My 2015 Homescreen
Everything is still fresh as I’ve recently switched to my new iPhone and re-thought everything.
Would be interesting to see how it would evolve in the coming year and whether more startups would get their honorable spot on my homescreen :)
What am I missing?
What Has Changed
Calendar: Switched from Sunrise to Google Calendar
Sunrise was a great calendar but now it’s dead. I’ve tried Microsoft Outlook (which Sunrise was merged into) but I hate it. Google Calendar is pretty decent on mobile.
Calendar Desktop: Switched from Sunrise to Fantastical
Google calendar on the web is horrible and this is where Sunrise was truly awesome. Luckily Fantastical for Mac released 2.0 not too long ago and so far it’s working well.
Personal Email, Notes & Todo: Switched from Wunderlist & Gmail to Google Keep + Inbox
I’ve been a fan of Wunderlist for few years but following what happened to Sunrise I’ve decided to see whether there’re good alternatives.
While on Android the Gmail app was great, on iOS it’s unbelievably slow, picking a different email client was mandatory.
I’ve experimented with Google Inbox and I really like some aspects of the product (my favorite features are: Snooze, Travel Plans & Smart Replies).
Google recent released the new Reminders functionality and this was the killer feature that finally triggered my switch. Today I can add reminder from Google Calendar, Google Keep and even from Inbox and have a single todo list in my inbox containing both snoozed emails and reminders (AKA todos) in a single implicit todo-list.
Professional Documentation: Switched from Hackpad to Paper :)
I spend significant amount of time in Dropbox Paper. As a long-time HackPad user there is no surprise :). I find it the best platform internal documentation & brainstorming. We still use Google Drive in cases where more features are needed but it happens infrequently.
We’ve tried Quip multiple times since their launch but paper is far superior IMO (I would have been easier if Quip was the better product as they have great mobile support that Paper still lacks but hopefully will be coming soon).
Team Todo: Switched from Trello to Asana
About a year ago we’ve found Trello to be insufficient for our needs. While it’s a great product we struggled to work with it across multiple projects.
Today we’re using Asana and while it’s ok we’re not extremely happy with it.
In 2016 we will spend some time to rethink our task management. I’m leaning towards experiment Dropbox Paper as a task management, at least
Chat: WhatsApp for personal, Slack for Business
I’ve been using WhatsApp for years now and nothing has changed :)
On the business side we’re using Slack. We’ve had periods where it was our main communication channel within the company and we’ve had times where it is used in parallel to emails.
The integrations to our production and to 3rd party apps is definitely the retention loop that make sure we will not stop using the product :)
Experiment: Elevate
A week ago I’ve started experimenting with Elevate. The User-Experience is just stunning. it’s tough to create the daily habit and it’s even tougher to convince myself to complete the exercise but I’m result driven and I want to see if I feel a difference one month in … will update :)
Notes
Fred Wilson just published an interesting post summarizing 2015:
The top 6 mobile apps and 8 of the top 9 are owned by Facebook and Google. 10 of the top 12 mobile apps are owned by Apple, Facebook, and Google.
There isn’t a single “startup” on that list and the youngest company on that list is Snapchat which is now over four years old.
This is definitely inline with what I’m experiencing myself. This is disappointing and I’m challenging myself to change my own workflow :)
