I’ve downloaded and abandoned way too many productivity apps, hoping they’d help me stay organized, manage tasks, and build better routines. Instead, I end up overwhelmed by features, notifications, and complicated systems that don’t last. I need help figuring out why some productivity apps fail for real users and which task management or habit tracker apps people actually stick with long term.
I killed off Todoist, Notion, Trello, ClickUp, Habitica, and about 6 habit trackers I forgot the names of. The pattern was the same every time.
Too many fields.
Too many views.
Too many reminders.
Too much setup before doing the work.
What stuck for me was boring stuff. Apple Reminders for tasks. Google Calendar for time. Notes for quick capture. Three lists only.
- Today
- This week
- Waiting on
If an app needs a tutorial, I stop using it. If it sends more than 3 notifications a day, I mute it or delete it. If I spend 20 minutes organizing tasks, I count tha as procrastination.
My worst abandon was Notion. It turned into a part-time job. Looked clean, ate my time.
My rule now, if your system takes longer to maintain than a paper list, dump it. Simple wins. Fancy loses. Somtimes the graveyard exists because the apps were built for managing work about work, not work itself.
I’ve rage-deleted a bunch: Asana, Monday, TickTick, Any.do, Sunsama, Motion, and honestly half the habit apps all blur together after a while.
My abandoned-app pattern was a little different from @jeff’s though. Mine usually died when the app started acting like my boss. Every tool wants you to categorize your energy, estimate duration, assign priority, choose a color, set a recurring rule, and then reflect on it later like you’re in productivity therapy. By the time I finished “setting up my system,” the thing I needed to do was still not done. Shocking.
I actually disagree a tiny bit with the “simple always wins” take. Sometimes simple loses too, if it’s so barebones that stuff falls through the cracks. I’ve had paper lists and basic reminder apps become black holes because they were too easy to ignore. For me the sweet spot is not simplest, it’s lowest friction with just enough structure.
What finally worked was splitting tools by job, not trying to force one app to run my whole life. Calendar for appointments and anything tied to time. Task app for stuff that can be done whenever. Separate place for reference material. Once I stopped asking one app to be planner, notebook, habit coach, life dashboard, and personal savior, things got less dumb.
Biggest graveyard resident for me? Notion too, weirdly. Beautiful app. Absolute timesink. I’d spend 45 mins making a dashboard to track 3 habits I could’ve just… done. Classic me tbh.