Notes from building a calmer planner.
The invisible load, body-aware planning, owning your own data, and the honest version of what shipped this week. Written by Luana, who builds ReturnKit as a sole trader in Ireland and needed it before she made it.
I write a newsletter on building calm, women-first tools, the science of the body, and tech-mom life abroad. New posts land there first. Free, unsubscribe any time.
Childcare is infrastructure, not a mother’s workaround
A new NBER working paper on childcare, women’s work and child development. What it says, what it does not, and the coordination families should not have to carry alone.
Read the research noteNobody gets locked out. You just get quietly downgraded.
Automated hiring does not say no to women over 40. It stops saying anything. On AI, age, and a career break that costs about 2% a year in pay and never gives it back.
Read the essayAI that carries instead of optimising
Most AI planners help you think faster. For a woman already at capacity that is a raised ceiling, not help. The one test every AI feature here has to pass, and the four things this app will not do.
Read the essayYou cannot delegate what you cannot see
Mothers report holding about 73% of the household's cognitive labor, and it is the part tied to depression and burnout. Why tracking the invisible load changes the conversation.
Read the essayAn ADHD planner for moms who have seventeen tabs open
Paper planners die by week three. What a planner for ADHD mothers actually has to do, and what I built instead.
Read the essayThe 2am is over
Women-only dance clubs, early-bird discos that finish by eight, and nightlife finally built for women with somewhere to be on Monday.
Read the essayIt was never the snooze button
New research on flexible work and mothers' careers, and the two days a week that changed mine.
Read the essayYour second brain should be one you can hold
Why ReturnKit gets things out of your head, why you should download everything in it, and why I still keep a pen on the desk.
Read the essayMore coming: notes on the invisible load, planning around a changing body without medicalising it, and a plain-English changelog of what ReturnKit shipped and what I am still wrestling with.