Our Favorite Productivity Apps!

31:30Let's get something done. There it is. What do you do for things that need to happen at some point in the next couple of days? You're like, oh, I need to take that box to FedEx. It doesn't really matter when I do it, but I have to do it soon. It's almost always like I get home from work on Friday and I just think to myself, like, these are the things that need to be done by the end of the weekend. And then Sunday at five o 'clock happens. And then I'm like, I think it to myself. And then I just go. I just remember. And then I do it all Sunday at five o 'clock. Pretty much. OK. Or actually, I'll say this.

32:01What I'm realizing is that Andrew forgets lots of stuff, but doesn't realize he forgot it because he didn't write any of that. That's fair. that's one of the things you're talking about in all of this is like if i if i have that app where it's like i have to do eight things today and i only do six it's like then i have to admit that i didn't do that thing at the end of the day okay which is a little anxiety inducing but maybe it's the risk maybe it's the responsibility i need i'll say rather than leave it till the end of the weekend it's more of i sit down and i figure everything i need to do and then i wait till that moment that hits where i'm like i'm productive right i feel productive a lot of the times in the summer that's like i'm gonna go mow the lawn and then once i finish mowing the lawn i'm like i'm just in that mood where i'm gonna get stuff done and i usually find myself like getting everything done very quickly as far as you know except all the things you forgot you didn't write it down you know in a pessimistic world maybe in an optimistic world andrew's killing it and it's he's ready for some valorant um no but i will say that like and it's something that also does kind of drive Claire crazy because like if we are if it's Monday and we're having people around Saturday she is like throughout the week doing all of the things that need to be done for there and my things that have to get done are waiting till that time where I'm like yeah I could get a bunch of stuff done right now and I'd rather just knock all of it out in one to two hours and then it almost always is Claire's like I'm upset how you did every single thing you needed to do and it was there but like it was causing her anxiety through the week and like I do feel bad about that but like yeah yeah i i do wind up getting my stuff done it just seems i'm in times where i just want to sit and do absolutely nothing in times where i'm productive when i'm productive i'm productive and when i'm not i'm gonna look at that app and i'm gonna be like tomorrow tomorrow tomorrow so this is good so we also what you we need a thing that doesn't yell at you if you don't get something done that day and i will say like this is not the app we're going to tell you to use okay but the app things which marquez and i both fall occasionally in love with uh one thing it does that i really like is if you have you have a list of stuff to today and if you don't get it done it doesn't mark it red or punt it to overdue it just keeps it in today and so it's just like this is a thing i mean okay and it's not it doesn't get mad that you didn't do it lots of other things are like your tasks are overdue you know and this is not like that that's an app it's like you want to click this yeah you're one you want to postpone yeah it's are you sure it's funny you bring that up because like that in a sense i was thinking about if i continue to just not doing like let's say it goes from like this is your app and it's in a green color and it's like i didn't do that today and tomorrow it's yellow and then it's like the next day it's orange it's like i don't know if i would want that but if it just kept adding to the next one and then i saw that list get longer that's like a less intense version of like i do have a lot of stuff to do i don't know if you heard ellis's idea for a vision pro task cap where it is when you're in the vision pro and you have things to do depending on how intense they are they start chasing you faster in the vision pro so like taking out the trash it has to be thursday night and it's thursday at five it's like it is a giant monster following they chase you is dependent on their urgency i love it so like something so let's not get to there sort of slowly walk take out the trash just like hauling that would be real so let's take it a few steps down from that but i like this idea of just can adding to the next day or like yeah because then that would get to that point where i'm like oh i just did something i'm in one of those boots right now let's get stuff done and i'll just be like all right let's check this right and in that moment it's helpful to have here's all the list of stuff that just needs to happen and you can it's not mad at you for not having done it yet but when you want to do it it's all right there cool dig that okay all right great idea okay i have one more variable to throw at you let's see um what was the app you mentioned with like keeping the alarm stack the kid stuff huckleberry a third party i'm still mad about that do you care about your thing because you mentioned you deleted you switch you care about your alarm your alarm app all your stuff disappeared and you have a new phone do you care about your tasks syncing between devices so you can check them anywhere yeah that would be awesome especially for work at like my my desktop or on my phone because even in here there are days where i realize it's four o 'clock i'm like i haven't sat on my computer the entire day everything i've done is based off my phone all the meetings i've looked at and stuff like that or like notifications sent to my watch like i only this is only because you have really important notifications yeah you have a unique setup and i get told this is weird all the time but you have an android phone and a mac so like a mac at work a windows computer so a Windows machine and a Mac and an Android phone.

36:38That narrows things down substantially. It does. Cool. We like that. There are so many that have a beautiful website and an awesome GTD method. What does GTD mean? Getting things done method and a whole bunch of cool things about it. And then I go to try it and it's like, this app is in beta, it's iPhone only. Or this app is iPhone and Mac only and sorry about your Android phone. And it's just enough for me to go, I can't try it yet. I will say you don't have to worry about my Windows computer much. because that is very specifically like, I play games on it, I stream on it, I do very little on that, especially now that my work computer is a laptop that I can bring home.

37:14Do you know what? And it needs to every morning remind me that if I brought this home, I need to bring it back to work or else I don't have anything to work on. Which I've only had this for like two months. I've done that already. Okay. So yes, that is a problem. At least Mac OS and Android would be nice. Because a lot of them will have a web app and it's like you have to remember to open it, but just like having an app for each week. I'm scared to tell you that I use the Google calendar on my computer in a tab. Yeah, that's fine. And I'm willing to go outside of that, but I need the help to get there.

37:47So why don't we go through our top candidates that we think would match? Can I throw one more wrench in this potentially? And maybe this won't change anything. I'm realizing when I say that I like getting these productivity, like hours or moods or whatever. I also am very good at not just being like, I have to take everything out of my office and then I have to replace the sockets in the nursery and then I have to clean the downstairs. It is like, I am halfway through getting the stuff out of my office. And then when I'm bringing some of that stuff to my room, I pass the nursery and I'm like, oh, I can replace one of those sockets.

38:25And then, so there are lots of - There's so many listeners who are diagnosing you with various things as you explain this. Dr. Mike's coming in next week to just finish that off but yes so there is definitely a level of me being pretty scatterbrained which I think this will help and I don't know if that changes that much if I think about it if I just think of those tasks none of those are finished so I know they still have to happen but just throwing it out there but you never run out of RAM not that I know of like you're doing task 1 and then you pass by task 2 and then you go oh I do task 2 and then you start doing task 2 and then you see task three needs being done and you start task three, do you ever get so far down the rabbit hole that you forgot about task one and you just need to just put it all down somewhere so you make sure you do all the things?

39:10If you ask the open socket in the nursery, yes. So I guess, so I think that's - It does get to that point. That's good to know. All right. Wait, I have one more question. Sure. Are you a note taker? Like you're saying like in a meeting or something? Not even in a meeting, but like if you have stuff to do this weekend under like the sockets. Do you also want with that thing you have to do, like here's a link to the Home Depot website for the thing I'm gonna buy and here's the size. Like are you a, do you wanna consolidate all that? I use Keep. Okay. Oh, okay. Keep. Sorry. I'm worried to show you my thought, but I'm interested.

39:50Alarm app and Keep, okay. My Keep, Keep is very good. My Keep is a mess actually. For everyone who uses Keep. My Keep is a mess. At the top of it right now, Oh, I have a to-do thing note in here. Oh, God. When was this from? It says, oil change, return Amazon, mic cable, cookbook, curtains, disc golf tracker. That's one note in keep. So those are things. None of them are checked. I did all of these. The fact that that exists, you didn't know you did it. And it's pinned. And you've done all those things anyway. And it's pinned. You have done those things? I did all of those. Oh, and then there's housework underneath.

40:27Front light, door light. Should we check the oil on your car before you leave today? Yeah, oven light, shelves in office. I did all of these as well. That is also a pinned. Oh, no, wait. I checked two of these off. Basement, stair light, bathroom light. Checked off. Now I'm imagining you're like a sleep productivity expert. You just like sleepwalk into your bathroom and just start writing down to-dos that you're never going to see. So I do use keep a lot. Yeah, other than that is like a big list of things that I definitely don't need. And then my AeroPress coffee recipe. Okay. very important to be stuff to keep around yeah yeah keep is interesting so you you would say you remembered to do those things despite not using keep to remember them um maybe you just no no I go back to them I just for some reason don't check them off my my oldest note is a grocery list which is yeah did you check it when you were there there's a lot of links in it for some reason okay and then yeah my grocery list for my Christmas ham okay sorry I don't want to go too deep into that, but I just want people to understand how messed up.

41:32There's some notes stuff in here too. Okay. I'm going to start with one that I think is, please. This is the one that I've told you about that I come back to all the time. It's tick, tick. Okay. This is a to-do list app at its core and on the fringe, on the outsides, which you never have to get into are things like a calendar, things like notes, things like shared lists, habit tracker. You never habit tracker. I use a lot of them. You don't have to touch them. you can just use it as a list of tasks but it is available inside of tick tick yes okay exactly don't have to use it's multi-platform so i have it on my mac i have it on my android phone i have it on my iphone and my windows computer and there's a web app and it's all great um but the thing that it will just basically do is take over what you do with keep and the alarm app which is every time you have a task you need to remember to do instead of opening the alarm app and setting a time, you open keep and either write down, remind me to take the trash out tomorrow afternoon, and it will know based on what you're typing, when to remind you, or you can just go through the picker, like David said, and pick the exact time you want the notification and get it then.

42:36But it's at its core, it's a solidly good looking, very functional multi-platform task app. Okay. I think that's my number one candidate that I keep coming back to. Haven't found any major flaws with yet I'll leave that can I when you guys are pitching this can I ask you what widgets are available for it and how I can see things because it is also something I'm realizing I am a very like I like my home screen to be super clean and that's in some part of me thinks about this is like I kind of want it as a widget here maybe as a separate page on the side that would just be the full page in there rather than going into an app every time because I've become a big believer in that exact strategy i feel like have it one swipe away and have it huge i think has for me at least has been really helpful having it yell at you about your tasks all day is actually no no no and i do not like like i like this to be clean and just like peaceful and then thank you very much um and then i yeah maybe one swipe away i'm also very i do not like any swipes on it at also this is a big step for me agreeing that i might be able to add a second screen with its two app your intervention is working so it has we only want to add one screen one screen that's it don't you dare ask for two there's a couple ways to jump into tick tick that i obviously like just having the icon on your home screen is one way and then it just has a big plus button for you to start adding a task okay there's also the widget which is a list of your tasks that just lives on your home screen and then a little plus button in the corner so if you just hit the plus okay you jump right into adding a task so that's like convenient yeah um on the iphone even you can set the action button to be just start letting me type a new task which i had okay uh so there are there are various levels of uh friction i think the point of this is to be as frictionless as possible correct so then my question is does it have the natural language that dave was talking about before and it's it's i'm gonna put that out that might be a non-negotiable already i think i honestly think it should be i think every to-do list app needs it and whenever i switch to one I don't know if this is your experience too, but whenever I switch to one that doesn't have it, the reason I bail is because I spend way too much time tapping on calendar dates.

44:46Yeah. Yeah. So I recently tried Superlist, which I'm not going to recommend, and it just has a little bit too much friction for it. It's the picker. It's the adding a new task. It's the couple extra clicks. Yep. Superlist is like beautiful and full of good ideas and just not quite ready. Yeah. It's 1.1. Here's the question. All of these seem to be beautiful. No. Okay, cool. No, that's what I was going to ask. It seems, because we always talk about it, and you guys mentioned in the beginning, when a new one of these calendar to do apps launches, it feels like they're putting 50 % of the effort into the marketing and launching and the beautiful website and everything.

45:20So I'm just assuming most of these look good. I would love to see some bad examples at some point in this episode. It's gotten a lot better, I will say. There has been a definite move toward what if the app looked nice for a long time. Because if you think about it, A lot of these apps are for people who want to do productivity. And those people want to see tons of metadata, and they have priorities, and they have tags, and they have filters, and they have all this stuff. And for those people, having lots of information shoved at your face is useful. But if you're just like, I want to write a thing down, and I want you to tell me about it when I have to do it, it ends up just being super overwrought.

45:57But a lot of these apps have gotten better at pulling some of that stuff out of the interface over time. Cool, yeah. I don't need to 10x anything. Let's just go 2x right now. I don't need no Sigma grind set anything. Sure. So let's. I think that will be my. The para method is for another podcast. Yeah. We'll leave the Eisenhower matrix out of this. Yes. Okay. The next episode, we're doing my original theory where I'm locking you two in this room and you have to both agree on which app you're using. That would take forever. Yeah. Yeah. Or maybe it wouldn't. I don't know. Hey, we're going to take a quick break.

46:26But after this, we'll be right back with David Pierce giving his recommendation to Andrew.

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47:09When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp. The secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans. Send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets mom's 60th. And never miss a meme or milestone. All protected with end-to-end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp. Message privately with everyone. Learn more at whatsapp.com. So my recommendation, which I actually think I switched between TickTick, which I like for a lot of reasons, and this app, which is Todoist, constantly. I think, generally speaking, these are the two sort of most mainstream cross-platform to-do list apps.

47:52Todoist has awesome language processing. It's a super straightforward, simple app. It, again, has a lot of the extra powerful stuff if you want to use it and filters and projects and subtasks and all this stuff. but uh you fundamentally can just make it a list of tasks and the reason i like to do is is that it integrates out much better than tick tick tick really wants you to use the tick tick app but to do is you can you can two-way sync with your google calendar so you can see your tasks in the calendar app so if you're somebody who like lives in your calendar grid you can still see your task there you can sync it to a bunch of other apps so it'll pull stuff in it'll send and stuff out, it thinks of itself as kind of a tasks platform.

48:34And as somebody who my problem has always been, I'm just not necessarily as reliable as I need to about looking at my app. And so A, I rely on reminders a lot. If I have a thing that needs to get done, I just make my phone tell me to do it. But also, I do look at my calendar all day. So having something I can see in my calendar is very important. And the reason I end up leaving TickTick every time I leave TickTick is that TickTick's calendar, which is in TickTick, which is a good idea. Like I like the idea of having the calendar next to the tasks in the same app. TickTick's calendar is just not very good.

49:07It's not very good. You can't add calendar events from TickTick. It only brings in calendar events. It doesn't let you make new ones. It's a read-only calendar essentially. So you can sort of map it next to your tasks and you can put tasks on the calendar. But even that still only lives in TickTick. So you have to kind of be in its universe. There's a weird hack. you can export your tasks back out to google calendar and subscribe to that google calendar so that when you make a task press that button i need that button and if you if you just have a day it makes it an all-day event which is not great but if you put slide it to the calendar it makes it a event on a google calendar so yeah okay it's a couple steps to make it work yeah but tick tick if you're listening fix that make that just make that better here's a question when you're doing either of these in the Google Calendar, there's a way to differentiate if it's going into my work calendar versus personal calendar?

50:00Yep. Yeah. It can sometimes be a little hacky. Most of them will let you set a default and by default, it'll go to that and then you can move it, but you kind of have to explicitly move it most of the time. Okay. I think I also would probably be, if I'm being honest, this to-do app would be most of my personal things because I'm pretty good at with Notion and Google Calendar and what Marques and just Marques and I talking every morning and knowing what we need like my job is to know what the hell we're doing every week so like i kind of have to so if it was defaulting to all my personal stuff and then i still have my google calendar and stuff that's how i think that works pretty well okay all of my tasks just dump onto my personal gmail calendar i think that's good and i have my personal reminders coming to my watch in my calendar so that would be really helpful i think okay yeah cool both of these are free and with some level of premium features if you really find you need the specific thing or a ton of extra features or if they're watching this episode or that you know but they're pretty cheap three four five bucks a month so but i think actually for what you're describing which is basically a list of tasks with reminders and dates it's it's probably both will probably be free cool yeah here you know this might be something to think about in the premium section do you ever like you tell yourself you want to start doing something i feel like this always happens with like going to the gym the thing that motivates you is like i need to spend money on something that's going to make me do this.

51:19So it's like buying a new thing of protein or like a new pair of running shoes. It's like that is the thing that's motivating me to start running. So maybe I just need to buy some premium and be like, yeah, I already threw some money at it. For me, I like, I would spend two hours in an afternoon getting all of my stuff into it. And I'm like, all right, I have to use it now. Fair, that's super fair too. That's still investment into it. I also think for you, it's literally like, we're gonna put it on your home screen and that's gonna feel big in a way that's gonna make you use it. Second screen.

51:47Is that right? Chill, David. I would never. Big widget. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And then the last one that we were sort of talking about earlier is I put this at the bottom of the list, but could possibly be a good idea. Just based on the fact that you use Google Calendar and you have an Android phone and you use the browser for Google Calendar and you use Gmail. So Google has this thing and we never know how long Google things are going to last. So this is the asterisk on top of all of this. But Google has this thing where it's fairly good at giving you tasks separately, but integrated with the rest of your things.

52:24So let's say, so I think it can show up next to Gmail. Yeah. So you can have basically your full list of tasks in like the right sidebar of your Google Calendar and your Gmail. And I think your drive as just it sort of follows you around all the Google products. Yeah. But then you can drag stuff onto the calendar. if you set up like if you use google assistant to set a reminder it'll show up in tasks and on your calendar uh this is i mean again this is all in theory yeah google's reminder product is the worst organizational nightmare of all time uh but it is like very slowly coming back towards the thing it's supposed to be uh and there's still a standalone app for it right wait did you tell me the name of this and i missed or it's google it's google tasks which you can have the google tasks app okay but again if you like have gmail or the calendar open on your desktop then it's just always sitting over there ready to add a task from an email or a calendar event or vice versa that sounds like something that would be good as like an in-between of if i picked tick tick or to do is if google task could just take everything from that and then also throw it at the side of my gmail that's i mean that's the dream yeah that is truly the dream and i will tell you the the dream for me with Google Tasks would be if it also integrated with Keep.

53:35And so, like, part of what I want to recommend for you is just to dump all of your stuff into Keep, right? And you have a list of tasks. It should, you say, you know, remind me to do whatever at 9 p.m. And it'll just put a Keep note with a reminder that's also in Google Tasks and also in Google Calendar. Incredibly obvious, doesn't work at all. I can't believe they don't. Completely non-existent. They must not even talk to each other, those teams. I'm convinced that Google is not aware of all of the products that it has. Too many buildings, man. Yeah. But yeah, I do think there is a version of what you're describing that you can do pretty successfully, mostly inside of your calendar.

54:13Again, I think it timestamps things in a way that I don't think you're going to love all the time. And it's not good at natural language processing in the same way. Google Calendar has a little bit of it, especially on mobile. you can use apps like Fantastical which is a Mac and iOS only app is very good at natural language processing but useless to you on some of these other platforms and so like I think it's not crazy to say your calendar can just be the place for all of this stuff and I know a lot of people who use like all day events as their task list to me just the visual clutter of that gives me itchy feelings this is a question I was going to ask I'm like my calendar feels pretty intense sometimes but is it I'd like to see how both of you look at your calendar because I use weekly you use weekly Sam now I don't know I think on mobile do you use weekly well I can't fit enough I think it's five days okay I do I have a list like I just do the pure like schedule list because the list goes too long like my widget is the list but a lot of times the list goes off of like this is one day so I can't yeah can I see doesn't work uh because i'm realizing how i look at mine and i do not think it's the right way of doing it like that this is this is seven days oh do you have yours as the the day the single day a month those are all all day events right uh no these are all these are all work events so these are all the ones oh i put in but it's just the month so like it's very little and i use that occasionally because it's nice to sort of pull out and be like okay what free days do i have this but as a general way to sort of manage my days, that just feels like a pain to me.

55:50It's hard and then like getting into it, then it gets a little more confused. I guess that's not too bad. I live in, so Kron, the app that is now Notion Calendar, which I think is what you're using, on mobile defaults to I think a three day view. That sounds nice. Which is really nice. I actually like it a lot. It's funny, I downloaded Notion Calendar on my Mac and then I've realized I never click it. The only thing I feel like it's good for is the like top task bar up here, like whatever the next one is. And then I'm like, I always, I'm like, oh, I don't have that. Open it, minimize it immediately.

56:23And then just keep it for that part. It does always show what your next task is and how long it is till your next event, which is nice. Yeah. I'm learning some tips and tricks here as well. Yeah, there are infinite tech tips and tricks. Any one of these apps, you can find dozens of YouTube videos on like how to optimize your workflow and how to take the most advantage of all these features that it has. Why watch those when I have YouTube right here? I think you can just drive into the core functions of it and be totally leveled up. Cool. Yeah. Yeah. I actually think in general, the mistake I make too often is I watch all those videos and I read all the things and I end up spending all of this time creating this beautiful, elaborate system where everything is in its right place and everything is perfect.

57:03And then I've made it way too much work for myself to actually do anything. So then I go find something else that doesn't have any of that going for me. And it's just a list of stuff. And it turns out that's what I actually need. so just start with the list of stuff do either of you find yourself not getting to your to-do things because your tube is you putting them on your that's why it's your apps and change it like yeah so you're literally setting up what you need to do for the day where you're like i want to do in this new app and then the day's over and you're like i didn't do any of the things unfortunately that has happened we are done okay all the tasks but it looks real pretty yeah yeah i guess that's that's the idea is the as frictionless and uh straightforward as it can possibly be as a win i have one last question for you you've seen these these new like ai hardware pieces right like the rabbit or the ai pin do you think that this has any merit as maybe a possible next level future version of like task management like if in theory you could just tell your ai I think remind me to do the thing at this time.

58:06And it takes all your natural language and just goes, all right, I'll remember it and reminds you whenever. Could that be real or am I just in fantasy life? I think that could totally be real. And actually the first version of that, which is basically just like a much simpler way to dump stuff into my task system, is not hard, right? Like all we're missing right now is the fact that most of the time to do it, you have to get out your phone and unlock it and open an app and press a button. And if you can shortcut all of that, It's one of the things I use the watch for a lot, is just being able to just quickly plug in a reminder.

58:38Interesting. And when I'm walking the dog constantly, it's literally the only thing I use Siri for at this point, is just dumping stuff into reminders. And I wouldn't use Apple Reminders, except that nothing else plugs into Siri successfully. That's exactly why I use the shopping list in Keep. Oh, that's smart. That's what I should start doing. The only thing that I can say, hey, gee, add this to my shopping list, it just dumps it in keep every time and i wish i could put it in super list or tick tick but like i need the frictionless like yell across the room thing because i'm always doing something totally that's the same thing but i think the idea of dedicated hardware that can do that is super enticing and then if you add on the idea of it being much smarter like one of the things the the rabbit folks promised that they can do is you can point the camera at something and be like you know watch me remind me to buy this on amazon in a week and it'll it's like in theory these things will be able to like dump the right amazon link into your to-do list to buy a week from now all of that is like sitting there and i think we'll get there eventually i hope so but right now i found uh every time i try i then do it and i have to go open the app to make sure that it did it right yeah and i've now just done all the same work i would have done anyway i feel like even when you like when it starts doing correctly the anxiety of did that do that correctly 100 like Like, just like, I know.

1:00:00And the thing is, I need to look. And the thing is, with any system like this, if you don't trust it completely, it's a waste of your time. Yeah, that's a really good point. Yeah. Yeah, there's some amount of, like the ideal would be I can just have a Google Assistant plugin where I can just ask the Assistant to just add a task and it adds it to whatever app I've decided I'm using. Right, but instead you have to be like, hey, G, talk to Todoist. I'm like, no, I don't want that. That sucks. and so you say when you're doing because i do not add reminders through google assistant at all but i should because in android auto when half of my ideas come out on the drive home yeah that's the waste that's the golden good ideas by the way you only get them when it's impossible that was my other thing how many what is the easiest way to set a reminder for something when i am half asleep in bed in the shower or like away from all of your tech and you need to write something down Yeah.

1:00:55Yeah. That's, if I had the answer. Google Assistant sounds like the best, but it's the right answer. And it throws it into Keep, you're saying? It'll throw it into Google Tasks. Yeah, if you ask it to remind you to do something, it's going to make a task, which will actually give it a date and everything, which is cool, but I don't, that's the thing is I don't use Google Tasks, so I don't get to take advantage of that frictionless experience. I just opened Google's support page explaining the difference between Tasks and Keep and where your reminders go, and it's like 12 ,000 words long, which just tells you everything you need to know yeah but i think i mean and truthfully you're getting most of the reminders that you're talking about through your alarm app on your phone so to the extent that you're just using assistant to do them anyway the worst case scenario is your phone will remind you anyway so you've you're kind of netting out the same way with just like slightly easier input but i think that the challenge with that is if you have a thing you need to do regularly yeah that that's a really good system for like simple one-off things that you're like i just need to remember to switch the laundry in 45 minutes this is not like an interesting task that you either need to remember or do again voice assistant reminders perfect best possible system for that uh but like ironically for a thing you have to do every week your alarm system is actually better than that because the other way to do it is then you'd have to tell assistant to do it and and then go find the thing in Google Tasks and add the recurring to it.

1:02:18And that's just a mess. Wow, so you can't just say, hey G, add a Monday recurring? You can add it to your calendar every Monday, but at least in my experience so far, you cannot add a task with any of that sub-information to tasks. Ah! It's unfortunate. It would be so great. Again, if Google reminded themselves a few times of the fact that they own this stuff, they could probably do it if google just set an alarm reminder to tell them that they owned all of these different companies yeah recurring they have like 50 alarms of like remember you have this product we own then they have too many alarms cooked up for like delete google hangouts in one month or kill this because somebody reminded them it exists and they're like wait we're paying for that too yeah well that's i think i think we've left on a good place i want to throw to one person yeah adam do you have any suggestions or things said as someone else who is in the the realm of having your life together or whatever you want to call it well as someone that's in like seven different apps right now i would argue i do not have my life together you don't figure out you guys have your life together except for in the do apps it seems like that's where it is totally tearing you apart i have nine different reminders coming from the same for the same i had I had this on my calendar that we were doing this and no fewer than five apps reminded me that this was happening this morning.

1:03:43Exactly. My suggestion would be try to keep it as simple as possible. So I would say just lean into the Google system for now. Because you don't think Google Tasks. Interesting. Google Tasks, Google Calendar. Because you don't leave Android like ever. You've never had an iPhone. So my problem with a lot of the Google stuff is or at least the Apple stuff in particular, like notes and reminders, is it doesn't leave Apple. So that's it. But Google works everywhere. so you could just do things in google and have it pop up places and even like emails you can snooze for later or things like that like you don't have to get into the super crazy features as long as you have the browser tab yeah basically and keep is great for dumping stuff in but then it also has a lot of power features where if eventually you get down you can start tagging things and filtering and all that stuff but you don't have to even do that yeah i come back to that like every couple months because i remember you wrote an article once a while ago about how to make Google just like the system.

1:04:39And it's a dream I've been trying to have come true for so long. It's so close. I mean, this is the thing that I experience with every one of these apps and systems is in so many cases, all the pieces are there. It's like it has all the features that I need around. They're just put together in slightly wrong ways or it's missing one thing that turns out to be really important to me. and this is why again I come back to don't try to use any of these systems just make a list of stuff and for me I had a long run of using Todoist to its fullest extent oh man the system that I had and that was awful and I just deleted all of that and I went back to all of my tasks live in the inbox and they have dates on them, the end wow you don't separate your tasks I don't anymore, I have stopped because for me it was like if I have to click into, I do have a separate list for my shopping list.

1:05:34That's the only one that's separate. But when I had more things to open and check, I just wouldn't. And so I was like, oh, I have a list of personal finance tasks that I haven't checked in eight months. Like, it's just, this is just not useful. That's my notion. Fair. And so I think getting into a position where you just have the fewest possible number of things to check is the right place to start. And then eventually, if you're like, oh, I have all this stuff I need to put somewhere else so I can manage it, that's actually a good problem to have. Yeah. I think my number one tip for myself is I give everything a date.

1:06:08Everything gets a date. So I don't have to check anything. I just will always get, and whenever I open the new app, I just look at what's today and I'll just go through today. And if I finish today, I'll look at tomorrow, but I always just have, everything always gets a date. So if there's recurring tasks, like I have maintenance tasks for appliances and stuff, it always gets a date. That's the, it's just always the date it has to be done or the date it has to be done by? Or like the date you feel like doing it or the date it has to be done by? Everything always has a date that I have to do it.

1:06:37Okay. So you're not a get this done by Friday. You're like on Monday, you're like, I am calling the dishwasher repairman on Wednesday. I always set, I never set deadlines. I always set dates to do things based on, if there is something where like you're saying I have to do something by Friday. Yeah. Before I even write it down, I think how long is that going to take me to do? I'm going to write the date down of when I need to do it to get it done by that time. okay and so it'll show so if i if i need to make a call that's a one-day thing but if it's a project then i'll write down a monday test i feel like this is a level of life planning andrew is not comfortable no i was just thinking i am like how i said i worked before i need a i need this done by friday right so like when i hit the area and it needs to just like be like hey this is coming up and then when i get to that point of less hecticness of like being productive it's like okay i do that and i tap it off and yeah friday now it's done yeah wow i can have things done before the day they need to be done by yeah it's a magical world at some point the onus does remain on you to do those things hey hey and as someone who continues to do things just five minutes before they're due uh even though i have a lovely to-do list but it probably feels sick to check it off after the thing for me is that that feeling of uh for me it's often like with a baby it's like right after the kid goes to bed and it's like okay i have i have a couple of hours i'm gonna like put on a show or a movie like what do i need to do and i could either sit there and sort of rack my brain and try to think about it or i could just open an app and be like oh here's all the stuff sitting here waiting for me because what i find is when i don't make that kind of list i end up doing all of the sort of low stakes not very important kind of irrelevant stuff like oh i'm gonna go like organize one of the folders of my email like the promotion section of my gmail it's like not an important thing subscribe from everything right but that's what i'll do because it like feels useful but instead if i can go to somewhere and be like oh what do i actually care about getting done right now like having that list in front of me yeah feels really good yeah that's and the whole like because there definitely is that sense right now of oh lane just went down for a nap and i know she's gonna have another nap later what can i get done during this one and what can i get out for this one because that was exhausting and then that nap later i know i can get these things done i will say the people who love time blocking uh and time boxing and the idea of like give everything a time love it for that exact reason because then you can say i'm gonna do all this and then for this one hour block i am just gonna screw off and play video games and i don't have to feel bad about it because everything else i need to do has a has a job it's a blank slot on the calendar i'm not a time blocker if i ever write down in my calendar have fun i'm gonna be like i've lost who is this i did actually notice that the other day you have like drive home and i was because i know i can't do other things during that block so like i have that's super fair okay from for like a 45 minute block because if i have like something to do i better not schedule it for that time or i will no longer have time to drive home it's bad that in my eyes you were like that day doesn't have drive home and you're standing in the studio and you're like what's how do i get home it didn't tell me where to go the internet was it does feel like that sometimes yeah no i that's that's the purpose of my blocking is to give like purpose that's super fair um yeah this kind of reminds me of the way you guys are describing all these different ones and how like so many of them have so much but there's just this one thing i feel like this is the same with mirrorless cameras and we talk about this all the time just every time a mirrorless camera comes out you're like oh this is gonna be perfect if they had one problem last model and they're gonna fix it like ak overheating they've got it they're like we fixed ak overheating you're like can you flip that screen out why is the microphone jack right in front of it like how do you mess one thing up every single time and that's reminding me of this right now yeah my last little bonus every single one of these apps makes a different sound when you check off a task oh can you play all of them that might some that might make my decision sometimes it's really good sound tic-tic has good sounds tic-tic's got a nice sound super list has a nice sound and super list has a little like scribbly animation when you cross really it's really good asana used to shove a unicorn across the screen wait let me make let me i'm gonna which is like fun the first three times and you're like can we get the unicorn out of here like i have other stuff to do it takes too much time it takes too much time all right this is super list it's a long sound here's a tic-tic that one's customizable there's several sounds in tick tick i use that same one though it's like that's pretty like it's kind of a done i have accomplished something i did the thing all right anyway all right i think the the three options i've written down because they're the ones you gave me and i kind of ignore most of the other ones is tick tick to do this and google tasks perfect i do think those are the ones that i think that's right yeah i think i'm gonna start with google tasks even though the hovering over of google might just kill this at any moment is a little worrisome it just seems the most simple and i think starting there is a good i feel pretty good about the immediate future of google tasks like okay bet on it being here in a decade no what i bet on anything google does being here no but google has if anything really reinvested in making this a thing that makes sense okay and there are a lot of interesting business reasons for google to care about this but uh also it has very slowly started to do the work on google tasks it launched it like five years ago and then literally basically forgot about it for four years they killed it and then it came back inside of Gmail or something yeah I mean it's all deranged it was like it had a dedicated app and then it didn't and then it was a really ugly web app that you could only find with a sneaky URL but now it is beginning to make sense and I'm pretty confident that Google at least is going to keep it around as a thing for a while okay yeah so I think I'm going to start with Google Tasks it seems the simplest it also seems like something that very quickly when i'm at work i can start getting myself used to and all that and then maybe expanding into my personal life more often which is where i ultimately want it and i think you use that but tick tick and to do is both look pretty awesome and i think i want to graduate to those okay actually and then here we go baby hey listen i finished my school schooling and i never look back at grad work or anything like that I graduate and I never look back.

1:13:01So we are going to graduate to this new one and then that is going to be it. Here's how I would tell you to make that decision. Sure. Download Google Tasks to your phone. Okay. And then see which app you use more, Google Calendar or Google Tasks. Because you can add a Google Tasks in Google Calendar. Okay. The mobile Google Calendar app is actually a pretty full featured Google Tasks app also. Okay. So you can have both in place. And if you find yourself being like, oh, what I really like to do is look at the list of tasks, you will lean more towards TickTick, I think. But if you find yourself saying, oh, I like looking at my calendar with my tasks kind of around, you'll want to be in more of a Todoist place where it can pull stuff back out into your calendar and that kind of thing.

1:13:44Cool, I like that. But I think it's like for me, the interface of being able to open it up and be like, here's a list of all the stuff that I need to do is great. And I think that's where you'll lean to TickTick. Okay, cool. Like just looking at the UIs of both of these, I think I like the look of TickTick more, but Todoist feels more familiar. It feels very Notion slacky on the left side of it, and that seems familiar, which I think seems like a good thing. So I'm kind of in between those. So I think start Google Tasks. I wouldn't doubt if by next week I've already picked one of them, but it's way too much pressure to pick by the end of the show, which I thought I was going to have to do, but you were just going to go out and do it.

1:14:21So maybe I should have just let that happen. But I want a good payoff at the end of this episode. to check in though we're gonna need at some point in the coming weeks I don't know how how about at some point in the next four months no no no no alarm okay you guys have to call David and have him surprised on the waveform podcast to check in on me oh I love this live but I don't know it's coming anytime let me make a task real quick set an alarm I like that cool yeah I think that's the best way to check up because then I won't then I can't be like oh David's calling tomorrow let me make a bunch into this yeah i love it okay i'm in surprise check-in okay now what's your notes app wait what email apps no that i was i was i almost went there and i was like this is unnecessary i do you use superhuman i do i every time i even consider talking about on the podcast i'm like it's a 30 a month email app how can i even begin to recommend it to anyone like no one would i I wouldn't recommend it to most people, to be honest.

1:15:22It is sort of preposterous. But it runs my life, so. It's just so fast. And yeah, I like it very much. But also, I have used every single email app that exists. And it's, if anything, even more chaotic than to-do list apps. But the problem with most of them is their search sucks, so I stopped using them for the most part. And I ended up back on Gmail, or MimeStream, which is a Mac app for Gmail that's very good, or Superhuman, which also has good search. Good search, yeah. I want to spend as little time in Gmail as possible, so my main gmail my main email goal tends to be just like get to zero and leave it's fast select all that's another that's another episode it's the dream um okay david how fast can you type the alphabet a through z in order perfect we'll find out we have no idea we have a challenge You don't even have to guess.

1:16:16We can just find out right now. Could it be, is it eight seconds? That would be a pretty decent time. That might even be on our leaderboard of people we've timed to have in the alphabet. We'll give you a, I'll give you a URL right now. Okay. What would you feel more comfortable typing on? Your laptop keyboard? We have a mechanical keyboard. We have like a magic keyboard. I can't do mechanical keyboards. It's just, I just. No, that's fine. So we do this for all our guests and we have a leaderboard and the number one on the leaderboard right now is tom scott who requested to go get his dell laptop that he writes all his scripts on wow and then he crushed proceeded to dominate he's extremely competitive apparently so i will say just to immediately explain why i'm going to do poorly at this it is very hard it's it actually seems hard it's super hard like have i ever typed the alphabet no uh i i use too many keyboards at this point which i think has made me bad at it you use too many keyboards but you don't like mechanical keyboards.

1:17:14What keyboards are you using? I have a Logitech craft keyboard that is the one I use at my home base. I have a Surface Book and I have a MacBook Air, which have obviously their own keyboards. And occasionally, I would say four times a year, I try to become a mechanical keyboard person. I'm there for you when you do it. I think the world of it is very cool. I think there's lots of interesting stuff going on. I think the companies are up to stuff. I like the technology. I want to be able to talk about cherry switches and know what that is. about those anymore. But I just, there's something about the way that it feels.

1:17:48I also have found that I type constantly while I'm in meetings with people and it's super helpful that people can't hear me doing that. That's fine. Not to dive too deep into that, but there are low profiles getting super popular and silent switches are becoming super popular. So you can still get all the benefits and cool feel and all that while not being annoying. Okay, silent switches I could very much get behind because everybody's like, oh, I love the noise. I'm like, I don't like the noise. The number one negative comment on the mechanical keyboard switch video i did is like if you were in my office i would hate you and it's like it was just a fun video man but yes that is a serious concern how many attempts do i get at this three so you will get three attempts i get three attempts yes when you type it'll show it the letters highlighting above it um if you miss a letter it won't continue you have to hit the letter before you can go to the next one and just don't hit enter at the end because that resets it if you're trying to like the website if you just want to like keep practicing I'm like nervous.

1:18:44It's nervous. This is really stressing me out more than I expected. Well, here, this might make you more or less nervous. Do you want to see the leaderboard now or after? After. Okay. All right. Do you want to count them down, Marquez? Oh, he's going. Oh, he started already. I didn't type in the, what? That's fine. Just start over. It doesn't count. Just practice. Okay. Yeah. That was like two seconds, just in case you can. Oh, okay. Yeah. I timed myself so fast. Also, just discovered, I don't know where the Q key is. It's, no one types the alphabet. No. No. Like nobody. This is a very hard thing to do.

1:19:13This is also making me realize that, like, I think one of the things that I have also learned in my aspirations of being a mechanical keyboard person is how many different ideas about keyboard layouts there are, and that everyone agrees that the QWERTY keyboard is a ridiculous invention, but we're sort of stuck with it because relearning it, it's just not worth it anymore. It would be like some fringe keyboards that try some wild things. Yeah. I was talking to a guy who was like, he built a thing that he basically never has to move his fingers, but the keys are like three things deep. so he has modifier keys on modifier keys.

1:19:43Oh, modifier keys are wild. He's like, I take 45 ,000 words a minute, but no one on earth can figure out how to use it. Yeah. All right, man, congrats. Okay, here we go. I just start typing and it'll go, right? Exactly. Yeah, you don't have to backspace.

1:20:015.712 seconds. That's a great first. That's a really good one. Very good first try. Would you like to keep going? I think I can do better than that. Go for it. We're taking your best score. in 0.000 seconds. So that's pretty good. That's unfathomable. Wait, now I want to know. Okay, so... It took the... I had a big gap between P and Q. That checked out. Took a while. Q's a hard key. This is fascinating. I'm learning so much about myself right now. Okay. Now that's going to mentally stress you out when you get to P. I'm just going to hit Q. All you need to know, five is a great time. It's like a pretty good time already.

1:20:39and we're gonna take your best so if you go later yeah okay now i want to see the leaderboard you got that you want to see it now i do i do want to see it okay that might be stressful but i like that i want to know what i'm up against i have a baseline now here's your uh top three right around now three and a half seconds but your 5.7 would fall in the top 10 right around you'd be if you stopped now you'd be right above my sole goal is to beat jad abenrod right right after andrew actually so you're you're in the top 10 all right i feel good about that yeah This is a good start. Okay.

1:21:18Sure. I should look while I'm doing this. 8.2 seconds. And it took me three seconds to find the U. I need to look. In the time it took you to find the U, Tom Scott did the entire alphabet. That's crazy. Crazy stat of the day. That is wild. Okay. All right. I get one more.

1:21:476.2 seconds my first one I thought that one felt good I mean 5 is still a great number that one was cleaner but a little slower that's I thought that sounded good but that is top 10 my friend I'll take it that's pretty good so what it's right above me right above Raleigh right behind Andrew 5.7 let's go honestly in the spectrum of like we've had all the way up to 8s and 9s all the way down to threes. That's an above average score. 3.5 seconds. That's an absurd score. No one else is even in the threes. Okay, next time, I'm going to bring my own custom-built mechanical keyboard. And I'm going to blow mine.

1:22:19The stenographer is going to be in here. Yeah. No, this was super fun. Thank you for taking the time. Yeah, thank you so much. Thank you for fixing my life. Yeah. I'm so excited to see how this goes. Obviously, this is just the first of many check-ins with Andrew to make sure he's on the right path. Also, Marquez, Guys, I think we've proved that you and I are both completely out of our minds with these apps. But we can be reasonable about them in the real world. It's good to know you're out of your mind. Right. So that you don't recommend other people lose their minds. Right. Should we both be more like Andrew?

1:22:49Probably. But is that going to happen? Hey, listen. If there's just that quick one. There's a new app that just came out yesterday that I'm so excited to pull. Oh, what is it called? I don't even remember. Oh, no. It's called like To Do, T-W-O-D-O or something like that. It probably has a gorgeous website. Oh, I'm sure it's lovely. Oh, is this the one that you just slide it to be later or earlier? The task? Marquez is the one you showed me. It's called To Do's. Oh, that's right. I did see. I linked it in the Slack yesterday. Oh, there you go. Yeah. Okay. You all have a problem. Marquez is my people.

1:23:17All I'm saying is don't be embarrassed to throw something in the alarm app every once in a while. You know? Wake up. Wake up task. Drive home. Drive home task. Well, either way, we'll be back to our regularly scheduled programming on Friday, as you guys already know. but thanks for hanging out with us and subscribing and liking and commenting and let us know what else we missed. Catch you guys in the next one. Peace. Waveform is produced by Adam Alina and Ellis Rovin. We're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro outro music was created by Vane Still.