We Need a Productivity System that Understands We Are Human

Everyone is constantly talking about how artificial intelligence will solve everything. While I do think A.I. can be a solution for many things, there are still areas in software, specifically productivity software, that can be greatly improved without A.I. and could even cost less to build.

Imagine an app that saves us time and energy by offering a structured and smart system to be productive in multiple areas of our life. Imagine an app where the different areas of your life had their own hub but could still neatly tie into your main dashboard. Imagine an app that knows the difference between tasks, habits, reminders, notes, calendar events, and log items. Imagine an app that lets you input all of these things into 1 input box. Imagine an app that knows the distinction between a doctor visit and a trip to the gas station and a reminder to call the hotel.

Do you buy things? Do you buy groceries? Have you ever made a recipe? Do you live in an apartment or house? Do you have pets? Do you have a family? Have you been to a doctor? Have you been to a dentist? Have you ever requested a replacement for a product that was under warranty? Do you have certain habits that you want to improve on?

You likely answered yes to most, if not all, of those questions. You’re not alone, those areas are just the icing on the cake when it comes to the daily life of being a human on planet Earth. If we have so much in common, then why aren’t these things being included in productivity apps like task managers? I've outlined some excuses you might hear from app developers below:

Excuse 1 : Everyone’s Different

Not everyone is going to want their task manager to look the same and to have the same features but is that a good enough excuse to completely exclude useful features? Solution : They could offer a settings page where users can toggle certain features on/off based on their own needs.

Excuse 2 : Do It Yourself

When you reach out to an app that doesn’t have a feature that you’re looking for, their support team will usually suggest that you can use another generalized feature to accomplish the same thing, like tags or filters. Though this can be a quick solution, it still doesn’t solve the larger problem of scaling. Need to share a grocery list with a friend? Sure, just create a project and name it “Grocery List” and share it with your friend’s account. Want the items to be arranged by aisle? Just add tags to each item with the aisle number (annoying by doable). Then after you check off your purchases from the list, you will need to do the whole process all again. The more things you need to buy, the more cumbersome the system becomes. Solution : They could find out where users struggle the most and prioritize new features based on those situations to replace typical workarounds.

Excuse 3 : Outside the Scope

Another excuse is that certain requested features go beyond the scope of a task manager. The truth is, more and more app developers are blending different productivity tools together in a single app and it’s been saving people time and energy. Solution : They could be open-minded and not let their software be defined by some sort of box.

Excuse 4 : Can’t Offend Our Users

Once an app developer starts seeing prolonged success with their app, they tend to play it safe with new features, to avoid offending their current user base. These users have been around for years, some even since the beginning, and the last thing that they would want is to introduce a change that would cause these users to leave and I totally get that but there are things these developers can do to avoid that kind of outcome. Solutions : They could send out surveys asking their users what new features they might be interested in. They could set up a place where users can suggest and vote on new features. They could test a new feature with only a small subset of the user base and ask for feedback from those users on their experience using the new feature.

Excuse 5 : Lack of Creativity

This is sadly probably the main reason we haven’t seen much innovation when it comes to productivity software. If you think you have a good idea that changes how we look at productivity, then please share it with app developers. Let them know that you will gladly beta test any new features. Don’t hold back, always share your feedback.

Benefits of Context

By integrating these life areas into an app, developers can track usage and issues with better clarity. For example, let’s say some users kept running into trouble with repeating tasks for certain types of personal events or reminders because they often require a different approach than casual repeating tasks. The developers might identify this issue occurring across multiple user accounts but since they can’t see the task details (to protect the user’s privacy) they would be unable to find the common theme among these tasks. For example, you might want to set up repeating tasks for grocery items you need every week but you don’t need them to have due dates so, in an attempt to modify the due date of an item, you end up accidentally canceling the repeating rule. The developer would see that you keep fussing around with the repeating rule of a task but they won’t necessarily be able to figure out why.

Bottom Line

Despite there being a few exceptions (which I will include below), the vast majority of productivity software is stuck inside a status quo loop. We see so many task and project managers offering the same features that have been on display for several years. We see outdated minimal to-do lists, we see apps with narrow GTD options, we see apps that force due dates on us, and yes, we’re now finally seeing some apps that have added some new useful features but overall, no one is changing the game just yet.

We need an app that introduces a system that mimics our real lives. A system where we can monitor and manage all of the essential areas of our lives without needing to rely on “everything buckets” or generalized task managers. We need a place to keep our most important information safe and readily available but also integrated in such a way that it almost feels effortless when interacting with the app. We need an app that understands our needs without the unnecessary baggage of spotty artificial intelligence. We need an app that was made for us by design.

Temporary Solutions

• Notion — DIY workspace for almost anything
• Airtable — futuristic databases + plugins
• Ora — a better Trello
• TickTick — task manager that includes habits

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