Aug 2026 — Azmi Hayaza

Forty open loops

The short version: I never struggled with ideas or hard work. The long version is everything around them, the invisible tax. Forty open loops running in my head at any time, the paralyzing friction of opening a blank document, and the quiet shame of commitments dropped to people I respect.

I tried every app in the store. Boards, tags, color-coding, red notification badges. Every single tool demanded the exact executive function I was running out of. They were built by and for people with a working memory I didn't have.

The psychology is well understood: the Zeigarnik effect — uncompleted tasks keep occupying working memory until they're closed. For an ADHD brain there's a ceiling on open loops, and past it, you don't get more organized. You freeze. Another reminder doesn't help. Fewer open loops help.

So the product stopped being a tool and became a partner. Loopsmate lives inside Telegram. You dump the raw chaos — a voice memo walking to the shop, a forwarded email you can't face — and it does the executive work: logs the open loop, shrinks it into micro-steps, drafts the deliverable, and reminds you before a promise slips. It closes loops. No badges, no streaks, no judgment. Silence is safe, and picking a thread back up is handled quietly.

I built it for one person first: me. It's now onboarding its founding cohort, and the reason I write about it is that the pattern turned out to be general. A partner that does the managing is exactly what busy professionals need, ADHD or not. That thread runs through everything I build.

If this sounds like your brain, no setup is required — just a Telegram chat. That's the whole design.