Every app layout ships with a profile dropdown. I kept the dropdown for days. Then, using the app for real work, I finally saw it. It's a tool, not a social network. I dropped it. The brand block went the same week.

Days before, I cut a piece I wrote from 235 words to 119. Everything I cut was for me, not the reader: the backstory, the clever bits.

Writers have a trick for this: they wait. Stephen King leaves a draft in a drawer for six weeks. Not me. Using the app every day is the drawer. King forgets his draft. I never forget my app. What use gives me is fresh annoyance, and annoyance is enough. Every morning I arrive as the user. Whatever bothers me is the to-do list.

Bugs count too. The modal that wouldn't close. That's the app's awkward sentence. You stumble over a bad sentence. I stumbled over that modal.

Until this month, I rewrote my writing. My apps got reviewed, not rewritten. The first version doesn't have to be right. It exists to give me the eyes that judge it.

A few days of this so far. The user shows up every day.