My Daily Life Operating System: How I Run Two Businesses in SelfManager.ai

By Marian Sorca, founder of SelfManager.ai

People ask me what SelfManager.ai is.

A task manager? A planner? A journal with AI on top?

My honest answer is shorter.

It's my daily life operating system.

I run two businesses from it: ABZ Global, my web development and AI integrations agency, and SelfManager.ai itself.

I plan my workouts in it.

I keep my shopping lists and finances in it.

I journal in it.

And every Sunday night, I argue with my week in it.

This is exactly how I use it, from the first minute of the morning to the Sunday night review.

No polished demo. Just my real setup.

It started on paper

Long before it was an app, it was three things on my desk.

A calendar. An agenda. A notebook.

The calendar told me what was coming.

The agenda held what I had to do.

The notebook caught everything else.

One rule held it all together: every task belongs to a day.

Not to a list that grows forever. To a date.

In 2016 I started turning that paper system into software.

Ten years later, I've planned more than 1,322 days in it.

Created over 3,000 tables.

Tracked more than 18,600 tasks.

The rule hasn't changed.

The day is the container. Everything else hangs off it.

My morning: one sentence sets up the day

When I open SelfManager.ai in the morning, the day is never blank.

The first thing I see is a repeating table with my daily routine tasks. It shows up on its own every day, because it's set to repeat.

Then I deal with yesterday.

My main working table is named after the day of the week. So on a Sunday, yesterday's table is called Saturday.

I duplicate it to today, rename the copy Sunday, and adjust it.

Some tasks come along.

Some stay behind.

A few new ones get added.

For a long time I did this by hand.

Now I mostly do it by voice.

SelfManager.ai connects to Claude and ChatGPT through MCP, the standard way AI assistants plug into other apps. So I open voice mode and say something like:

Duplicate Saturday's table to today, call it Sunday, add these tasks and leave these ones out.

That's it. One sentence, and the day is set up.

Why I duplicate instead of carrying tasks over automatically

Nothing in SelfManager.ai carries over on its own. That's on purpose.

When I copy a task forward, the original stays on the day it belonged to.

So yesterday's record stays honest. If something got pushed three times, I can see it got pushed three times.

And because I choose what comes with me, every morning starts with a small decision instead of an inherited pile.

One table per business, every day

Most of my day lives in that one table named after the day.

But recently, I split my two businesses out.

ABZ Global and SelfManager.ai now each have their own repeating table that appears every day, next to the day table.

The reason was practical. Each business had its own details, and they needed their own space.

On the agency side, that means tasks, progress and notes for every client and project.

On the product side, it's development and marketing.

Now a typical day looks like this:

My routine table
The day table, like Sunday
An ABZ Global table
A SelfManager.ai table

Four tables, one day.

At a glance, I can see which part of my life got attention and which didn't.

Social media: one table per platform

Marketing gets the same treatment.

I keep a separate table for each social platform.

When a post works, I save a screenshot of it in that platform's table.

So when I plan the next posts, I'm not guessing what worked.

The proof is right there.

Pinned tables hold the long view

Daily tables are about today. Pinned tables are about where I'm going.

I keep these pinned, one click away from any day:

My yearly goals
My quarterly goals
ABZ Global projects
SelfManager.ai development tasks
Marketing work

This split is what makes the system work for me.

The day handles what I'm doing now. The pins remind me why.

In the middle of a busy Tuesday, my quarterly goals are still right there. I don't have to dig them out of another app or a forgotten document.

Context, not just checkboxes

A finished task tells you what happened.

It doesn't tell you why.

So I write the why down.

In the web app, I leave comments and notes on my tables: why I made a decision, what I was thinking, what I chose not to do.

When I work something through with Claude or ChatGPT, I do the same thing another way. At the end of the conversation, I ask the assistant to save the conclusions into my SelfManager.ai tables, as comments or notes.

That changed how useful my history is.

When I look back at a week, I don't just see a column of ticks. I see the reasoning behind them.

And every future AI review has that reasoning to work with too.

Voice notes and my end-of-day journal

I use voice a lot.

At the end of the day, when I have time, I journal by voice:

What happened.

How I felt.

Why I made the decisions I made.

What got done.

It takes a few minutes, and it's far easier than typing at the end of a long day.

Sometimes I'm in a hurry and SelfManager.ai isn't open. Then I use the fastest tool I have: the voice recorder on my iPhone.

I record the note, upload it to SelfManager.ai, and get the transcript there.

That last step matters.

Once the transcript is in SelfManager.ai, my AI can read it. The thoughts I recorded on the go become part of the record my weekly review works from.

Sunday night: I argue with my week

Every Sunday night, I review the week.

I have two ways to do it, and sometimes I use both.

The first is AI Review inside SelfManager.ai. It reads the week's tables, notes and comments, then tells me what moved, what didn't and where my time went.

The second is Claude or ChatGPT, connected to my account through MCP. I ask it to review the current week from my real data.

When I run both, I compare the two versions. The differences are often the most interesting part.

Then comes the step most people skip.

I debate it.

What actually got completed?

How are things really going?

Where did I go wrong?

Where did my time go?

Which of my assumptions doesn't hold up anymore?

I'm not looking for a nice summary.

I'm looking for maximum efficiency: what to optimize, what to change, what to challenge.

Every review gets saved

All of it ends up in one place.

Every AI review, and every follow-up question after it, gets saved in AI History in SelfManager.ai. That includes the reviews that run inside the app and the ones I do in ChatGPT or Claude.

So I can open a review from a month ago and ask one simple question:

Did I actually change what I said I'd change?

That question alone keeps me honest.

What the reviews actually changed

A review is only worth something if next week looks different.

Here are two real examples.

The first was about ABZ Global. One review made it clear that the real bottleneck at the agency was client acquisition.

So I didn't just add "find clients" to a to-do list. I fixed the process.

I set up a daily automation in ChatGPT and Claude that finds new possible jobs for ABZ Global every day.

The second was about SelfManager.ai. Another review led me to start automating organic video production and marketing for the product.

Neither of these would have shown up on a Monday morning to-do list.

Both came from stepping back on a Sunday night and arguing with my own data.

SelfManager builds SelfManager

One of my two businesses is the app itself.

So SelfManager.ai is also where SelfManager.ai gets built.

The development tasks sit in a pinned table.

The day's work sits in that day's SelfManager.ai table.

The decisions behind it sit in comments and notes.

More than 5,000 git commits later, it still works the same way.

I use the app every day. When something is missing or slows me down, it becomes a task on a date.

Many of the features in SelfManager.ai exist because I needed them on a real day.

That's the advantage of building the tool you live in. You feel every rough edge first.

Not just work: my gym comeback, shopping and finances

SelfManager.ai isn't only for business.

A couple of months ago, I decided to get back to the gym, and I used AI Plan to plan the comeback.

AI Plan takes a goal and a period, anything from one day up to a month, and turns it into one table per day. You see every day before you approve it, and you can edit each one.

Now my workouts are planned through the week, on the days they actually happen.

My shopping lists live in it too. So do my finances.

All of it sits in the same place as my client work and my product work.

That's the point of an operating system. Work doesn't live in one app and the rest of life in another.

It's one life, organized by day.

Time tracking taught me how long things take

For about a year, I tracked time on my tasks.

Then I stopped.

Not because it didn't work. Because it did.

After a year of real numbers, I know how long things take. I plan with that knowledge now, instead of guessing and being surprised.

What I still use every day are deadlines and reminders.

When something has to happen by a certain date, I set a reminder. It reaches me in the app, as a push notification and by email.

Making it mine

This sounds small, but it isn't.

I personalize the top hero image and the left sidebar image in the web app.

And I leave myself a self message for each day.

The place I open every morning feels like my space, not a corporate tool I'm forced to use.

When you open something every single day, that matters more than any feature list.

What changed: I stopped crashing

The biggest change isn't a feature.

I became much more accountable.

Before, my life moved in waves.

A good period would come. Things felt fine. And I'd get loose.

I'd forget about work. I'd forget about things, just because the period was going well.

Then came the drop. And the drops were big.

Now I track in good periods and bad periods alike. Every day gets its table, whether the week is great or terrible.

The result isn't a dramatic overnight transformation.

It's something better.

I'm stable. And from stable, I grow.

No more big crashes where things fall through the cracks because I stopped paying attention during a good month.

That's what I mean by a daily life operating system.

It runs on good days and bad days, and it keeps me from falling apart on either.

Takeaways: build your own daily operating system

You don't need my exact setup. But these are the parts I'd copy.

Give every task a date. A task with no day is a wish, not a plan.
Start each day from a repeating routine table, so the basics never depend on memory.
Carry tasks forward on purpose. Decide each morning what comes with you, and leave the original where it was.
Give each big area its own table once one list gets too crowded: a business, a client, a platform.
Pin your long-term goals, so they're one click away from any day.
Write down the why, not just the what. Comments and notes turn your history into something you can learn from.
Capture by voice. A two-minute voice journal beats a perfect journal you never write.
Review on a fixed day every week. Then argue with the review, and change one real thing.
Save your reviews, so next month you can check whether you actually changed.
Track your time for a while. Not forever, just long enough to know how long things really take.

FAQ

What is SelfManager.ai?

SelfManager.ai is a date-centric AI task manager. Every task, note, comment, file and voice note belongs to a specific day, and AI features like AI Plan and AI Review work on top of that daily record.

Who built SelfManager.ai?

SelfManager.ai was built by Marian Sorca, a software engineer who has been building it since 2016 and plans every day in it. He has planned more than 1,322 days, created over 3,000 tables and tracked more than 18,600 tasks in the app.

What does "daily life operating system" mean?

It means one place that runs your whole day: routines, work, side projects, health and reflection. Instead of a separate app for each part of life, everything is organized by date and reviewed regularly, so the system keeps improving.

Can SelfManager.ai connect to ChatGPT or Claude?

Yes. SelfManager.ai connects to Claude and ChatGPT through MCP. Once it's connected, you can ask the assistant to duplicate tables, add tasks, review your week or save conclusions as notes and comments, including by voice.

Do unfinished tasks carry over automatically?

No. Nothing carries over on its own. You decide what moves forward by copying tasks or duplicating a table to another day. The original stays on its date, so your history stays accurate.

How does AI Review work?

AI Review reads your tables, notes and comments for a period, such as a week, a month or a quarter. It summarizes what moved, what didn't and where your time went. You can ask follow-up questions, and reviews are saved in AI History.

Can I use voice notes in SelfManager.ai?

Yes. You can record voice notes of up to 30 minutes in the web app and get a transcript, or upload a recording you made somewhere else. Once it's transcribed, the AI can use it in reviews and chats.

Can I use SelfManager.ai on my phone?

Yes. SelfManager.ai works in your phone's browser with every feature of the desktop version. There's no separate app to install.

Is SelfManager.ai only for work?

No. Anything that happens on a day can live in it: routines, journaling, workouts planned with AI Plan, shopping lists and finances, alongside client and project work.

Is there a free trial?

Yes. There's a 7-day free trial with full access, including the AI features, and no credit card is needed.