I Bought Apps Thinking They Make Me More Productive — They Didn’t!

I paid $80 for a To-Do app, hoping I would do my task, but I didn’t . The clutter still got in my way.

As a tech enthusiast with immense admiration for beauty, I steer towards functional products with beautiful designs.

One of the biggest mistakes I’ve made in life was thinking I could become productive and retain (certain) aesthetics.

Believing that macOS is superior to Windows or Linux because apps look better on it formed a set of wrong opinions.

A computer is a computer. No matter the make.

I can add all my tasks in a text file and use it on basically any computer with a text editor. I don’t need a task manager.

Having buyer’s remorse is one thing. Having an opinion on a product after months of use is another; Fortunately, I formed a perspective on the latter.

I understood most of my choices were a reflection of my insecurities and the desire for perfection.

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1. Task Managers and To-Do Apps

The amount of money I paid for task managers made me sad. I’ve bought tens of task managers for Mac, iPad, and iPhone.

I spent hundreds of dollars to feel adequate in my quest to check off my overdue tasks and become (or feel) productive.

After years of procrastination, I discovered the primary problem is me, not the apps.

Credit where credit’s due, their minimal design was inspirational and a temporary boost to do some work, but only to some extent.

No matter how often I changed my To-Do apps, one element remained unchanged: Me.

I used to create and manage tasks on Apple Reminders. However, after following my perfectionist desire, I found another app that cost around $80 for all my devices.

I was absolutely fine with Apple Reminders, but I thought this one would make me more productive as it had more features and a cleaner design.

No matter what I did, the fact remained unchanged: I’m still me, and it’s the app that’s only different.

Fortunately, a therapist helped me notice what I couldn’t correctly see and I had a massive realisation:

When I take responsibility for my actions, knowing that perfectionism leads to a desolate place dry of perfection, then I can grow.

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2. Note & Second-Brain Apps

There’s a surplus of apps for organising notes and documents.

This is yet another trap that I and many others have fallen into. Plenty of other people already use Note-Taking apps that they don’t need.

I’m not trying to make a blanket statement. This is just my opinion on the matter regarding (most) document management apps.

The simplest way to manage notes and documents is to put them in different folders and organise them by a naming system that follows a rule.

That’s it! You don’t need Notion or Craft or Obsidian to organise your documents.

For Apple users, the free option would be to utilise the Apple Notes. It’s free, fast with plenty of useful features you find third-party apps.

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3. Email Clinets

I don’t get people who pay $30 each month to access their GMail account on a web app with features only useful to certain C-level managers.

Owning an email account is basically free. Plenty of websites (including the provider) offer great dashboards to access them. There’s also the Apple Mail.

For most people, paying a subscription for third-party email clients just to access AI features and generate emails is redundant and impractical.

I’m sure there’s a great use for corportations that require automation and AI-generated content to accelerate their work, but for the rest, I find such apps expensive with designs that lack a humane design.

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There are plenty more apps that I wouldn’t recommend, for example:

Calendar apps: Apple and Google Calendar are free and work great.
AI Wrappers: Most LLMs (such as ChatGPT) have official clients.
Photo Gallery: The Apple (or Google) Photos apps work well.
Third-Party Browsers: Safari and Chrome work great on most devices.
Microsoft Office suite: You can use Apple Pages, Numbers, etc.
Bookmark Managers: You can use Safari Bookmarks (or Google Chrome) with their Save-Article feature.
Grammar Correction: You can use free AI models, or Apple Intelligence. I suggest writing with mistakes rather than using AI.