Implement Microsoft To-Do Like "Reset My Day" Feature in Things App

I've been using the Things app for over a decade. I love its aesthetics, simplicity, and minimalism. It's the app I keep coming back to, my long-standing pal. Recently, after hearing good things, I decided to take Microsoft’s To-Do for a spin, and found one feature to be an absolute game changer: the "My Day" list reset at midnight.

Most to-do apps, including Things, carry forward incomplete tasks to the next day. They assume you still want to do them, so you wake up to overdue or past-due tasks. Microsoft To-Do’s "My Day" feature does the opposite. It doesn’t carry forward incomplete tasks.

I love this feature. It makes you rethink what you want to do the next day. If something didn’t get done today, it shouldn’t automatically be on tomorrow's list. It brings a sense of calm the next day, seeing an empty "Today" list. No carry forward. No pressure from the app telling me what’s overdue. It gives me the freedom to choose what I still want to work on. Everything goes back to zero, and it’s up to me to decide what I want to do that day. It’s liberating, calming, and powerful.

Things doesn’t have this built-in feature.

So, I thought about writing an AppleScript to run at a specific time that would simply remove items from the "Today" list. But that would mean my laptop would have to be turned on at that time.

So, instead, I went with the iOS Shortcuts route. My phone is always on, and I can have the shortcut run at a specific time in the morning. This way, I get a clean list to plan my day anew, without any leftovers from the previous day.

Here’s how I did it:

And that’s it! Now, every morning at sunrise, this automation will open your Things app and prepare to clear out incomplete tasks from your "Today" list.