I have ADHD. I run three businesses. Sometimes I live in a van.
That combination breaks most productivity systems. So I built my own.
The Problem
Every “life management” app assumes you’ll:
- Remember to check it
- Have the energy to process what you see
- Actually follow through
For someone with ADHD, that’s three points of failure before you’ve done anything useful.
I needed something different. Something that would handle the cognitive load for me and only surface what actually matters.
The Three Pillars
My work falls into three buckets:
Brand.i — Design and creative work. Adobe plugins, branding projects, visual problem-solving.
MagHugg — E-commerce. Products, inventory, the business operations side.
Neatworld — The infrastructure layer. The system that makes the other two manageable.
Each has different rhythms, different tools, different mental contexts. Context-switching between them is expensive.
What Neatworld Actually Does
At its core, Neatworld is a FastAPI backend with Claude integration. It connects to:
- Gmail (two accounts, OAuth, real-time sync)
- Google Calendar (same deal)
- Bank accounts via SimpleFIN (live balances, auto-categorized transactions)
- Whatever else I need
The key insight: I don’t want dashboards. I want conversations.
# This is how I interact with my finances now
"Can I afford $500 for that new monitor?"
# And get back:
"Yes, but it would drop your runway from 32 to 28 days.
Your Citi card has a $4,200 balance due in 12 days."
The AI has context. It knows my accounts, my burn rate, my upcoming bills. I don’t have to look at spreadsheets or parse bank statements.
The Traffic Light System
For finances, I implemented a simple mental model:
- 🟢 Green: 30+ days of runway. Don’t think about money.
- 🟡 Yellow: 15-30 days. Be mindful.
- 🔴 Red: Under 15 days. Pay attention.
I don’t need to see numbers. I need to know if there’s a problem.
Auto-Categorization
Every transaction gets tagged automatically:
- Adobe charge → Brand.i
- Starlink → Van
- Shopify fees → MagHugg
- Grocery store → Personal
I built rules for my specific vendors. The system learns from corrections. After a month, it’s 90%+ accurate.
Why Claude?
I tried building this with GPT-4 first. It worked, but Claude’s tool use is cleaner. The XML-style function calls, the way it handles multi-step operations, the consistency of output—it just fit better for this use case.
The key pattern that works:
tools = [
{
"name": "get_finance_status",
"description": "Get financial health status...",
"input_schema": {...}
},
{
"name": "can_i_afford",
"description": "Check if a purchase is affordable...",
"input_schema": {...}
}
]
Claude calls the tools, gets real data, synthesizes an answer. No hallucination because it’s grounded in actual numbers.
The ADHD Angle
A few specific design decisions for the ADHD brain:
No dashboards on the homepage. I removed all financial numbers from the main view. Money anxiety is real, and constantly seeing balances doesn’t help.
Conversational interface. Asking questions is easier than navigating menus.
Automatic sync. I never have to remember to “update” anything. Cron jobs handle it.
Traffic lights over numbers. Color-coded status is processable at a glance.
What’s Next
This blog is auto-generated too. I have a script that takes a topic, calls Claude, formats the post, builds with Hugo, and deploys. Because of course it does.
Future additions:
- Weekly briefing emails
- iOS Shortcuts integration
- Receipt OCR for expense tracking
- Actual Budget integration
The Takeaway
The best productivity system is one you don’t have to think about.
If you’re constantly “managing” your management system, it’s not working. Automate the tedious parts. Let AI handle the synthesis. Save your attention for the work that actually matters.
That’s what Neatworld is for me. Your version will look different. But the principle holds: build systems that work with your brain, not against it.