All I would like is one productiveness app that may deal with all the pieces

I’m an organized particular person. I’ve to be. Writing is a deadline-oriented job, and I’ve the working reminiscence of an aged goldfish. Gone are the times once I might retailer a whole week’s price of occasions, deadlines, and schedules in my head. Now, all of that stuff must reside someplace tangible.

The issue is, there isn’t a single app that may deal with the vast majority of my wants. By my depend, there are a minimum of 10 productiveness apps I exploit each day to perform — and so they all suck.

There’s Airtable for work tasks so my editors can see what I’m engaged on — simply one of many venture administration apps I’ve utilized in my profession. There’s additionally been Basecamp, Asana, Trello, and in a single occasion, a rickety Excel sheet maintained by sweat and tears. All of them do the identical factor — present a big-picture view of a group’s tasks, completion standing, and deadlines. And but none have ever been sufficient to be the only technique of sustaining an editorial calendar at any of the publications I’ve ever labored at. There are at all times supplementary Google Docs, spreadsheets, and Slack channels. I find yourself spending a superb hour day-after-day replicating the identical workflows and knowledge in several codecs.

Most venture administration software program additionally doesn’t embody a sublime built-in every day to-do checklist. That is bananas. No venture is ever executed in a single step. If I’m writing a narrative, there’s testing and analysis, then there’s pictures and artwork, then there’s the precise writing, adopted by a multistep enhancing and publishing course of. Airtable, Asana, Trello — they’re alright for exhibiting everybody my progress, however this isn’t all the pieces I’m liable for. There are dozens of subtasks, emails, and calendar occasions that Airtable doesn’t deal with. That’s not gonna work for my goldfish mind. So I find yourself needing a to-do app.

That’s led me down a rabbit gap of making an attempt a number of of the hundreds of to-do apps on the market. However regardless of which of them I’ve tried, they’ve, at most, 75 p.c of the options I want or need — which is how I ended up with not one, not two, not three, however 4 to-do apps.

There’s Focus To-Do for work and private errands. It’s a mashup of a Pomodoro timer and a to-do checklist — which has been very important in serving to me shake off my pandemic-induced mind fog. Then there’s Todoist. Whereas I really like Focus To-Do, the one factor it doesn’t do is let me create lists that aren’t time-based or combine with my e-mail app. Therefore, why I nonetheless use Todoist to cowl Focus To-Do and Airtable’s gaps.

And neither of those apps is nice at serving to me maintain a housecleaning schedule, nor are they useful for protecting my vegetation alive. Therefore why I additionally use Tody and Planta.

You recognize what’s worse? None of those apps are useful for stock administration — each by way of managing my evaluation models and my pantry. They’re additionally ineffective at sustaining databases. That’s why I additionally use Notion, an app I’ve an intense love-hate relationship with. Whereas Notion is extremely customizable and comes with a ton of premade templates, it’s received a big studying curve. I spent 4 hours constructing a number of databases simply to maintain observe of my bylines, sources, product stock, working logs, take a look at logs, and meal planning. It really works fairly effectively, nevertheless it’s additionally a complete time suck to take care of as a result of lord is aware of I don’t have the willpower to determine find out how to automate this factor.

A number of months in the past, I received so fed up with all the pieces, I ended up shopping for an old-school planner. In contrast to utilizing myriad apps, I might maintain all of this info in a single referenceable pocket book. However the issue with analog notebooks is that the knowledge in them isn’t simply shareable with folks or collaborators. So as soon as once more, I ended up including yet one more productiveness device to my arsenal.

That is simply the tip of the iceberg. I haven’t even gotten into calendar apps, note-taking apps, video conferencing apps, transcription apps, or communication apps like Slack. (By the best way, any time somebody creates a brand new Slack or Discord channel, part of my soul dies.) However the story is similar. I find yourself making an attempt a bunch of various apps seeking the One That Can Do It All, solely to accept the one I hate least that does 75–85 p.c of what I want.

I do know there isn’t a excellent answer. A singular productiveness device that works for everybody is a unicorn — stunning, excellent, and utterly fictional. Nonetheless, there needs to be some kind of center floor between an unachievable fantasy and the present panorama. I might fortunately accept two, possibly three apps. Truthfully, lower than 10 is all I’m asking for.

Till then, my telephone and laptop computer can be a cluttered mess of productiveness apps that solely do half their jobs.