Our Story

From frustration to a new way of seeing time

Elysium didn't start as a grand vision.
It started as frustration. Lots and lots of frustration.

Not the cliché “I couldn't focus” kind of frustration, either.
In my case, it was almost the opposite.

I didn't struggle to focus —
I struggled to stop focusing.

I'd get locked into work, forget to eat lunch, forget basic life things, and slip into days where there was no real boundary between work and rest. I knew I needed structure, but every system I tried felt like I was forcing my brain into someone else's idea of order and I either couldn't adopt it or ended up just ignoring it entirely.

Maybe you're like me.
Maybe you're the inverse.
Either way, you probably know this feeling:

You're not lazy. You're not broken.
Your tools just weren't built for you.

One app here, another app there… and no real control

I tried everything.

  • One app for tasks
  • Another for habits
  • Another for long-term goals
  • Another for calendar events
  • Another for reminders

On paper, I had “everything covered.”
In reality, nothing worked together.

Every tool came with its own philosophy, its own idea of how my life should be structured — and its own database where my data quietly got trapped.

Some apps let me export in clunky formats.
Some didn't let me export at all.
And even when I could move data, it always felt like:

I wasn't gaining freedom — I was just choosing a different cage.

The more I thought about “time management,” the less it felt like managing my time, and the more it felt like my time was being managed by apps.

That's when the question started to bother me:

Why do my notes have a universal, portable format…
but my life schedule doesn't?

Markdown has thoughts. What does time have?

If you've ever fallen in love with Markdown, you know how freeing it is.

  • Your thoughts aren't locked into an app.
  • Your writing lives in plain text.
  • You can move it anywhere.
  • Hundreds of tools can read it.

It's simple. It's human-readable. It's durable.

But when it comes to time?

There's… ICS.
An older calendar format that's clunky, limited, and focused almost entirely on events. It doesn't really understand tasks, habits, routines, or the way modern people actually live.

There was no “.md of time.”
No universal, future-proof, human-readable way to store:

  • goals
  • tasks
  • habits
  • reminders
  • events
  • appointments
  • projects

So when I started building Elysium, it didn't take long to realize:

I wasn't just building “another productivity app.”
I was accidentally stepping into a much bigger problem.

Elysium: a system that had to be local-first

Elysium began as a deeply personal project.

I wanted:

  • something local-first
  • something I could shape to fit my brain
  • something that respected my data
  • something that could adapt over time

It had to handle:

  • goals and projects
  • tasks and habits
  • appointments and events
  • short-term and long-term planning

But under all of that, I wanted one thing more than anything else:

I wanted to own my time.

Not in the vague motivational sense —
in the literal, technical sense.

I wanted the data that described my life to live in a format I controlled, in files I could open, read, and understand, without asking anyone's permission or relying on a server somewhere.

That's where OpenTime was born.

OpenTime: the .md of time

At some point in this journey, the idea finally clicked:

If Markdown is how we store thoughts,
OpenTime should be how we store time.

OpenTime (.ot) is:

  • a human-readable, plain-text format
  • a way to describe goals, tasks, habits, reminders, events, appointments, and projects
  • a format that any app can support
  • a way to make your entire schedule portable and future-proof

Elysium is the first app built natively around OpenTime.
It's:

  • a powerful productivity system for everyday life
  • the reference implementation for the .ot format
  • and a community-driven effort to refine a modern standard for time

But OpenTime isn't just “a feature of Elysium.”

Elysium exists, in part, to prove that OpenTime can work — and to invite other apps, developers, and users into something bigger:

A new standard for time: free, flexible, and fully yours.

Why this matters (and why I think you might care)

You don't have to be a developer to care about formats.
You don't have to be a “productivity nerd” to care about systems.

You just have to care about one thing:

Your time is the only thing you can't get back.

If the tools that handle your time:

  • lock your data away
  • force you into one rigid style
  • make it hard to move or export your life

…then they're not really serving you.

They might be convenient.
They might even be beautiful.
But they're not yours.

Elysium and OpenTime are my answer to that.

This isn't a finished product. It's a starting point.

I'm not claiming I've solved time.
I'm not claiming Elysium is the ultimate productivity app.

What I am saying is:

  • there should be a standard for time
  • it should be open, human-readable, and easy to adopt
  • your schedule should be portable
  • your data should be yours
  • your tools should serve your way of thinking, not the other way around

Elysium is my attempt to build that —
for myself first, and now for anyone who feels the same tension.

If you've ever felt:

  • trapped between apps
  • frustrated by scattered systems
  • stuck inside somebody else's idea of “time management”
  • or just tired of losing your data every time you switch tools

…then you're the person I've been building this for.

An invitation

Elysium is the app.
OpenTime is the standard.
You are the missing piece.

You don't have to contribute code to shape this.

You shape it when you:

  • use it
  • push against its edges
  • ask for what's missing
  • build plugins or integrations
  • or simply refuse to accept that your time should live in someone else's cage

I built this because I was frustrated and stubborn enough to believe time could be handled differently.

If any of this resonates with you…

Welcome to Elysium.

You're not just adopting another productivity app.
You're helping redefine how we think about time itself.