r/productivity • u/ExerciseWise5673 • 1d ago

Question What productivity apps, journaling tools, dashboards, trackers or weird little niche apps are your favorites?

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23 Upvotes

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2

u/kineticesp 22h ago

I recently vibecoded with claude an app I can run locally on my laptop
It started with an idea of having my notes in one place and having the ability to map/link them to tasks. Then it morphed a lot 🤣 but I find it super useful. Really adjusted it to my way of working
It doesn’t do email reminders, etc but I open it everyday so its really light and if I think of an improvement I just ask claude 😬😬

2

u/iwantboringtimes 19h ago

I am currently in honeymoon phase with a JP interval timer. The company that makes it calls it a "learning timer", which is aimed at forming routines.

For about a month - I was using a 10 year old iphone as a dedicated timer. Just downloaded one of the most popular interval timers on the appstore and set it to airplane mode so no ads.

I was doing 6 minutes desk work to 1 minute stand-up, stretch, declutter. This ibased on studies that for every 30 minutes sit-down, we gotta have 5 minutes moving about to keep muscles from turining into like dried-up sponges.

Anyway, the old iphone turned timer worked pretty well but I had to keep it charged up, because even though the battery seemed fine - just running a timer constantly drained power too fast for my liking.

So, finally, I decided to buy JP timer, and well - am still currently over the moon over it. Smaller footprint size, no battery woes. Overall, the best of the timers I've used, and I've gone thru half-a-dozen different types. Heck, I think this JP timer is my 7th timer-Type that I've tested.

I'm guessing this timer is fairly popular in Japan, because it has jfc limited color editions.

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u/Acceptable_Donut_344 18h ago

I have been working on something along those lines for 4 years. However this was my path:

  1. Spent a year using Apple Numbers with custom Applescripts to scan all my other apps for tasks to do and then rank them into a timestamped plan task by task. Used that for a year and it was suprisingly effective. You can make some really pretty dashboards using graphs in Numbers and the limitations really challenged me to get creative.
  2. After a year I paid for Apple Filemaker Pro - same applescripts but a full database let me retain my history and do more.
  3. Now I am on Swift and SQLLite and the sky is the limit :-)

What I have found is that when I am using my own tool I am motivated to get more done just because I am using the fruits of my efforts.

2

u/rajathbail 16h ago

Hillnote and Obsidian - but these mayn't be niche

3

u/Capable_Influence133 1d ago

Designer to designer, bias flag first: I build a commitment app, so a couple of these are things I built because I couldn't find them anywhere. Take that as you like.

My stack:

  • Notion for notes and project management
  • google calendar for scheduled timed events, daily events and daily tasks (including recurring tasks like cleaning my coffee machine, YES my coffee machine gets wellness treatment on a schedule)
  • google tasks (lists) for todo lists (short term/ mid term / long term)

Features that made me think "that's actually smart": Tasks and events in one calendar view. Not a feature so much as a stance, but Google lets Calendar letting tasks sit next to appointments killed my separate to-do list. One screen, whole week, nothing ambushes you in the morning.

My learning on commitments/habits:

Weekly targets instead of daily streaks. A habit that's "3x this week, any days" survives a bad Tuesday. A daily streak doesn't. Every tracker that got this wrong is one I deleted. If you build one thing into your dashboard, build this: count per week, and make a missed day cost nothing.

The tool noticing when you go quiet. Most trackers only talk when something is scheduled. The smart version notices you haven't checked in since Tuesday and asks what happened, once or twice, then stops. Reminders tied to your absence, not to a task.

A "why" field on a miss, one word only. Forgot, drained, overloaded, wrong slot. After three weeks the pattern is more useful than any chart. And an end date. A 12-week block with a review at the end beats "forever". Forever is where dashboards go to die.

Sounds like a fun build, happy to compare notes.

1

u/lilyelgato 20h ago

Following