I've been Chief Technology Officer of the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, which runs the largest integrated health care system in the country. I've written three books. I'm a partner in a crisis engineering firm, Layer Aleph, where I've worked on some of the highest-profile crises out there. I work with states to fix foster care, I've been a volunteer advocate for foster youth for over 20 years, I serve on a couple of boards (and a handful of advisory boards), and I still have time to walk the dog.

I can do all of that because I made TaskTackler over 10 years ago, and it runs my life, and I love it.

Why I built it

I built it because I was frustrated with myself. When I was perfectly caffeinated and ready to take on the world, I gravitated towards whatever task was right in front of me, which tended to be folding the laundry or clearing emails. I could just as easily have done those when I was tired! But the reverse isn't true: there are some tasks, particularly reading and writing for work, that I can only do when I'm feeling sharp. So TaskTackler organizes my Tasks by Temperament, hiding the ones that aren't a match for my current mood while still letting me be productive even when I'm falling asleep.

In 2021, Steve Levitt of Freakonomics interviewed me about how I stay organized on his podcast People I (Mostly) Admire, and TaskTackler was a big part of the answer. Listen to the episode.

The details, if you want them

I was CTO of VA from 2013 to 2017, where my team built vets.gov (now VA.gov), and before that I helped found the United States Digital Service and served as a Senior Advisor on technology in the Obama White House. The books are Crisis Engineering, Hack Your Bureaucracy and Business Efficiency for Dummies. Layer Aleph restores complex systems to service when they're failing. The foster care work happens through the Child Welfare Playbook, and the boards are Renaissance Philanthropy and Ameelio.

I've been a Type-A for a long time: before government I founded a business efficiency consulting firm called The Type-A Way. I live in Seattle with my husband Charles and our dog, Fiona.

TaskTackler has been in development for more than a decade. You can see what's changed, year by year, in the release notes.