My journey searching for the simple yet efficient: apps I’m trying
Not only productivity — a better life management using apps
“What do I need?” and “What is viable in my routine?” were the two questions I asked myself most in 2023. In the middle of the year my Android cell phone broke and simultaneously there was the opportunity to get an iPhone XS. What’s called “new app syndrome” hit hard along with my first exploration of the Apple Store. I already had 12 years of experience with the Google Play Store and all my interest and enthusiasm with technology came from what I learned with so many tools. A new chest of shiny objects appeared in front of me and I needed to taste everything…
Tests and more tests… But what can really help me register my life events/details and remember them later?
I use Google Calendar so that my wife can follow our routine events with me. I have an agenda for each family member: me, my wife and the two children (2 and 9 years old). Therefore, the first requirement that a good app must have for me is: integration with Google Calendar.
Digital tools that I tried and didn’t keep using
To-do apps
Todoist: fast, best NLP for scheduling reminders, beautiful but… Google events don’t appear in it yet. Only Todoist tasks appear on Google, which is counterproductive… Great price and speed, but it doesn’t show what I need (tasks + calendar).
TickTick: it wants to be everything, but I’ve always been more demanding with notes because I’m a writer (fiction and poetry)… So I always had in mind an app just for writing and another just for tasks/reminders. TickTick is good for tasks, but everything else is so average… Good price but too much functionality for me.
AnyDo: beautiful but a little expensive — it doesn’t have good integration with GCal if I don’t pay for Premium, and it always shows me the option of teams, teams… I just want it for myself. Next…
Things: beautiful, but I still don’t have the prospect of having a Macbook. I have Windows + iPhone: I didn’t choose 2Do for the same reason. Both are great task and project apps, but they don’t work in my current structure.
Note-takers
Capacities: a very promising “improved Notion”, but it still doesn’t have a mobile app for non-payers and here in Brazil the monthly subscription is very expensive… Beautiful, versatile and promising, but unfeasible for me.
Supernotes: almost the same qualities and defects as Capacities. Unfortunately too expensive for my financial reality.
Tana: too complicated even for me, who likes to organize everything in a granular way. I tested it and I didn’t feel comfortable with that bunch of small information on the screen.
Workflowy: one of the best text editors I’ve ever seen. The design is wonderful, the infinite sub-bullets are sensational… But there’s no sign of having reminders for a robust task system. Sad…
All-in-one apps
Notion: too complicated, requires a lifetime to create a system. In terms of note-taking, it’s very good, but it’s not fast and depends entirely on the internet connection. Its tasks with reminders might work, but I really don’t get along with this system of spreadsheets and databases, it’s all very complicated. It didn’t work for me…
Amplenote: I simply didn’t like the UI, but even if I liked it, it’s very, very expensive here in Brazil… It seems to be good in several features, I just didn’t have the opportunity to use it to its full potential because of financial limitations.
Amazing Marvin: despite being probably the most expensive of all, the Marvin team gave me a trial period and it is a great tool. But it is very computer-oriented, not yet very smartphone-friendly.
The ones I use daily: my favorite digital tools (May 2024)
Twos by Parker Klein ✌️ for daily logs
With Twos I can do the 2 priorities in my life: writing and remembering. In my home I became the secretary of family events: my wife asks me “can you create a reminder for me?” and there I go with this simple and fast action: hold the Twos icon on my home screen, select to-do and save a thing with date and time to keep everything organized.
Perhaps my only criticism of Twos concerns my Writer side, which may be something particular to me:
— Formatting of words and not just paragraphs: this would make the writing more beautiful and configurable.
— Internal links in paragraphs: similar to formatting in words, internal links would have functionality similar to apps like Obsidian, which makes items clickable to take the user to another page/source list to go to the original file.
— Likewise, I’m really looking forward to the “Clone/Mirror” feature: the app would be much more powerful if the user could reuse texts and information to place them in many lists at the same time.
Twos is simple and at the same time efficient. Today I stick with it because I write activity logs to remember when I did something, tasks with reminders and of course, lists: I’ve always loved creating lists for everything.
Lunatask for tasks, reminders, projects and habits — my whole private life ans aspirations
This is a great product, the most promising digital tool in my opinion. The developer has a spectacular vision and can potentially be a major player in the all-in-one app market in about 2 years. For now I can’t use it at full potential as it still lacks basic features such as image attachments, notifications in the mobile app… But I still love using it and follow the dev’s updates in a Slack Community.
Luna have a nice GCal integration and I can drag and drop tasks directly on the agenda. It’s a fast time blocking feature that help me organizing my daily life. It also have a simple habits feature to register activities with streaks. The focus on encription is like a special power for apps nowadays so Luna get some extra points for that.
Some basic note-taking capabilities complete the package. I hope to see Lunatask grow to shine in the digital productivity scenario.
UpNote for deep writing and work-related demands
I call it “the cross-platform Bear.” Beautiful, fast, relatively cheap for what it delivers, the best long-form writing experience I’ve ever seen (maybe a tie with iA Writer, but I don’t have the money to buy it, so I don’t know which one wins) and I already said beatiful? It has simple tasks (basically checkboxes) but no reminders or any calendar integration. Maybe it would be the best in the world if it had all this. But do not have. So I stick with it for long, focused writing.
As UpNote released recently Workspaces, I have different spaces for my writing and my job. Simple, beautiful, fast and works offline. Amazing product.
Roam Research for deep Bible studies
I mentioned Obsidian a while ago, and for me Roam is the most powerful notes app on the market. It is known for having a high price but I use it for free as I was a beta tester (thanks Roam team for that!). It’s not the fastest solution in the world but Roam is really powerful for creating connections between notes and concepts. I use it solely for Bible studies — I have a special project in this context, something I’ll share here soon.
Final considerations
I do like all of these tools. If you’re part of a team of one of these apps, I want you to know I’m an admirer. I talk about my choices today and this is a reflection about my journey with productivity and digital solutions. I’ll share more insights as I try to engage on my life’s demands and integrate good tech to my activities.
Thanks for reading and shall we learn together on this journey!
