entire life, color-coded your projects, and felt a surge of dopamine.

Two weeks later? You haven't opened the app once. The red notification badge stares at you, a tiny digital eye of judgment, until you finally delete the app or bury it in a folder to hide the shame.

The problem isn't the app. And the problem definitely isn't you. The problem is friction.

The Cost of "Opening an App"

For a neurotypical brain, the sequence "Have idea -> Open Todo App -> Type idea" is trivial. For an ADHD brain, that middle step—Opening the App—is a chasm.

It requires a context switch. You have to stop what you're doing, locate the icon, wait for it to load, navigate to the "Inbox," tap the "plus" button, and then remember what you were going to write.

By the time the app loads, the thought is gone. Or worse, you saw a notification from Instagram on the way there, and now you've lost 20 minutes to doom-scrolling.

Capture Must Be Automatic

David Allen, the creator of GTD (Getting Things Done), says that your mind is for having ideas, not holding them. But capture only works if it's faster than the speed of forgetting.

This is why WhatsApp is the superior capture tool for ADHD. You don't have to "decide" to open WhatsApp. You're already there. You use it to talk to your mom, your friends, your partner. It's the digital living room of your life.

There is no "context switch" required to open a chat. It relies on muscle memory, not executive function.

TalkToTali: The Contact That Organizes You

This is the core philosophy behind TalkToTali. We didn't want to build another app graveyard. We wanted to meet you where you already are.

Tali lives in your contacts list. Capturing a task is as simple as texting a friend:

• "Remind me to call the dentist tomorrow"
• "I need to buy milk"
• "Brain dump: get tires checked, email Sarah, pay rent"

Tali captures it instantly. No forms, no dates to pick, no tags to select. Just text. The AI handles the sorting, the reminding, and the organizing. Your only job is to get it out of your head.