How to be productive - Part 1 - Apps

In #productivity

I am a to-do list app junkie, unfortunately. Actually, beyond that, I am a productivity method junkie. Of course, I recognize that in doing so I often make myself less productive. Still it's a hard interest to shake. Further, I find that when I switch to-do apps it makes it easier to throw out all kinds of items which I wasn't going to do anyway. So I feel like I get a burst of productivity simply by switching to-do apps every 6 months to a year. Here is a short list of the to-do apps I have tried, and some quick comments on them:

  • Todoist (current app) - good free app, but the premium is worth it. I haven't used it for sharing to-do's but it has a clean interface and I can have it on my phone, mac, and windows tablet. You need to pay for some features that Wunderlist has in the free - like reminders, comments, and attachments.
  • Wunderlist (former app) - nice free app, but seems to be aging a bit and there is no future support for it. Microsoft hopes to replace it with their own To Do app. Doesn't archive projects at all (you have to delete them!)
  • Things - a solid app, but mac/iphone only - and expensive!
  • Tick-tick (as of June 2017) - maximum of 9 lists or go pro with $25/mo
  • Asana - looks interesting, but perhaps overkill as a to-do app - more for teams

I've also tried, and rejected for various reasons:

  • Firetask
  • Todo Pro
  • Astrid
  • Taskpaper - nice idea for text-based to-dos, but a bit fragile
  • OmniFocus - complete, huge learning curve, and quite pricey. overkill for most of the things I need a to-do app to do.

This year, I am going to try out an analog solution with bullet journal, once I figure out how it works. I'll report on what I find!