Mapwork
Productivity is charted, know your course.
Sign in to Mapwork
Mapwork needs an account before it will open on a device. After this first sign-in it works offline — your items live on the phone, and they sync up whenever you have a signal.
There is no sign-up here. Accounts are made for you — ask for one rather than looking for a button that is deliberately absent.
How to use Mapwork
An action system for hyperfocal, high-drive people who have failed every other system. Not because they lack discipline — because those systems assumed you can schedule your mood. You can’t.
It is built for people who surge rather than sustain. You did not fail those systems; they failed you. What you need is the right thing in front of you when the mood arrives.
So Mapwork does not tell you what to do or when to do it. It shows you where you are pointed. When the mood hits, you open the right waypoint and pick what is pulling.
The six waypoints
Inbox — fast capture. Drop anything here the moment it occurs to you. No sorting at capture time; the Inbox is the net.
Compass — your four quadrants, the active working terrain. Anything you could act on lives here, whether that is today or six months from now.
Rigging — single actions that do not belong to a quadrant, and the things you are waiting on somebody else for. A call to make, someone to chase, a thing to send. Open Rigging before you navigate, clear what you can, then go to your compass. It is meant to stay at five to ten items.
Tap the anchor on a Rigging row when an item is not yours to move — a reply you are waiting on, a delivery, an answer. It stays in the same list; the anchor is there so you can tell in one look which items you could actually pick up right now. Tap it again when it comes free.
The Cave — everything not ready for action yet. That is the only test. Four chambers mirroring your four quadrants. A Cave item can show how old it is and how long it has sat there — both, if you want them, since a year-old idea parked last week is a different thing from a year-old idea parked last year. Every waypoint has its own Settings tick-box for this, so you can see how long you have been waiting on somebody in Rigging without ages turning up everywhere else.
Archive — finished work, kept. The Plank — deleted work, recoverable for 30 days. Both are behind the menu.
The four directions
The directions are fixed and mean the same thing for everyone. The words on them are yours, and you set them in Settings.
North — your default. Where you naturally live and work most often. The mood you return to without thinking.
South — your joy. What feeds you and reconnects you with why you do any of this.
East — creative and thinking. Where things get born. Early stage, unformed, actively mapping something that does not exist yet.
West — the grind. Deep focus, long sessions, nose down. Highest output, highest effort.
East births it. North maintains it. West grinds it. South restores it.
Charting
Chart is how something moves forward. Out of the Inbox it asks two questions — which of the four, and whether it is ready now or not yet. Out of a Cave chamber it needs neither: the chamber already knows the direction, and charting says it is ready.
Temperature
A thermometer with four states, one tap to cycle: empty, low, medium, hot. It is how something feels, not how important it is. Rigging has none — those are actions, not projects with weight.
A quadrant opens sorted by it, hottest first, so what has weight is at the top without your arranging it. The sort menu holds the other orders — Manual is where dragging lives, since dragging a list that is sorting itself would move something you would not see move.
Mature or mold
Things in the Cave do one of two things. They mature — you open the Cave, something is ready, you chart it. Or they mold — something feels dead and you delete it without guilt. It served its purpose by getting out of your head. Both outcomes are correct. Neither is a failure.
What Mapwork will never do
No reminders. No due dates. No priorities. No obligations. Not as a version-one cut — ever. A system that schedules your mood is the thing every other system got wrong.
Questions
I don’t know which quadrant this goes in.
Then it goes in the Inbox and you decide later, or it goes in the Cave and you decide when it matures. Neither is a failure to sort. Sorting at capture time is what makes capture slow, which is what makes you stop capturing.
What is the difference between Rigging and a quadrant?
A quadrant holds work you are pointed at. Rigging holds everything that has to happen anyway — a call, an email, a thing to send, a person to chase. If a Rigging item grows into real work, chart it to a quadrant. If Rigging is growing past ten items, that is the signal to clear it rather than to reorganize it.
What is the difference between the Cave and the Plank?
The Cave is for things you still want and cannot act on yet. The Plank is for things you have thrown away; they stay recoverable for thirty days and then they are gone. The Cave has no time limit at all — something can sit there for years and still be exactly right the day you open it.
Do I have to visit the Cave?
No. It is a waypoint you can pass without stopping, and nothing in here will make you feel behind for not opening it. Mature or mold — both outcomes are correct.
Why is there no due date field?
Because a due date is a promise made by someone who cannot know what mood you will be in. This is the thing Mapwork is most sure about: the moment the app starts scheduling you, it has become the thing you already quit. Reminders, priorities and obligations are absent for the same reason, and they are not coming later.
Why can’t I drag items in a sorted list?
Because the list would put them straight back. Choose Manual from the sort menu and the drag handles appear. Every other order is the app arranging the list for you, and dragging inside one would move something you would not see move.
What does the temperature actually mean?
How much pull something has right now — not how important it is, and not how urgent. It is what lets a quadrant open with the thing you would actually reach for at the top. It changes as often as you do, which is the point, and one tap cycles it.
It changed my capitals.
New items are set in Proper Case by default, because capture is one-handed and half of it arrives lowercase. Settings has the other two choices, Sentence case and As typed, and a button that corrects everything already on your map. Editing an item always keeps exactly the letters you type, so a capital you meant — AI, BBQ, someone’s initials — survives being put back by hand.
Do I need an account? Does it work offline?
No, and yes. Everything here runs on this device with no network and nobody signed in — that is what Mapwork is. Signing in adds a second copy of your map somewhere your phone is not, which is the only thing it does.
Where is my map kept, and what if I lose the phone?
On the phone. Snapshots are taken automatically — one the first time you open the app each day, one before anything expires, and one before every restore — and they live on the device too, so they survive a mistake but not a lost phone. The two things that leave the device are the backup file you can download and the account. Settings has both.
Can I change my four words later?
Any time, in Settings. The four directions are fixed and mean the same thing for everyone; the words on them are yours and are meant to change as you do. The Cave’s four chambers rename themselves to match.
What is not built yet?
Expeditions — projects with depth living inside a quadrant. The Cave’s nudge, which will say something after a stretch of not visiting. The auto-generated “Inbox has items” row in Rigging. Capture from outside the app — voice, share sheet, widget. None of them change anything above.
Chart
Settings
Show or Hide Task Start Dates
In the Cave, which can show both:
The Archive and the Plank count the other way, down to the day they let an item go, and are not affected by any of this.
Capitalization of New Items
Recipe Database With Ai Capture
Recipe database with ai capture
Recipe database with AI capture
Applied once, when an item is added. Nothing already on your map changes on its own, and editing an item keeps exactly the letters you type — so a capital you meant, like AI, survives being put in by hand.
Correcting is reversible: choose As typed and run it again to get back exactly what you typed. Items captured before this was added may not come back word for word, since nothing recorded how they were first written.
Snapshots
One a day, the first time you open the app — plus one before anything expires and one before every restore. Opening the app again on a day it has already taken one does nothing. These live on this device: they survive a mistake, not a lost phone.
Off this device
Snapshots go with the phone. A file does not: on a phone it lands in Files or iCloud Drive, which is a copy that survives losing this one.
Putting one back replaces every item, label and setting. A snapshot is taken first, so this is undoable.
Or use the text, if a file is awkward
Your account
These live in Cloudflare, not on this phone — the copy that survives losing it. One is sent up whenever you open the app and something has changed.
Change your password
At least 10 characters, with an upper case letter, a lower case one and a symbol. It cannot be one you have used before.