Waveform: The MKBHD Podcast - Our Favorite Productivity Apps!

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

This week, we have a fun bonus episode where David Pierce from the Vergecast tries to help Marques convince Andrew to use a proper to-do list app instead of his alarm clock. Throughout the episode they gather information on how Andrew handles his task list and then try to figure out which app would be best for him to use. Then we turn the tables and see how fast David Pierce can type the alphabet! Enjoy! Shop the merch: https://shop.mkbhd.com Socials: Waveform: https://twitter.com/WVFRM Waveform: https://www.threads.net/@waveformpodcast Marques: https://www.threads.net/@mkbhd Andrew: https://www.threads.net/@andrew_manganelli David Pierce: https://www.threads.net/@imdavidpierce David Imel: https://www.threads.net/@davidimel Adam: https://www.threads.net/@parmesanpapi17 Ellis: https://twitter.com/EllisRovin TikTok:  https://www.tiktok.com/@waveformpodcast Join the Discord: https://discord.gg/mkbhd Music by 20syl: https://bit.ly/2S53xlC Waveform is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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It doesn't matter. It's too many characters for my alarm app. I'll forget. What is up, people of the internet? Welcome back to another episode of the Waveform Podcast, but it's a bonus episode this time. You can tell because we have new people and I'm in a different chair oh i didn't even realize this would collide that's new okay we're your hosts i'm marquez i'm andrew and we're joined by david pierce hello thank you for uh thank you for hopping on with us thanks for having me it's fun to like be here and do this with my internet

friends in person we've done it before but apple camp is weirdly enough though this is better this is cooler yeah this is This is cozier. If you don't already remember, David Pierce, host of The Verge cast, editor-at-large at The Verge, fellow productivity app nerd. And that's exactly what we're talking about today. I hesitate to call this an intervention, but it's kind of how it feels. You waited until right now to use that word. A little bit, yeah. So on the right side of the table for our audio listeners,

David and I have been not just using, but experimenting with, playing with, trying, implementing. Ruining our lives with. All of these productivity apps for the past couple of years, probably a little too much. But on the other side of the aisle, Andrew is either way smarter than us or has a bunch of unlocked potential ruining his life on the other end of the spectra andrew uses

uh the alarm app we've talked about this as literally a task manager reminders like that's the maximalist that's as far as it goes right pretty much i mean we have notion for work we do even sometimes with that if i really need something to get done yeah i put an alarm for it yeah so i think uh i think this is our opportunity to like expose you to the the world that you could live in of of like second brain software yeah i think the goal for the end of this episode is one of you should convince me to use an app and if i get convinced i will use it for we'll see and if we can't marquez and i have to both live our lives out of the alarm app oh that i cannot do i yeah i respect my job too much i feel like this whole company would crumble to the ground if that

happens i just will not get anything done. This is something actually my dad has said before, but I say the same thing. Like, if you tell me to do something and in that moment I don't write it down, trust me, I'm not going to remember. So I'll start my opening convincing argument with the human brain is an amazing computer. Right? It's very powerful it has incredible ai obviously it has a neural engine it has an optical image processor it has all these things that are amazing for a computer but it has one critical flaw the memory only one fallible that's

the only flaw with the human brain as a computer okay the memory is fallible and so you could think you remember to do something you could tell yourself to remember something but it may not remember you may lose those bits and bytes and so the reason that i'm so into this software augmenting my brain is because that memory is not infallible that will stay that will work and then i can sort of plug it into my brain as like a puzzle piece, as the way to not, as a way to complete myself as a computer, if that makes any sense.

Am I making any sense? No, it makes total sense. And I think I would just add two things. One is that, do you ever hear people talk about decision fatigue? Like why, like Barack Obama wore the same suit every day or why Mark Zuckerberg always wears gray t-shirts or whatever?

Well, he's a robot, but. That's where I'm going with this. We're're all real no i think the the point is that uh there is at least i experienced this in a huge way this feeling of like i'm supposed to be doing something or i was supposed to have remembered something or something is going on and there's just this like latent constant anxiety of thinking about all of the stuff happening. And you and I, Andrew are both new parents. So there's even more of that because I haven't slept in forever and I have to

remember to like keep my child alive. So for me, it's, it's not just like having a place to offload all of that stuff. It's having a place that I know that it is. And I think like, I always think about my own brand as like, do you have a drawer full of like thumb drives

and memory cards and memory sticks? And there's just a thousand of them. And you're like, I know the thing I need is on one of these, but my options are either, I'm not even positive what I'm looking for, but there's something in here that I need, which is a terrible outcome. Or I know what I need and it's on one of these

but what do i do with it okay and i feel like my entire product productivity journey has been trying to solve those two problems yeah yeah and my own brain is both of those things at the same time that's fair i'm gonna interject here and say nothing either of you have said i disagree with you okay that's good yeah yeah i would, and I would say I have these same feelings as both of you do in a lot of these senses. You're just more comfortable in your chaos than we are. I don't even know if comfortable is the term. Maybe thriving in anxiety works sometimes.

And it's funny you mentioned being a new dad because arguably the only productivity app I have outside of my alarms app is the Huckleberry app, which is like the very newborn, like I need to make sure she's eating enough and pooping consistently and sleeping and taking naps. So that is one thing that Claire and I together are consistently, I'm logging things in that all the time. So maybe that's, that is my gateway drug into the life of productivity. That needs notion integration. That's what it is. drug into the life of productivity.

That needs notion integration. That's what it is. That is really interesting. Okay. I think what I thought would be really fun was to give you some hypotheticals, some hypothetical situations that I could propose that would maybe convince you that it would be more likely that you would get the thing done if you had a better tool to do so. Because from what I'm hearing, you're not against maybe trying some productivity apps or I don't know.

You don't necessarily need to dive into the deep end with it because there's all kinds of, there's so many, first of all. But they also all have different pros and cons and different capabilities and different weaknesses. But you're at least down to here how they could plug in. I'm down to here. I'm open.

The more I've thought about this episode, the more open I've become because at first I said, Marques, I'm not doing this. It's open. The more I've thought about this episode, the more open I've become because at first I said, Marques, I'm not doing this. It's going to be boring when I do nothing at the end of it because I'm still just going to use the alarm app. But you know what? I got a new phone,

so it kind of feels like new phone, new me. And like, maybe it's time to add some things. And it deleted all of my alarms. So I don't have any of those anymore. To that point, though, this is one of the things I was wondering for you is it's not like you don't spend all of your time with somebody who talks about this stuff incessantly uh no i hear it maybe that's part of the reason why i haven't made the jump yet

is like is it do you feel like the system you have like works and why screw it up in the name of just some cool app that might not solve your problems or like what what has kept you in the alarm app world all this time? I'll be honest, it's stubbornness. It's not like, no, I don't think I'm running smoothly. I think if you had the opportunity to call my wife right now, she would be like, no, he does not do all the things that he says he will do

or I ask him to do. So I'm consistently forgetting things. I mean, if it's super, super important, I will remember it or it will be in the alarm app and that's how i'll remember it but like there's only so much i'm gonna put in there and there are definitely times where i get to the point of like this needed to be done by friday and i've had an entire week to do it and there was plenty of time to do it but you know there may also be in my mind there may be an element of overexposure as well, because I've talked about it being like almost, what did I call it?

Like my toxic tree. Where I will have everything I need in one productivity app, which I literally did this two days ago. I have both the apps in my dock, which is hilarious. I've used a to-do list app, a calendar app, and an email app and Notion for however many years. And I'll see a new one. And the problem is the websites are always so pretty. Oh, they're so good. They're always so good.

And they're all animated now. They just make you feel feelings. They're gorgeous. And I feel like if I could just have this in my life, everything would be even better than it already is. Not that I'm missing anything, but there'll be one or two cool features where I'm like, that, I want that. And then I'll dump

my entire life out of one into the other one. And then several days later, I'd be like, why did I do this? This is missing the things that I like about the other thing. Even though I like that, I have to move back. And now I'm like constantly doing this dance between apps. Adam actually has a little bit of the same bug. I'm not even gonna i'm outing you over there but thanks we do a little bit of the same dance so i'm gonna interject right there and i'm gonna say by the end of this episode i need convincing on something that will be my app and just be my app because that sounds terrible and i will never do that. I am so stubborn. You either have to enjoy it literally for its own sake. And also the one thing, I had an old boss who watched me do this a hundred times

and he was like, oh, every time you do it, you're actually like going through all of your old notes and reevaluating all the stuff you're working on. I was like, I don't know that that's actually true, but it made me feel better. That this is my way of sort of taking stock of my system and all that um it's not no one should do what marquez is yeah it's not it's delightful and unhealthy and

unproductive i appreciate you guys i have all the viewpoints of all these different apps but if i pick an app and i use it by the end of this episode if there becomes a time where i'm like i don't want to use this that looks better i will never make that switch it is too annoying for me to do that they're partially one of the reasons i've never switched to an iphone with ample opportunity here is i've tried to set one up before and in the setup process i just go i don't feel like doing this and then i'd never use it so because this makes me think we need to put andrew in an app that is very stable and straightforward and not likely to sort of explode. And of course I know what that means. I think that's one of the top candidates

right now. I think I have three in mind. And that's one of them. Can I see your three real quick? So I'll just write them down. Yep. This is the podcast version of We Can Fix Him. Claire put them up to this yeah yeah it's that's yeah the i have it's the top two that i feel pretty good about and then the third one is kind of my wild card yes just because of who makes it okay but it's also potentially the one that is the

most things i i know why and i think we should try to explain it yeah but yeah now i know how audio listeners feel how confusing this is no no do you want me to kind of go over maybe like a day a week a month of what i do and maybe like that might help your guys thought process on this i think this might work the same way which i have increasingly complex hypotheticals okay and you can tell me how you would tackle them. Okay. Okay. Hypothetical number one. Sure. Claire says,

Andrew, don't forget to take out the trash on Friday morning. What do you do? Wait, you just unlocked something. That's the only reoccurring task in my calendar app is take out the trash on Thursday. Okay. That's a good answer. And it comes up on my watch.

Okay. Every time I'm sitting on the couch Thursday night. Is it a task in your calendar app or is it a calendar event in your calendar app? That's a great question. This is very important. This is huge. Okay.

Let's see. I'm guessing it's a calendar event. You probably have it either the night before when you need to put things out or that morning. If memory serves, you have both, right? I have both. I have one as a task the night before, and then I have the calendar event the next day. Okay.

Of when it actually gets collected. Which do you follow more often? I follow the task because the calendar event is syncing to a GCAL provided by my town's website. That is not always accurate. Because the holiday weeks, all the weirdness. It's supposed to be up to date, but I've just found it's, I live on a corner.

I think it might be the other block this podcast is gonna be 16 hours this is prepare everyone i'm here trying to figure out if it's a task or an event and marquez is connecting to his local government with this marquez hacked into the mayor's office to get the schedule yeah it is an event okay and it is sorry can i see that one more time you can it is the night before it is the night the night before okay perfect i'm i ain't getting up in the morning to do that totally fine so but that works for you it works for me it works every yeah i have not missed a trash day perfect okay so so the calendar app so part two hypothetical claire says now when you're taking the trash out

make sure that you break down the cardboard and put it to the left of the plastic or they won't take it. We only have one recycling bin. This is hypothetical. I'm not good at hypotheticals. So you need to remember both to do this task at this time and there's something specific to do in this task. I'll give you the perfect example, which is something we found as an old alarm app on my phone the other day when we were talking about this where i had an alarm that said money on trash because for the holidays i was tipping the trash people and i needed to bring out the trash cans and also put the like card for them so you set an alarm to do that and i did it actually in a

third-party alarm app which is is deranged. Hey, hey. And I did have to do... What did it actually say, Andrew? It said monkey on trash. Thank you. So I... So it took a minute. So if there's autocorrect,

that would be a huge benefit of whatever we're doing. But yeah, so... And that was something I did the next morning because I didn't want to leave money on the trash can overnight. So you set that alarm for the morning. Yeah, so at the end of my driveway, I would know to pull it out of my car. So in this hypothetical, if there was a specific thing you had to do with the cardboard to the left of the plastic, you would set maybe an alarm at the same time that you're taking out the trash that tells

you what to do. That says cardboard left plastic. Yeah, like it would essentially be at the same time. Okay. I already have so much anxiety. So far it's checking out. Coordinating the alarms. I can't wait for in a month you're like, how's it going? And I'm like, there's so

much trash in my house. Piles. Part three. Again, in a month you're like how's it going and i'm like there's so much trash in my house piles part three again pure hypothetical but how would you tackle this you now need to do this every monday and thursday night during the summer but every sunday and wednesday night during the winter if i'm being honest i would probably just have two calendar recurring apps and just ignore one of them during the summer and ignore one of them during the winter remember i've not had to do that maybe i just have sweet trash people and they always come on fridays no matter what but

in that scenario if it were changing in those yeah i don't know can you do that just on google calendar summer in parentheses that's a good point yeah man maybe i should just have you on speed dial and call you instead this is not a what should you do but like i'm curious like you have two things that say take out the trash and you just remember which one was i probably what i would probably do is i would you said it's like friday summer monday winter i would probably just do reoccurring every friday and then once it hit winter and i either missed one of those or realized i would just delete that event and then probably start the winter event okay i'm trying to be honest here adam stop making fun of me this is making me realize that andrew is a much more like capable functional person than

i am because my life would collapse in what you're describing i think kind of but that's also kind of the like why it's a little pathetic that i'm not using one of these describing i think kind of but that's also kind of the like why it's a little pathetic that i'm not using one of these because i'm capable of doing all of these things i'm capable i'm more than tech savvy to be very into a productivity i just think you'd be like president of the united states by now if you know maybe i'm just trying to give everyone a head start here i just don't want to don't want to win too hard. Okay, here's one more. You get an email with all the instructions. By the way, this is 2013.

We play on the Hammerhead still. Did we have to? We get an email with all the instructions and your itinerary for a Hammerhead's trip that we have this upcoming weekend. And in the email is a Google Doc docs link that says don't fill out this form until saturday morning when we're getting on the bus so again it's an email with a weekend itinerary and a link in the email of a form to fill out that morning i mean without trying to be funny one i would forget but if i like thought to myself 100%, like, I need to do this, that would be, so I need to know what my itinerary is,

and I need to fill, the alarm app goes on to fill out the form. Okay. A thousand percent. Alarm app. Because that's the thing I need to do. Saturday morning. Alarm app, Saturday morning. That's fill out form.

Do you put the Google Doc link in the alarm? No, it would just say fill out form. Do form. Okay. Do form. Hammerhead form. Do you put the Google Doc link in the alarm? No, it would just say fill out form. Do form. Okay. Hammerhead form. Do form. And then you see there, remember that there's an email somewhere that you're supposed to remember. Yeah, that I'll be able to remember. Okay. And then the itinerary part, it would, I mean, I probably would never put it, I would never actually, if I needed to know, I would put parts in my calendar but like other than that man I'm realizing my entire life's calendar is just texting my wife to see what we're doing this weekend well that's a different productivity she's this is gonna be her favorite part this might be the first episode she listens to this is good this is all very good okay

I that's a you're bringing that up I want my personal calendar to be anything i need that i need that for myself i think um that would be super important i feel like especially now with all of the hobbies that i have and now also having a child i need to be way more organized so i can find those time slots to when i can do the things that i love to do that are just me or like meeting up with people so is your wife a calendar keeper? Uh, yeah, not like super intense, but like way better than I am. And like, she actually knows when we're doing everything. Okay. So yes. So I guess the, the idea behind my hypotheticals is there are certain productivity apps that try to, uh, merge certain things and to have certain features embedded that help these levels of

complex complexities feel simple okay um i think my favorite is a to-do list app where all i do is when i need to do something or remember something all i do is open the to-do list app and set the time and date and the more complex task is, the more I can dive into the features of the to-do list app to have either recurring tasks, subtasks, descriptions, offsetting days and weeks and things like that. Like all sorts of flexibility inside of remembering to give me the notification to tell me to do the thing. Okay. To-do list 101 for me. There's 10 bazillion options for this. There are 10 bazillion options. The good news is, most apps do that thing

you just described pretty well. The idea of just like, I need to open this thing, I need to write a thing down, it needs to answer the question. The key there is you need natural language processing. Because being able to type, take out trash 7 a.m. every Friday is so much easier than opening a picker and tapping yes okay a thing and and and in that range of natural language processing gigantic spectrum

of quality and then so because that's the first thing marquez just said there and i like when marquez was saying that he puts this stuff in his app and then it's like this on this day at this time i was just like i'm already thinking of scrolling through all those stupid things. And I was I'm like, I'm bored of this already. I don't I don't see myself doing it. So that is huge. What you're saying. Does that also work for like voice input?

So like voice to text and then. Yeah, it's a little if you're in that case. There are kind of more places it can go sideways. Sometimes voice recognition is not amazing. Sometimes the speech to text is not amazing for sure sometimes the you know speech to text is not amazing like it can get a little wonky but the idea of being able to do that in literally one step from i need to say a sentence out loud and it does a thing on a date in my to-do list app is very possible that i will say to me to be totally honest the thing

that i find most bizarre about the alarms thing is exactly what you just described. It is an awful user interface for what you're trying to do. It's tons of scrolling. Everything looks the same. It's sorted by time of day, which is bananas. So, by the way, there's two types of alarm maps, people, I realized recently. There is people who have a new task for every alarm and then they scroll and there is 800 alarms on their phone and then i draw a line marquez deleting the alarm app and

renaming it every single time you have a new task well not the alarm app the alarm the alarm deleting i think i'm in between alarm okay i'm not renaming alarms yeah yeah just rename and change the time of the alarm. So I, I mean, this phone doesn't show up, but my last one had maybe five all the time. It's like my actual wake up alarm. Actually, I don't even use my wake up alarm. I use it on my watch now. So like there's five alarms and it's just like, this one is, uh, you know, I have to remember to put something in my bag in the morning because I want to take it to work. And then it's like, oh, if I had one

other thing, I have to, the next one, I'm just going to erase whatever that was, which is, you know, kind of fun sometimes when you're like, oh, what was I doing? And how long ago did I need to remember to like take this box out of the trunk of my car and then look at it and be like, wow, that box is still in the trunk of the car. But okay. So yeah, that's where we're at i really like what you're talking about with a very simple type this out it feels to me like the do you know they say you can just type whatever the hell you want google and it'll figure out just like what's that song that goes la la la la and it's like oh it's creed higher and then you're like yeah that's awesome it is that's so yeah i like this already i like i like the direction we're going okay this is good we're

yeah we're so that's again that's one genre so the to-do list app can i can i interject and maybe you're gonna ask this question so you can tell me and we can just go further can any of those see what somebody is texting me and be like actually i think this happens already in google messages if claire says like we're going to abby and grover's house saturday at seven can i just like no but that's a really good feature that if i saw that in one i would think about ending all the other i would pour my life into that wow i'm already the ceo of a task actually wow okay okay so but one thing to that point uh things like Gmail are actually pretty good at that. And they're starting to get pretty sophisticated at understanding like, oh, this is about a thing at a time.

Do you want to add that to your calendar? And I think the one other piece of this I was going to add is I do think we're talking about a to-do list app. I'm increasingly convinced we're talking about a to-do list app. But I think one way you can think about a lot of this stuff also is to do it in your calendar and there are a bunch of interesting ideas about calendars which i know you guys have talked about a bunch on this show but the idea of basically just letting your calendar run your life and it ends up being fewer things because you need a calendar anyway and like events in a to-do list don't actually work very well uh so like there is a world in which you can consolidate

a lot of this into your calendar, but the sort of ease of adding stuff and making sense is not quite there. And I'll just say for work, I am like chronically in our Google calendar. Almost to like, sometimes I wonder if that's why my personal calendar is so bad because our work calendar has so much in it.

And I'm just like, I'm so much more focused on that right now. And like, this is everything. So like yeah i know how to work google calendar pretty well except for maybe that i put an event instead of a task i'm still not sure if that was the right or the wrong answer when you guys asked me that before um so like yeah chronically in the work app in the work calendar if there was some way where it could be like, you're at home, maybe these are our priorities now versus these at work are our priorities. Yes. Hey, we're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more from David Pierce.

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Lots of them have various plugins and UIs and things they can do. They all more or less look the same because a calendar is a calendar. But the way you're organizing, i need to take out the trash at a certain time i will set an event so that i remember to do this thing at this time you can also do it that way and there's a bunch of calendar apps and my issue with that is not every task that i do has a specific time that i'm going to be doing it it's almost more like a hierarchy of things that i'll be doing during the day and not necessarily time.

This is, you and I have the same problem, which is I am constantly flitting between a to-do list app, which is very good for tasks and not very good for things that have to happen at a very specific time and often have other information associated with them. Or a calendar, which is really great for that stuff. But for like a thing that I just need to remember

to do sometime in the next couple of days,ars are awful yeah yeah that's a really good point and like i feel like there's even the like this needs to be done by the end of the day this needs to be done by the end of the week this just needs to be done whenever you're ready and then like this needs this is this exact date on this calendar right so yeah then there are the hybrids yes there are some apps i hate how you understand everything he's saying at one point i want you to be like what are you talking about you're like no it's that meme of like he's thinking about other women it's like the hybrid task apps so there are apps that understand this dichotomy with tasks and events and will try to help you bring them both to one place. So Adam was trying Amy earlier.

There are other apps like this where and one of them that I'll suggest later kind of lets you drag tasks onto the calendar as you're going about your day to sort of move through things. I feel like just by the way you're talking about this, this is, I'm going to compare this to a two in one where it's just not as good as either of them. That's basically right. Okay. That is basically right. Yeah.

I think there are, this is either the perfect puzzle piece to fit or it's just going to cause you pain and you don't even have to worry about it. But there are, it depends on kind of like how many tasks you do and what style you have. But there are some apps where it's literally like,

all right, on the side over here is your to-do list. On the side over here is your calendar. And if you live through like blocks of time in your calendar and you have a to-do list, you'd be like, all right, drag this to three o'clock, drag this to four o'clock and you get a new email and it shows up in your task app and you drag it over and you just sort of lay out the day in blocks of tasks.

It may not be something you're interested in. Do you know the concept of time blocking or time boxing people call it i mean i've heard other people do that that sounds the whole thing yeah yeah it's very i i'm kind of with you like my thing about that is all of these apps that try to do both are very opinionated about kind of the best way to manage your life yeah and they're probably right in a lot of cases, right? Like the idea of saying, I need to do 10 things today. I have eight hours. One of these things is going to take me six hours.

I'm probably not going to get them all done. Let me go schedule other things somewhere else. It's probably like a healthy, safe, correct way to live. But I just can't do it. Like life is too messy and all over the place and priorities change. And the idea of like constantly rewriting my calendar all day to match what I'm actually doing just drives me nuts.

And so I think that's the problem I've always run into. It's like if I wanna sort of live by this thing's system, it works. Like Amy is a perfect example of that. Like beautiful app, really interesting ideas, but if you don't sort of use it the way it is meant to be used, it will cause friction. I mean, yeah, it sounds like it's kind of the reason for a task app is because of the anxiety of multiple things hanging over your head.

But if you go too far and then the task app is now causing you more anxiety than the actual tasks and stuff like that. And I also think we are landing pretty quickly at a place where you are not interested in spending a lot of time managing your tasks. No. There are things we could set you up with that are like incredibly powerful project management tools with lots of subtasks and projects and i can tell you we can tell you all about the second i'm a free-flowing kind of guy man in the five stages i i feel like you just want a list of things that tells you what needs to happen when it needs to happen yeah think of me as like the deadhead task man like we're just very free flow and we're just like oh if my day i'm

getting off of the couch and walking around it's like oh that this feels like a perfect time for a task let's get something done you just open it up and there it is 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, 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 about my life. I just remember. And then I do it all Sunday at five o'clock pretty much. Okay. Actually, I'll say this. What I'm realizing I wait Andrew forgets lots of stuff but doesn't realize he forgot it because

he didn't write any of 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 now. I feel productive. A lot of the times in the summer, that's like, I'm going to go mow the lawn. And then once I finished 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 for all the things you forgot you know in a pessimistic world maybe in an optimistic world andrew's killing it and it's he's ready for some valor yeah 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 at 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 due 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 a it's like you want to click this yeah you're wanting you want to post yeah it's like 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 oh i do have a lot of stuff to do i don't know if you heard ellis's idea for a vision pro task app 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 us 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 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 moods 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 lists 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 sure 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 do you care phones. Do you care about your phone? 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 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 really important notifications. Yeah.

You have a unique setup and I got 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. That narrows things down substantially. It does. There are so many that have a beautiful website and an awesome GTD method and

a great 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 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 do you know and it needs to every morning remind me that if i brought this home i need to bring 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 macOS 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. 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.

So 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 nurse here.

I'm like, oh, I can replace one of those sockets. And then so there are lots of so many listeners who are diagnosing you with various things as you explain this. That's Dr. Mike's coming in next week to just finish that off. But yes, there's so there is definitely a level of me being pretty scatterbrained, which I think this will help this will help um and i don't know if that changes that much if i think about it if i just think of those tasks i've never none of those are finished so i know they still have to happen but just throwing it out there but you never had a ram not that i know like you're doing task one and then you pass by task two and then you go oh i just do task two and then you start doing task two 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 if you ask the the open socket in the nursery yes okay so i guess so i think it does get to that point that's 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,

you're 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. Do you wanna consolidate all that stuff use keep okay um keep sorry this is worried to show you my thought but i'm interested okay alarm up and keep okay my keep keep is very good my keep is keep does not mess actually for everyone who my keep is a mess at the top of it

right now oh i have a to-do thing and no in here 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 none of them are checked 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. Front light, door light. Should we check the oil on your car before you leave today? Oven light, shelves and 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 like you just like sleepwalk into your bathroom and just start writing down to do's that you're never gonna see i do 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 a 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 note is a grocery list which is yeah did you check it when you were in the grocery store 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 yeah there's some notes stuff in here too okay i'm gonna 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 TickTick. 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 TickTick. Yes. Okay. Exactly. You don't have to use it you can just use it as a list of tasks but it is available inside of tick tick yes okay exactly you 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. But at its core, it's a solidly good looking,

very functional, multi-platform task app. 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? Absolutely. And how I can see things? Because it is also something I'm realizing. I am a very, I like my home screen to be super clean. And some part of me thinks about this as, 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. I've become a big believer in that exact strategy. So feel like have it one swipe away and have it huge. I think has for me, at least it's really helpful. Having it yell at you about your tasks all day is actually. No, 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. And then I, yeah, maybe one swipe away.

I'm also very, I do not like any swipes on it at all. So 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 of ways to jump into TickTick 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. 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 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 it'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 that my question is does it have the natural language that david was talking about 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 uh whenever i switch to one that doesn't have if this is your experience too but uh 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 yeah yeah so i recently tried super list which i'm not going to recommend and it just has a little bit too much friction for it's the picker it's the adding a new task it's the couple extra clicks yep super list is like beautiful and full of good ideas and just not quite ready yeah it's one dot here's the question all of these seem to be beautiful and and like no okay cool that's no that's what i was gonna ask it seems because like 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 like marketing and launching and the beautiful website and everything yeah so like 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 uh a definite move toward what if the app looked nice like for a long time because if you think about it right a lot of these apps are for people who like yeah 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 but 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. I think that will be my... The para method is for another podcast. We'll leave the Eisenhower matrix out of this. Yes. 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. Or maybe it wouldn't. I don't know. Hey, 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. But after this, we'll be right back with David Pierce giving his recommendation to Andrew.

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The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash waveform. netsuite.com slash waveform. So my recommendation, which I actually think I switched between TicTic, 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 Todoist apps. Todoist 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 you fundamentally can just make it a list of tasks. And the reason I like Todoist is that it integrates out much better than TickTick. TickTick really wants you to use the TickTick app. But Todoist, 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 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 stuff out like it's it thinks of itself as kind of a tasks platform and as somebody who my problem has always been i'm just not necessarily as reliable as i need to about like 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 um 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.

It'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... I was going to say, we lost a huge amount of room. Press that button. I need that button. And if you just have a day, it makes it an all-day event,

which is not great. But if you slide it to the calendar, it makes it an event on a Google Calendar. So it's a couple steps to make it work. Yeah, but TickT take take 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 yep 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 marquez and just marquez 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 or 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. Yeah. Here, you know, this might be something to think about in the premium section.

Do you ever like you tell yourself you want 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 so 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 yeah so maybe i just need to buy some premium and be like, yeah, I already threw some money at it. For me, I'll 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. The fair, that's your preferred trade. 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.

Is that right? Chill, David. I lost my home screen. Big widget. feel big in a way that's going to make you second screen is that right chill david big widget yeah yeah okay and then the last so the last one that we were sort of talking about earlier is i 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 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. So let's say so I think you can show up next to Gmail. Yeah. So it can 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, 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 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 TickTick or Todoist, if Google Tasks could just take everything from that and then also throw it at the side of my Gmail. I mean, that's the dream. Yeah. That is truly the dream.

And I will tell you, the dream for me with Google Tasks would be if it also integrated with Keap. And so, like part of what I want to recommend for you is just to dump all of your stuff into Keap, right? And you have a list of tasks, it should, you say, remind me to do whatever at 9 p.m. And it'll just put a Keap note with a reminder that's also in google

tasks and also in google calendar incredibly obvious doesn't work i can't believe they don't completely non-existent they must not even talk to each other those teams yeah i'm convinced that google is not aware of all of the products too many buildings man yeah uh but yeah i do think there is a there is a version of what you're describing that you can do pretty successfully mostly inside of your calendar uh again i think it time stamps things in a way that i don't think you're gonna love all the time uh and it's not good at natural language processing in the same way okay google calendar has a little bit of it especially on mobile uh you can use apps like fantastical which is a mac and

ios only app is very good at natural language processing okay but useless to you on some of these other platforms uh 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 yeah gives me itchy this is a question i was gonna 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 is my you use weekly sam now i don't know i think on mobile to use weekly well i can't fit enough i think it's five days okay i just 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 mobile 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 whatever but as a general way to sort of manage my days that just feels it's hard and then like getting into it then it gets a little more i guess that's not too bad i live in so cron the app that is now notion calendar which i think is

what you're using it is um on mobile defaults to i think a three-day view that sounds which is really nice yeah i actually like it a lot it's funny i downloaded notion calendar on my 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 notification 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 and then just keep it for that part it doesn't always show what your next task is it's nice event which is nice yeah um i'm learning some tips and tricks here yeah there's for the 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 i watch those when i have youtube right here this is 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. And 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 yeah that's so just start with the list of stuff do either of you find yourself not getting to your to do things because youtube 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. 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 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 thing, remind me to do the thing at this time and it takes all your natural language and just goes, all right, I'll remember it

and reminds you whenever. Could that be real or is that am i just in fantasy 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 yeah 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 right and if you can shortcut all of that like it's one of the things i use the watch for a lot uh is just being able to just quickly plug in a reminder uh interesting and like when i'm walking the dog constantly it's just like it's literally the only thing i use siri for at this point is just dumping stuff into reminders yeah uh and i

wouldn't use apple reminders except that nothing else plugs into siri that's exactly why i use the shopping list and keep oh that's smart that's what i should start doing the only thing that i can say hey g 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 the room thing. Cause 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, it like in theory, these things will be able to to dump the right Amazon link into your to-do list to buy a week from now. All of that is sitting there, and I think we'll get there eventually. I hope so. But right now, I found every time I try, I then do it, and I have to go open the app to make sure that it did it right. And I've now just done all the same work I would have done anyway. I feel like even when it starts doing it correctly,

the anxiety of did that do that correctly? A hundred percent. Oh, like, just like, I know. And 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 uh i would like the ideal would be i can just have a google assistant plug-in 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 to do it like no i don't want that extra sucks. 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, that's the way.

That's the golden rule of 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? Yeah, in the shower or like away from all of your tech and you need to write something down. Yeah.

Yeah. That's, if I had to answer. Google Assistant sounds like the best. I think Assistant's the right answer. And it throws it into Keep, you're saying? Or Google Tasks. 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. Which just tells you everything you need to know. 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 then go find the thing in google tasks and add the recurring to it and that's just a mess wow that's so you can't just say hey g add a monday recurring you can add it to your calendar oh it's your every

monday but at least in my experience so far you cannot add a task okay with any of that sub information yeah to tasks 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 it's 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 it 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 two 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 uh i had a this on my calendar that we were doing this and no fewer than five apps reminded me that this was happening this morning exactly yeah 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 like no 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, 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. 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. And it's a dream I've been trying to have come true for so long. It's so close. 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 yeah uh and and this is why again i come, like, don't try to use any of these systems. Just make a list of stuff. And, like, for me, I had a long run of using Todoist, like, to its fullest extent. Like, 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 have a, you don't separate your tasks into sub lists. I don't anymore. I have stopped because for me it was like if i if i have to click into i do have a separate list for my shopping list that's the only one that's separate sure 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 yeah it's, 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.

Everything 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 best. 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 okay so 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 said 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 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 to 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 done during that one or can I just hang 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 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 job already. it's a blank slot on the calendar run i'm not

a time blocker if i ever write down on my calendar have fun i'm gonna be like i've lost i did actually notice that the other day you have like drive home it's because i know i can't do other things during that block so like i have that's super OK, 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 down. 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 going to be

perfect. If they had one problem last model and they're going to 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 sometimes that might make my decision sometimes it's really good sound tic-tac has good sounds tic-tac'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 it takes too much time it takes too much time all right this is super list it's a long sound here's a tick tick that one's customizable there's several sounds 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 the other ones is tick tick to do this and google test perfect

i do think those are the ones that i think that start. I think that's right. I think I'm going to 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 would I bet on it being here in a decade? No. Would I bet on anything Google does being here in a decade? 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 uh it launched it like five years ago and then literally basically forgot about it for four years. Didn't they, they killed it and then they, it came back inside of Gmail or something? Yeah. I mean, it's, it's, it's all deranged. It was like, it had, 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, but now it is, it is beginning to make sense. And I, 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 TickTick and Todo is both look pretty awesome. And I think I want to graduate to those.

Okay. And then stop. Here we go, baby. Hey, listen, I finished my schooling and I never look back at grad work or anything like that. I graduate and I never look back. So 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 task in google calendar okay uh the mobile google calendar app is actually a pretty full featured google tasks app also okay uh 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. Okay. 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 to-do-ist place. Okay.

It can pull stuff back out into your calendar and that kind of thing. Cool. I like that. But I think it's like for me, the interface of being able to open it up and be like like here's a list of all the stuff that i need to do is great and i think that's where you'll lead the tactic okay cool like just looking at the uis of both of these i think i like the look of tiktok more but todoist feels more familiar it feels very notion slacky on like 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 but 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 gonna

have to do but you were just gonna go out into it so maybe i should have just let that happen but i want i want a good payoff at the end i do demand a check-in though. We're going to need it at some point. We will. In the coming weeks. How about at some point in the next four months. 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 yeah okay cool 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 i do you he's superhuman i do i every time i even consider talking about on the podcast I almost went there. I was like, this is unnecessary. We don't need to do this. Do you use Superhuman?

I do use Superhuman. Every time I even consider talking about it 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 wouldn't recommend it to most people, to be honest. It is sort of preposterous. But it runs my life, so.

It's just so fast. It's really good. 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 I end 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 as possible so my main gmail my main email goal tends to be just like get to zero and leave as fast as possible select all those that's another that's another episode that'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 for it you don't even have to guess we 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 telling the alphabet we'll give you uh 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 no that's fine

we 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 it. 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 actually seems hard. It's super hard. Have I ever typed the alphabet before? 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 what keyboards are you i have i have a logitech craft keyboard that is the one i use at like my home base okay uh i have a surface book and i have a macbook air which have obviously their own keyboards uh and occasionally i would say like 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 wanna be able to like talk about cherry switches and know what that is.

No one gives a about those anymore. But I just, there's something about the way that it feels. I 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. Because everybody's like oh i love the noise i'm like i don't like the noise the like 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 three attempts. Yes. When you type, it'll show it. The letter's highlighting above it. 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. It'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 him down, Marques? 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 got it wrong.

Okay, yeah, yeah. I timed myself so fast. Also, just discovered, I don't know where the Q key is. No one types the alphabet. No. Like, a very this is all hard thing to realize that like i 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. 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. Oh, modifier keys are wild. I take 45,000 words a minute, but no one on earth can figure out how to use them. Yeah. All right 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. 5.712 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. I got A in 0.000 seconds, so that's pretty good. That's unfathomable. Wait, now I want to know. Yeah.

I had a big gap between P and Q. That checks out. It took a while. Q's a hard work. 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. And we're going to take your best. So if you go later, no. 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 now. 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 top three. I'm going to be right around top. One, two, three. One I do. I do want to see it now. Okay. That might be stressful, but I like that. I want to know what I'm up against. No, I think that's... I have a baseline now. Here's your top three.

I think I'm up right around top. Wow. 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, I've been right.

Right between Jad. Right after Andrew, actually. So you're in the top 10. All right. I feel good about that. Yeah. This is a good start. Okay. after Andrew actually so you're in the top 10 alright I feel good about that this is a good start sure I should look while I'm doing this

8.2 seconds and it took me 3 seconds to find the U and the time it took you to find the u tom scott did the entire alphabet crazy side of the day that is wild okay all right i get one more six point two seconds my first i thought that was all good i mean I thought that one felt good. I mean, five is still a great number. That one was cleaner, but a little slower. I thought that sounded good.

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 eights and nines, 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 spectrum of like we've had all the way up to eights and nines all the way down to threes that's a 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 gonna bring my own custom-built mechanical keyboard and i'm gonna blow my stenographer is gonna be in here yeah no this is super fun thank you for taking the time yeah thank you so much thank you guys thank you for fixing my life yeah i'm so excited to see how this goes obviously this is just the first the first of many check-ins with Andrew to make sure he's on the right path. Also, Marques, 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? Probably. 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 put on my list. What is it called? I don't even remember. Oh, no. It's called like 2DU, 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?

Yeah. The TASIA, Marques is the one you showed me it's called to do's I did see I linked it in the slack yesterday oh there you go Marques is my people all I'm saying is don't be embarrassed to throw something in the alarm app every once in a while

wake up wake up task drive home 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 the next one peace waveform is produced by Adam Molina and Ellis Roven we're partnered with Vox Media Podcast Network and our intro and outro music was created by Vane Sill.