Counting Down
October 8, 2026 · 7 minutes
Contents
Every new tab I open shows a number. Right now it is 42, the days until a trip I have been planning since summer. I built the page that shows it, called it Until, and have used it every day for a month. This is a short account of why a countdown, and not the dozen other things a new tab could hold.
Most of what I build starts as a small annoyance. This one started as a sticky note.
A number on a blank page
The sticky note said 61 and I updated it every morning with a pen. It was the only thing on my monitor and it did more for my attention than any app I had installed. A number on its own asks nothing of you. It does not want a reply or a tap. It is just there, slightly smaller every day.
I wanted that on the screen I look at most, which for me is an empty browser tab. So the first version was exactly that: a white page and one number, drawn in a seven-segment font because the sticky note had looked like a cheap watch.
Up is a scoreboard
Counting up is a scoreboard. Streaks, days active, total commits: they reward you for not stopping, which sounds healthy until the number becomes the thing you protect. I have broken a long streak and felt worse about the number than about the work.
Counting down is different. It is about something outside you, a date that arrives whether you are ready or not. It does not punish a bad week. It only makes the next one a little more concrete. That is an odd thing to write on a site with a commit graph on the front page; more on that in the notes.
Five lines, no more
Until shows at most five countdowns. People asked for more within a day. Five is enough for the things that matter in the next few months, and few enough that each one still registers when you glance at it. A sixth line turns a reminder into a list, and lists are what I was trying to get away from.
The limit made the design easier too. Five rows fit in the middle of any screen. The numbers line up on the right, the words on the left, and nothing scrolls.
The day itself
When a countdown reaches zero the number turns red and reads todAy, spelled the only way a seven-segment display can spell it. It is the one moment the page raises its voice. The next morning it either disappears or starts counting the days since, depending on what you chose.
I spent longer on that word than on anything else in the project. It had to feel like an arrival, not an alarm.
What I'm still unsure about
I do not know yet whether a page this quiet holds up after a year. The sticky note worked because I touched it every day. A page that updates itself might fade into the background the way every dashboard eventually does.
So I am treating it as an experiment with a date on it. Ninety days from launch, I will write down whether I still look at the number. There is a countdown for that too.
Footnotes
The digits are DSEG7 Classic by Keshikan, under the SIL Open Font License.
The split-flap motion only runs for days, hours and minutes. Seconds tick without animation; anything faster felt anxious.
The commit graph on the front page is a record, not a target.
References
Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks (2021). The book behind the idea that a finite number is easier to act on than an open list.
Dieter Rams, Ten principles for good design. Mostly the one about as little design as possible.
Keshikan, DSEG font family, GitHub. Notes on how each character maps to segments, including why todAy is spelled that way.
Ryan Singer, Shape Up (Basecamp, 2019). Fixed time, variable scope; the five-countdown limit is the same trade.