About WayCharts

The Breaking Point: How WayCharts Was Born

The reason I started WayCharts was to help myself with an issue at work. I'd been working at this super stressful (to me) job.

This was a support type position and like it or not, I'd often find myself in a position where I had 5 things to do and 6 of them were urgent—6 because there was at least one additional thing that would come up unexpectedly and be urgent.

This was a place that if the phone did not ring for fifteen minutes, people would be looking at each other wondering what is going on.

Overwhelming workplace stress
Multiple urgent tasks
Constant interruptions

                        Key Insight: When everything feels urgent, nothing gets the attention it deserves.
                    

Understanding the Complexity of Work

There's a big difference between 'done' and 'well done.' The work I was doing had these repetitive elements that kept showing up, and certain things had to be consistent across similar types of tasks if I wanted them to turn out right.

It's all right to do the activities at a level necessary to finish the task, but there were always those extra steps that kicked the quality up a notch – and this was often expected of me.

Quality standards
Consistent processes
Excellence expectations

                        Key Insight: Quality isn't just about completion—it's about consistency and excellence in execution.
                    

The Energy Rhythm of Productivity

Another thing I realized was how our energy levels vary throughout the day. If you are a morning person, then in the morning your energy is up. You are firing on all cylinders. Not so much in the afternoon.

I also realized that it can take almost as much energy to keep track of the different aspects of what you are doing in your mind, as it does to do the actual work. Energy goes down, errors become easier to make. Things take longer to do.

For the morning person, it takes more effort to do things properly in the afternoon. Work, unfortunately, is not necessarily restricted to your most productive hours.

Energy fluctuations
Peak performance hours
Maintaining quality

                        Key Insight: Your best work happens when you work with your natural rhythms, not against them.
                    

Cognitive Load: The Invisible Workplace Challenge

After leaving school, I'd worked with one of my former professors who would say things like – "write it down for your future dumb self". This advice became the seed of what would eventually become WayCharts.

So, what does all this have to do with cognitive load? According to verywellmind.com, "Cognition includes all of the conscious and unconscious processes involved in thinking, perceiving, and reasoning."

Think of your cognition as having a limited number of points—like a bank account of mental resources. The more things you have to pay attention to simultaneously, the more points you use, and when you spend points on one task, they're no longer available for others.

Mental resources
Cognitive overload
Limited capacity

                        Key Insight: There are no guarantees that your mind will be as quick as it was when you first solved the problem or had the idea for a specific process, when you need it again later.
                    

The Birth of WayCharts

What can you do when faced with these challenges? Some people drink coffee or other things, but how sustainable is that?

I began to think deeply about what it means to do things well. It means thinking through each task, understanding the desired outcomes, and ensuring that all needed steps for completion are carried out.

WayCharts became my solution—a tool designed to:

Reduce cognitive load

Ensure consistency

Adapt to energy levels

Systematic approach

Innovation born from necessity
Systematic solutions
Sustainable productivity

                        Key Insight: Sometimes the best innovations come from solving your own problems first.
                    

A New Approach to Productivity

The application does more than just track tasks. It helps you to consistently perform repeatable tasks to standard. By breaking down work into precise activities with clear completion criteria, WayCharts addresses the mental overhead that can drain your productivity.

Every task instance can be planned, executed, and reviewed. The Focus List allows you to prioritize what matters most right now, acknowledging that your mental resources are not infinite.

Task Planning

Every task instance can be planned with robust task planning features that allow you to capture all essential details, eliminating guesswork.

Focus Lists

Our system acknowledges limited mental resources by enabling you to prioritize tasks, ensuring you focus on what matters most right now.

Continuous Improvement

After execution, plans can be reviewed and updated based on what was learned, allowing processes to evolve while maintaining historical records.

The Ongoing Journey

WayCharts is more than an app. It's a recognition that great work isn't about working harder, but working smarter. It's about creating systems that support our human limitations and strengths.