
Meishi: a tiny productivity system
5 min read Feb 1, 2025
When Dieter Rams said “less but better”, he probably wasn’t thinking about todo lists. Yet, as I stared at three different overcrowded digital task lists a month ago, I realized that’s exactly what I need. I call it Meishi, after the Japanese words for business card.
The problem
Between this blog, my work, and my life at home, I have quite a few different digital todo lists. They each promised to be expandable, always accessible, searchable, customizable and collaborative.
In practice, I find myself in decision paralysis, whether from deciding what to work on, to learning features to the overhead of maintenance. Furthermore, given low friction, my digital todo lists get longer and scarier.
Analog
I have long had a fascination with paper-based to do lists – from the Hipster PDA to Field Notes. They solve many, if not all, of the gripes I have with electronic tools. One that has stood out in recent time is Ugmonk Analog by Jeff Sheldon.
Analog is a complete solution. It all started with a wooden hand-made enclosure housing a set of cards and a slot at front to stand one up. It is similar in scale to a phone or desk clock — not too small, not too big.
Following the standard 3” x 5” index card size, the cards are beautifully crafted with a line for the date and ten todos, each with a circle and a single line. There’s a suggested way of using these circles to track progress, but it’s entirely up to the user. A dot grid on the back is the perfect place for notes and sketches. There are also other cards types — Next and Someday — for organizing future work.
At home, a Maple Ugmonk Analog set lives on my wife’s desk where she uses it as a weekly planner.
New scale
I have been using just the today cards by themselves in between the halves of my split keyboard. During the day, I’m often reaching for a card to carry around the house. Ugmonk has some great solutions like a case and the Discbound version, but they don’t easily fit into my pocket.
Inspired by Jeff centering Analog around a standard paper size, I started thinking of a solution. Since I already carry around a few things in my pocket, I didn’t want anything too large.
That’s when I had an idea — a credit card-sized list that I could put in an Apple MagSafe wallet. However, printing off custom credit card-sized lists proved tricky.
Analog to the left and Meishi
to the right
Business cards, their close cousin, are trivial to print. An added bonus is that there are countless ways that business cards can fit into someone’s life, like wallets and bags.
I quickly iterated through variations in Figma and sent the files off to a local print shop. The fronts of the cards are designed around an 1/8 inch grid, allowing for the date and twelve todos out front. I left the circles without the straight line that Jeff used in order to experiment with other ways of checking off items. The dots on the back are printed slightly lighter on a 1/16th inch grid to allow sketches to stand out.
The rounded corners, though they slightly reduce usable size, allow the cards to fit seamlessly with my phone and wallet.
In use
Since I’m often changing locations within my house throughout the workday, carrying my todo list with me is key. Having it attached to my phone makes that possible.
The ritual of sitting down and taking the MagSafe wallet off my phone to access my todo list marks the transition into focused work. This single list is the meeting point for all my digital lists. Every task ends up on paper.
Since the cards are so small, I have found myself making my tasks concise and clear. Writing them out subtly reinforces the ideas at hand. Paper lets me rely on spatial memory, like when I sort through my stack of previous days cards to look something up.
When I finally check an item off, there is a physical feeling of release that the digital check box has never matched.
The future
I can see some improvements to be made. Currently, you can see pixels at a close glance, and inconsistent colors. Another method like screen printing or offset could improve both. I’ll also explore other paper options. The current one’s sheen causes some inks to smear. Further out, I’m considering expanding beyond todo lists.
Regardless of potential changes, I’m happy with what I have today. What started as an attempt to escape overwhelm in the digital world has become something meaningful in the physical world.
Meishi embodies Rams’s principle of “less but better” by enforcing limits. Each card represents a commitment to do fewer things, but do them well. Most satisfying of all is that by solving this particular problem, I’ve found that small solutions can lead to big impact.
Thanks to Q for reading drafts of this.