We launch tomorrow — here's the thinking behind Matters (ask me anything)

Hi everyone — I'm Sina, the maker of Matters. We go live on Product Hunt tomorrow (Aug 6, 12:01 AM PT). Before launch day, I wanted to share the story of why this app exists.

I didn't build Matters because I wanted another productivity app. I built it because nothing could hold a whole life at once — so for years I ran two apps and a spreadsheet just to keep one.

I'd tried every serious task app and hit the same ceiling each time. So I did what deliberate planners do — ran several at once, with a spreadsheet underneath for the long horizons none of them could hold: a trip I could only pin to “sometime in 2027.” Other things just fell through the gaps — dinners that should rotate through the month instead of vanishing the moment I cooked one, the reasoning behind a decision I'd want to reread in a year. A pile of tools, each holding one corner of my life.

The real problem was never a missing feature — any app could add the next thing I wanted. It was that nothing held it together. Tasks in one app, events in the calendar, horizons in a spreadsheet, habits in whatever app I was trying that month — and the stitching between them was the tax I paid every morning. I was spending attention keeping the system intact instead of on the work it was meant to protect. And “today” became whatever had the least friction, not whatever mattered the most.

What I wanted was the opposite. The day as one sequence — a task, a habit, a meeting, back to tasks — not parked in separate trackers. The areas I kept neglecting blocked out by the hour, so when the time came I'd just take the top thing and work. The lists that matter most not just flagged important and then forgotten, but speaking up on their own on a day I'd let them slip.

And planning years out shouldn't mean exile to a spreadsheet. A plan should be allowed to stay vague — “Japan, sometime in 2027” — and sharpen only as it nears. I wanted to zoom from this morning to 2029, and to keep my week and two live projects open side by side, instead of switching between views all day.

So I built it, and I've run every day and the next few years through it since. If you've ever bent a todo app into a life system and felt it bend back, this one bends the other way — shaped to your life, not asking your life to be shaped to it. Built by someone who needed that first.

See you at launch 🚀

mattersplanner.com