About

Why I built a tool that does less, not more

Hi, I'm Tim. CutDone started as a strip of paper taped to a fridge — not an app idea.

A few years ago I watched my kid finish a sticker chart. Not check off a box on some habit-tracking app I'd installed with good intentions and abandoned in a week — an actual paper chart, stickers going on one at a time, the last empty row getting smaller and smaller until it was gone. When it was done, it was visibly done. No app ever gave me that feeling, and it clearly wasn't giving my kid that feeling either — the stickers were what worked.

I started paying attention to why. A checkbox on a screen disappears the moment you tap it — there's no trace it ever cost you anything. A strip of paper getting shorter is different: you can see exactly how much is left, and cutting a piece off is a small, real action, not a tap that a notification will undo your motivation for by tomorrow. It's the same reason a countdown calendar feels different from a countdown app. The paper doesn't need to remind you. It just sits there, visibly shrinking.

Why I didn't just build another habit app

Because I didn't want another app. I have enough apps asking for an account, a notification permission, and my email address before they'll let me type a single goal. I wanted something I could open, type into, print, and never think about again as software — the same way you don't think about a sticky note as software. So CutDone has no login, no account, and nothing you type ever leaves your browser except onto paper. If that sounds like a strange thing to build a whole site around, it's because it's the actual point, not a feature I added later.

What CutDone actually is

It's a designer for printable strips: you pick or write a goal, it lays out the steps in the order you'll cut them, and you print it on whatever paper you already have. That's the whole product. No streaks to keep up, no push notifications guilt-tripping you back in, no dashboard. Just a piece of paper that gets shorter every time you do the thing.

The checklists on this site

Beyond the blank designer, CutDone includes a library of ready-made checklists — for habits, small life goals, and specific challenges. I write and edit these myself, drafting with AI assistance and then rewriting anything that reads generic, unclear, or like advice nobody's actually tried. You can read exactly how that process works on the How We Write These page. If you ever spot one that feels off, tell me — I'd rather fix it than leave it up.

Thanks for reading this far. Now go print something and cut a piece off it.

— Tim Jia