There is fresh movement around I stopped hunting for the perfect productivity app; I built this instead, and the story is worth a closer look.
We pulled together what is known so far and what it could mean for the people following it.
I’ve tried more productivity apps than I can remember, all in a bid to find the one that would finally help me stay organized and get things done.
However, nothing really worked. I’d feel productive for a few days, but then go back to my old habits.
Eventually, I realized I didn’t need another app to solve the problem. I needed fewer of them and a better way of working with the ones I kept.
Today, my entire system runs from my phone using only two apps — Todoist and Notion — held together by a single daily habit.
After jumping between several to-do apps for years, I finally settled on Todoist.
While there are several reasons for this, Todoist’s focus on simplicity and the ability to ramble my thoughts into to-dos made it the perfect fit.
Every action I want or intend to take goes into Todoist. If something needs to be done today, tomorrow, or in the near future, it goes into Todoist.
This is a single rule that I strictly follow. I do not add unnecessary notes, ideas, or thoughts to my to-do list.
Todoist excels here because of its quick-add feature, which understands natural language.
So, I can type “finish the report by 10 am Wednesday,” and it automatically creates a task with the right date and time.
Ramble only makes things better, as I can tap a button and speak all action items — including the labels and deadlines, which Todoist will then convert into tasks.
It’s the ability to easily add new tasks right in the moment that makes Todoist click for me. And what ties all this together is the two-way sync with Google Calendar.
Any task added with a due time shows up as an event on my calendar. This way, I get one unified view of all appointments and tasks, right on my phone’s home screen.
That last part fixed my biggest problem. I’d always add tasks to Todoist. However, I was bad at remembering to open it.
I never opened the app when I started my day, and that meant I’d lose track of the tasks I needed to accomplish.
With Todoist syncing with Google Calendar, the tasks now appear on the calendar widget alongside my meetings, where I can’t miss them.
If Todoist is where things get done, Notion is the part of my system that remembers everything else. After all, not everything is a task or needs a deadline.
This includes important meeting notes, a half-formed idea about a side project, a potential solution to a longstanding problem, or upcoming travel plans.
Any ongoing research work, an image I might need to reference later, warranty details, account information — it all lives here.
None of this information needs a deadline or an immediate response. And they don’t fit into Todoist either. So, they go into Notion, organized and out of the way until I need it.
I used Google Keep for this before, but it quickly became a mess. It’s great for taking quick notes, and that’s about it. There’s no real structure beyond labels and colors.
My notes piled up into a never-ending list, and I could never find them when I needed them.
I don’t immediately organize Notion notes. Instead, I take them while on the go from my phone, using the proper tags to categorize them.
The heavy organizational work happens later, when I am in front of the PC, as it’s faster and easier to do it there.
Todoist is all about the actions I need to take, while Notion stores all my thoughts, ideas, and other information.
Keeping these two separate is why the entire system works and does not become chaotic after a few days or weeks of use.
The best part is that I can embed Todoist in Notion. So, if I have notes related to a project in Notion, I embed those tasks on the same page.
That gives me context and to-dos in one place and makes tracking group tasks easier.
Two separate apps, but working together to help me be more productive and organized
Notion or Todoist did not solve my problem of unorganized notes and a messy to-do list. Instead, it’s the habit that makes this entire setup work.
One app for what I need to do, one for everything I want to keep. Plus, a clear line in my mind between the two.
Admittedly, Notion and Todoist talking to each other makes it even better.
But even then, I can swap one of them out tomorrow for another productivity app, and the entire system will still work.
After years of chasing productivity apps, I finally realized that the fix was not another fancy new app. It was using fewer of them and creating a system that works.
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