The problem
I worked 13+ hour days for 12 years while traveling 3–4 weeks a month, managing 200+ foster animals through the organization Michelle and I run, maintaining a household, managing my own health, and implementing healthcare IT systems at some of the country's top hospitals.
I was drowning — not because my life was too complex, but because managing that complexity had become a full-time job on top of my full-time job. I spent 25 minutes every week just maintaining task lists. I carried constant anxiety about what I might be forgetting. Every missed task felt like personal failure.
I tried everything: Todoist, Notion, Habitica, Things. None solved the core problem. They all assumed the problem was me.
The realization
The problem wasn't complexity. The problem was friction. The friction of remembering what needs to be done. The friction of deciding what to prioritize when everything matters. The friction of household management when there's more than one person.
Through a real mental health journey — therapy, honest conversations about what was unsustainable — I realized I'd been blaming myself for something that wasn't my fault. I wasn't broken. The system wasn't designed for me.
Building Lifr
I started building Lifr in the spring of 2025. Not with the ambition to "disrupt" anything. With the ambition to build a system that would let me manage my own life without drowning.
The first feature I coded: auto-balance — the system looks at your week, sees what won't fit, and automatically redistributes tasks so you have only what you can actually do. No guilt. No overload.
Then energy matching, pattern detection, household fairness automation, 217 expert-curated tasks, time learning, seasonal reflection. All from the same belief: remove friction so people can manage actual complexity without drowning.
Why public?
I could use Lifr privately. But I kept seeing the same drowning in others — neurodivergent people convinced their brains were broken (they weren't). Caregivers carrying invisible loads and thinking they were failing. Households where one person was drowning while the other didn't see the work.
None of them were broken. They all needed infrastructure.
That's why Lifr is public. There are hundreds — maybe thousands — of people living actual complexity who just need systems instead of shame. Your life doesn't have to get smaller. The friction just gets smaller.