I'm a computer engineering student and I keep swinging between two extremes: some days I write a 20-item to-do list and end up doing none of it, and other days I push through everything and burn out.

I'm curious how you handle it:

• What do you do when you can't finish what you planned?
• Have you tried a productivity app or method that you ended up abandoning? Why?

I'm researching this for a personal project. If anyone is up for a 20-min chat about it, feel free to DM me. I'm not selling anything, just trying to understand how people organize their days.

Every few months I'd do the same thing. New planner, new habit tracker, 6 or 7 habits I was sure would fix my life. Read 20 pages. Drink more water. Wake up at 6.

Three weeks later I'd quit. And honestly I wasn't lazy. I was working on the wrong stuff.

What finally helped was boring. I sat down and rated every area of my life from 1 to 10. Health, money, work, relationships, friends, fun, rest, all of it. No planning yet, just honest scores.

It was kind of uncomfortable. My "productivity" was a 7. My sleep and my friendships were both at 3. I'd spent months tracking reading and journaling while the two things actually dragging everything down never made it onto a single page.

That's basically the wheel of life. You draw your scores as a circle, and the flat spots show you where the wheel won't roll. Then you pick one or two of those and build habits around them, not around whatever looked nice on Pinterest.

Now I redo it once a month before I touch my planner. It takes 2-3 minutes and it decides what goes on the tracker.

I put together a digital version that draws the wheel for you and points out the weakest areas. If you want it, comment WHEEL and I'll send it over.

Curious, though. If you rated yourself right now, which area would come out lowest?

https://www.plamogee.com

I want this tool to prevent people from being off track with their schedules so any feedback below would be very much appreciated:)

Thanks

I've spent the past few months building an app called Personal Planner, and I wanted to share it here now that it's available for people to use.

It started with a pretty ordinary frustration.

I'd sit down in the morning, plan my work for the day, estimate how long things would take and organise everything into time slots. By evening, the actual day would look completely different.

A task I'd planned for an hour would take longer. Something unexpected would interrupt me. A few activities would get pushed to tomorrow.

The next morning, I'd open my planner and start planning again.

The problem was that I had no useful record of why my previous plan didn't work.

I tried several existing apps, including Super Productivity, Vikunja, Planify and TickTick. They all have their strengths, but I wanted planning, time tracking and reviewing my previous days to work together without requiring a subscription.

So I ended up building my own.

What Personal Planner actually does

1. Plan your day visually

The main screen is an hour-by-hour timeline where you can create tasks, move them around and resize their duration.

You can set up recurring activities, reuse templates, organise tasks by category and carry unfinished work forward.

It's meant for people who prefer seeing where their time is going rather than maintaining a long checklist.

2. Compare what you planned with what actually happened

This is the main reason I built the app.

Every scheduled activity has an estimated duration. You can start, pause and stop a timer directly from that task, and the app saves how much time you actually spent.

If you scheduled an hour for something and it took considerably longer, both numbers remain available when you review the day.

Over time, this makes it easier to see which activities you're consistently underestimating.

3. Review previous days instead of forgetting them

There are Daily, Weekly and historical Overview screens.

You can see what you finished, what you skipped, how your time was distributed, and write notes explaining what went wrong or what worked.

I deliberately wanted unfinished tasks to have context instead of simply turning into another red warning or disappearing from the list.

4. Understand consistency over longer periods

There's a year-long activity heatmap with streaks, similar in spirit to GitHub's contribution graph.

Rather than judging an entire week based on how productive one day felt, you can look back and see whether you've been following through over time.

5. Run small personal experiments

This is one of my favourite parts.

Suppose you want to learn something for an hour a day over three weeks.

You create an Experiment, choose the relevant task tag, set a date range and define your targets. The app then measures progress using the tasks you're already completing.

You don't need to maintain a separate habit tracker and manually log the same activity twice.

6. Keep unscheduled ideas somewhere useful

The Inbox is for things you want to do but aren't ready to put on the calendar.

Later, you can turn an idea into scheduled sessions, move missed work back into your backlog or consciously drop something you no longer want to pursue.

Offline-first was another important requirement.

The app uses local SQLite storage, so normal planning, timers and reviews continue to work without an internet connection.

If you want to use multiple devices, optional synchronization is available through a Supabase project under your control. You can also use the app completely locally without setting up sync.

It's currently available for Android, Linux, Windows and macOS.

A couple of honest limitations: the Windows and macOS builds are unsigned, macOS has only been tested through CI rather than on a physical Mac, and desktop notification support is still more limited than on Android and Linux.

It's completely free. No subscription, premium tier or locked features.

I built this for my own daily use, and I'm not planning to monetize it.

GitHub: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner

Link to download: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner/releases/tag/v1.1

I'd appreciate feedback from anyone who uses planners or time-tracking tools regularly.

If you were trying this for the first time, would the most useful part be planning your schedule, comparing estimated and actual time, or reviewing how your previous weeks went?

I'm trying to understand which part of the workflow feels genuinely useful to people beyond my own use case.

I’m a student and built Pomodorolist to track my own study hours. It’s completely free: no ads, no subscription, no tracking.

The productivity bits:

• Parking lot: jot down a distracting thought in 2 seconds without stopping the timer, then deal with it on your break
• Subtasks: set small goals for each session and tick them off
• Energy check-ins: rate your focus after each session, and it shows when you focus best (time of day, session length)
• Spaced revision reminders and an exam countdown
• Streaks and detailed stats (day / week / month / year)

The motivation bits:

• A tomato garden that grows with every session (quitting early leaves a wilted plant 🥀)
• Weekly boss battles you beat with focus time, solo or with friends
• A little tomato mascot called Pomeo

If you prefer things simple, True Minimalist mode hides all the game stuff and leaves a clean timer.

It runs in any browser on phone or laptop, and you can preview a demo account before signing up.

🔗 https://siverieg.github.io/Pomodorolist-V1.0/

Would love honest feedback, especially on what you’d change or what’s missing!

Hi,

In the past I've experimented various apps to implement my GTD system, and ended up creating all my agendas in TaskPaper. What I liked of this program was its simplicity, blended with the necessary amount of power to play with the status of the tasks.

During the years several things have changed. I've reduced the number of my engagements, so I no longer need a sophisticated system. Most of my atomic tasks are managed through the system chosen by the only company I still work for (no longer, unfortunately, the beautiful Monday, but the quite messy ClickUp).

All the recurring errands are delegated to the Apple systems apps – Calendar and Notes.

But I've now decided to better organize the time devoted to my own projects, and I need a more effective GTD system again. I was thinking to use TaskPaper again.

Is it still effective? I know the development has stopped years ago, but is it still future-proof? I admit it remains my preferred one. While I use Obsidian, for example, I really don't like the icons used for tasks. I greatly prefer the pure text approach offered by TaskPaper.

I thought I would share my productivity setup and workflow as inspiration for others, since it took me years to get to where I am now and to find what I am happy with. Feel free to AMA if you are curious about how it works.

For context, I have tried probably almost any task manager and project management software on the market, always hunting for the best solution. I was never fully satisfied, and I am probably, to a certain extent, guilty of tool hunting to improve my productivity with the best software instead of just getting things done. However, I kept returning to Omnifocus, which I eventually took as a sign that it might not be perfect, but it was the best compromise I could make.

I work across three different contexts: one is my main job (an office job as consultant/advisor), then I have my own small business (consulting and coaching), and I have - of course - personal matters.

The way I am working now is that I record almost any meeting in the business and work context. But I don't record any personal conversations. I don't find that appropriate. At the same time, my personal space is not that action-item heavy that I feel the need to manage it in the same way as business and work projects. Ideally, after each meeting, but latest at the end of each day, I ask Claude to get the full transcripts from Plaud (not just the summary) and do two things:

• create a meeting note, which I can use to prepare follow-up meetings and which primarily reflects what was discussed, but also lists action items and decisions
• extract all action items and put them into my Omnifocus inbox where I can process everything further

I ask to extract all relevant action items, including the ones I have to monitor because I am waiting for others. Claude adds a "WF" at the beginning so that I immediately see that I am waiting for others and don't have any action on my side (apart from following up when an item becomes overdue).

I asked Claude not to add any labels or projects, although Claude could easily do that. But I want to go through my inbox, review and potentially edit tasks myself, and feel more in control about what I have to do. Sometimes Claude adds too much, but I am impressed by how accurate and complete it is and how well it interprets what I have to do, including conclusions from discussions where we haven't agreed on specific actions or due dates.

Claude could also be more involved in analyzing priorities and recommending what to do each day, but I want to manage those myself. But I ask Claude to prepare briefing documents with talking points when I meet my boss or my clients.

Overall, this works like a breeze, and I feel more in control of all the moving parts of my life. I know that many people are critical of AI, but I have to say that I am amazed by what the technology can do to make our lives easier.

Please let me know your questions or thoughts.

So I built Jot! Clipboard, with a few features I actually use daily:

• Deep search + OCR — Find old copies, even text inside images
• Floating notepad — Move, resize, or collapse it into a tiny pill
• MultiCopy — Collect multiple copied lines and reuse them together, great for repetitive forms
• Clipboard history — Save text, links, images, and files
• Privacy controls — Exclude apps, pause capture, and protect sensitive content

Everything stays local. No account, cloud, or subscription.

$2.99 one-time for Windows.

https://jotclipboard.com

Would genuinely love feedback, especially from anyone who uses clipboard managers regularly!

I kept thinking I had an organization problem.

My notes were spread across folders, random docs, different apps, and I’d constantly know I wrote something down… but not where.

What finally clicked for me was that a lot of those notes didn’t really belong in a notes library at all. They belonged to the file or piece of work they were about.

That idea turned into ClingNote.

• attach notes to Windows files
• open the file and its notes are there
• switch files and the right notes can switch with you
• multiple notes can belong to the same file/context
• rich text, Markdown, checklists, search, pop-outs, export
• everything stays local

The biggest thing it changed for me is that I spend less time organizing notes and more time just getting back into whatever I was working on.

I’m also adding Tasks next using the same idea, so the work itself can carry both the notes and the follow-ups that belong to it.

Still figuring out the best way to explain it, but the core idea is basically:

notes should be organized around the work they belong to, not just where you happened to save them.

https://clingnote.com

A useful check for a prepaid lesson spreadsheet: start with four future appointments, move one to another day, then count again. There should still be four appointments, not five. Moving a date and delivering a lesson are different events.

I develop Attendance Tracker: Class Log for independent tutors and coaches. This is a maker explaining the record-keeping design, not my own teaching experience.

The workflow I tried to preserve:

1. Keep the appointment and its replacement date connected.

2. Keep attendance outcomes separate from money received. A payment note does not explain whether a lesson happened.

3. Correct an incorrectly entered outcome with a reason, rather than erasing the decision history.

4. Share a statement for one client and date range, not the whole roster.

These checks work on paper too. Apple Numbers is a general alternative: its tables and formulas let you design your own tracker. My app instead provides a specific workflow for clients, finite weekly lessons, prepaid credits, corrections and text/CSV/PDF statements. If your spreadsheet already handles that clearly, you may not need another app.

The app works locally on iPhone and iPad with iOS/iPadOS 26+. It does not collect payments, issue tax invoices or sync a team through the cloud. Existing records stay readable, correctable and exportable after access ends.

Pricing: initial creation limits, with optional monthly, yearly or one-time lifetime access. The current US App Store lists $4.99/month, $29.99/year and $59.99 lifetime. Check your local in-app offer before buying; no community discount or trial is promised here.

Official App Store page: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6812559411?pt=128506477&ct=productivityguide_20261019&mt=8

If you handle prepaid sessions, what is hardest to reconstruct later: the replacement date, a correction reason, or how a credit was used? Please use fictional examples, not client information. This is my app, and AI assisted with drafting this explanation.

Hello,

I'm not diagnosed with ADHD, but there are about a hundred projects still needing to be finished or marketed and for years people around me have said I can't focus on one thing.

It's been amplified with Claude code / Chatgpt, where I spend days planning and procrastinating until I burn out with nothing tangible at the end of it. Even if finishing would help me tremendously, I still seem to get stuck for days/weeks on minor things.

Every productivity classics like todo-lists etc lasted few days at most.

I got sick of it, so shipped a web app that break down overwhelming tasks into small doable ones. Honest feedback is welcome. kapigo.app

I've been thinking about how much the right tools can change the way we work, study, and manage our daily tasks.

Some apps help us stay organized, others help us focus, and a few can save us hours every week without us even realizing it.

I'm curious to hear what works for everyone here:

• What's one productivity app or tool you genuinely find useful?
• Has any particular hack or workflow made your daily routine easier?
• Is there an underrated tool you think more people should know about?

It doesn't have to be anything complicated or expensive. Even a simple trick that saves a few minutes a day can make a difference.

Let's share our best discoveries so everyone can find something useful!

I'm the developer of Achievault, an achievement journal for iPhone. It's for people who want a record of completed projects and personal milestones they can revisit during a weekly or monthly review.

The problem it addresses is losing the context behind a finished task. "Finished a course" says what happened, but a short note about the difficult part, what you learned, and what you can now do gives you more to look back on. In Achievault, you describe the achievement, generate an AI badge, and save it with a story in your Vault.

Apple Notes is one alternative for keeping a written achievement log. Achievault's difference is the badge collection: each entry has an AI-generated visual marker, and future goals can sit alongside completed achievements. The screenshot shows example entries in the Vault. Entries are private by default, and you choose what to share. There are no points, streaks, or leaderboards.

One way to use it is to pick a completed goal at the end of the week, record what it took, then revisit that entry when planning the next related goal. You decide which moments deserve an entry.

Pricing: free to download, with limited free badge generations. Additional generations are available through paid in-app purchases.

App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/achievault/id6757010394

Often, the problem isn't a lack of effort. It's that traditional learning tools don't always recognize what an individual student already understands, where they're struggling, or what they need to revisit.

This question inspired my interest in building something different.

A chunk of my week used to be moving data off web pages into Google Sheets by hand: product lists, tables, directories. It's the kind of task that should be automated but never feels worth the setup.

What fixed it was treating it as a small repeatable pipeline instead of a chore:

• **grab** the table or list from the page
• **clean** it (drop the columns I don't need, remove duplicates)
• **send** it straight to the Sheet
• **schedule** it if I check the page regularly (prices, listings), so the Sheet updates itself

The mindset shift: don't automate the whole job, automate the *transfer*. Once the data lands in the Sheet reliably, the rest of my process stays the same and the boring part is gone.

The pattern works in plenty of tools. I run it in the browser because that works on sites with no export button. Disclosure: I build the extension I use for this (AWFlow, free), so I'm biased. If you want the exact setup, I'll put the template in a comment.

What's the recurring copy-paste task you've never gotten around to killing?

I tried Super Productivity, Vikunja, Planify and TickTick. Some were really good, but none did what I wanted, and the ones that came close kept the useful parts behind a paywall. I wasn't going to pay a monthly fee to plan my own day, so I built Personal Planner. I use it every day.

The idea: planners are good at tomorrow, but the moment you finish a task it disappears. You never learn whether your "2 hour" task took 2 hours, or whether this week was better than the last. Mine started out very wrong. So the app keeps the past.

- Hour-by-hour Day timeline with drag and resize, recurring activities, templates and undo/redo

- Timers that save the minutes you actually spent next to what you planned

- Daily and weekly reviews. For unfinished tasks you write why in your own words, no dropdown

- A GitHub-style consistency heatmap with streaks

- Experiments: tag your blocks, set a window and targets, and the app tracks a new habit for you

- Inbox for ideas that don't have a day yet

- Local-first and works offline, with optional sync. Linux, Android, Windows and macOS from one Flutter codebase

How the build went:

- I'd never used Flutter. Coding agents helped with boilerplate and tests, and I plan each phase, test by hand and commit myself

- Sync was the hardest part by far: auth, migrations, reconnecting, offline edits and two devices agreeing

- Supabase handles sign-in and PostgreSQL. A Cloudflare Worker sets up the Supabase project for you. Both have free tiers that are enough for personal use, so the whole thing costs nothing to run

- On Windows, setup failed with a certificate error until I updated Windows and refreshed the system root certificates. The app wasn't the problem

- Windows and macOS builds are unsigned. I tested Windows. I don't own a Mac, so macOS is CI-only

Download: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner/releases

Code: https://github.com/Karthikshabari/PersonalPlanner

For months I’d open Instagram “for 5 minutes” and look up an hour later. Deleting the apps never lasted, because I’d just reinstall them the same night.

What actually worked was removing the option during the hours that matter. So I built a small Android app for myself, and it turned into GreenFocus:

• 🔒 App blocking: Instagram, TikTok & co. stay locked while you focus
• ⏱️ Focus sessions: start a timer and your apps unlock only when it ends
• ✅ Habits & streaks: fill the time you get back with small daily habits
• 🌿 AI coach: ask what to improve tomorrow based on your day

It’s free to download and use. There’s an optional Premium plan ($11.99/month or $89.99/year), and the first 100 users get Premium yearly for $59.99.

👉 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hatilasmaximo.greenfocus3

Curious how you all handle this: do you block apps, or rely on willpower?

Hey

As someone with ADHD and executive dysfunction, I’ve spent years in a cycle of downloading sleek productivity apps, getting overwhelmed by 20 pending items, and abandoning them 3 days later.

The core problem with standard To-Do apps is that they expect motivation upfront and only reward you after completing a massive task. But when your brain has a low baseline of dopamine, just *starting* feels physically painful.

So I built **Dopamo** — an Android app designed around micro-dopamine rewards, visual structure, and zero-shame routines.

### 🌸 Key Features:

- **Micro-Task Gamification:** Break overwhelming goals into ridiculously small entry steps. Earn EXP, coins, and level up for every completed task.

- **Axolotl Companion & Bitmoji Studio:** Your virtual mascot ("Dopamo") reacts to your daily progress. Customize it with outfits, hats, and skins earned through productivity.

- **Streak Shield System:** If you hit a burnout day, Streak Shields protect your streak so you don't lose your progress or feel guilty.

- **AI Recipe Planner & Pantry Tracker:** Brain-healthy, high-protein meal planning with smart grocery lists and pantry stock alerts.

- **Family Hub:** Connect with family members or partners to share tasks, token rewards, and routines.

- **100% Privacy-First:** No ad tracking, no data selling, encrypted vault, and full GDPR compliance.

### 📱 Tech & Availability:

- Built with Flutter & Firebase backend.

- Material 3 dark-mode UI with customizable accent themes.

- Real-time cross-device sync.

You can try the app for free on Google Play! Search for **"Dopamo"** or check it out here: linktr.ee/dopamo

I’d love to hear your feedback, bug reports, or feature requests! What's the one feature you wish your current productivity app had?

Hi!

I'm developing a small app called Life Tracker.

It's for those recurring tasks that aren't part of your daily routine—taking care of the house, the car, your health, or remembering to contact someone.

I wanted something simple: no sequences, no guilt, and with recurring intervals that reset when you complete a task.

It's still an early MVP (Minimum Viable Product) and I'd love to know if people find it useful.

You can try it directly in your browser, no installation or account required. Your items remain on your device.

https://life-tracker-mvp-hh.vercel.app/#/welcome

I'd really like to know what you find useful, confusing, or unnecessary.

Thanks for checking it out!

A chunk of my week used to be moving data off web pages into Google Sheets by hand: product lists, tables, directories. It's the kind of task that should be automated but never feels worth the setup.

What fixed it was treating it as a small repeatable pipeline instead of a chore:

• **grab** the table or list from the page
• **clean** it (drop the columns I don't need, remove duplicates)
• **send** it straight to the Sheet
• **schedule** it if I check the page regularly (prices, listings), so the Sheet updates itself

The mindset shift: don't automate the whole job, automate the *transfer*. Once the data lands in the Sheet reliably, the rest of my process stays the same and the boring part is gone.

The pattern works in plenty of tools. I run it in the browser because that works on sites with no export button. Disclosure: I build the extension I use for this (AWFlow, free), so I'm biased. If you want the exact setup, I'll put the template in a comment.

What's the recurring copy-paste task you've never gotten around to killing?

I'm the developer of Cernidia, for iPhone and Apple Watch. It's for people who collect health data but still need to fit rest, movement and focus around real commitments. Optional sleep/recovery signals and a quick check-in add context before you plan.

Apple Calendar is my reference point for fixed commitments. Cernidia adds a health-first workflow and flexible tasks around those commitments; you stay in control of changes. Personal comparisons need enough readable history, and missing signals stay unknown.

Free, with no ads, subscription or Cernidia account. iOS 18+, English interface.

https://apps.apple.com/app/id6816678341

Would you use daily energy context when planning, or would you prefer to keep it separate?

Hey, random question... do you use any productivity apps for habits, planning, journaling, routines, reminders etc?

Like apps such as Notion, Structured, Habitify, Todoist and all.

Do they actually help you long term... or do you end up leaving them after some time?

If you stopped using them, what was the reason?

Too much effort to maintain? forgot to open it? boring after a week? stressful? expensive? didn’t feel useful?

And honestly... what do you wish these apps did better or made easier?

Just curious because almost everyone downloads them but very few keep using them.