Manage your creative work. Hone is a desktop application that helps you focus and limit context switching by combining time-blocking, to-do lists, and pomodoro timers into a single tool. We built the app to help us (and you) single-task.

Multitasking in the past two decades has been scrutinized for its detrimental effects on productivity and cognitive performance. Studies such as those by Ophir, Nass, and Wagner (2009), and by Mark, Gudith, and Klocke (2008), underscore the effects of "attention residue," where the cost of switching between tasks means we don’t have the full cognitive resources to fully focus on the given task at hand because we have split-focus.

A core component of Hone is holding yourself accountable to the amount of time you want to spend on a task. You set the amount of time and intention of the task to focus on, and then commit to doing that task once you hit the "Play" button.

Because Hone also serves as a time-tracking tool, you’re able to see how long it actually takes you to complete the tasks, so that over time you can have more realistic timing estimates. Research has shown we usually only think a task will take 33% of the time it actually ends up taking. Notes can be written live as a task is in progress, and is stickied and findable under the allotted task when you need to review.

Each task can be grouped into different categories, to get a more realistic picture of the larger initiatives in your life. Users will make categories for all sorts of different reasons, such as tracking billable hours, focusing on only one project at a time, or creating a backlog to complete at a later time.

Over time, a picture is painted for how you use your time through Hone’s analytics. You can see all the tasks, notes, and times you completed for any given day, and paste them into other tools such as Slack, Asana, or for invoices.

All of Hone’s data is stored entirely on your device, so your time information is owned and held only by you.

Overall, Hone is a way to manage your creative and emergent work. But it is also there to make sure that you take enough breaks. Because time off from work is just as important as the time you put in.