Posted by zesfy 10/23/2024
I’m the founder of Zesfy, a productivity app that I’ve been developing over the past few years. It’s designed to seamlessly integrate your tasks with your calendar, allowing you to transform your to-do lists into actionable events in just seconds. Here are some of its key features:
- Task Progress: Automatically update your progress based on subtasks completed
- Step: Create step-by-step breakdown of the subtask
- Target: Organize tasks with due date
- Session: Insert multiple tasks to calendar event
- Space: Filter event from specific sets of calendars
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/zesfy-planner-calendar/id64799...
Maybe it's just me but I found the app controls to be way too small, too many onboarding walk through steps and way too much information density in the Task screen.
Progress, Highlight, Due Date, different lists - it's a lot.
It seems to me you wanted to pack a punch, but it's so dense and so many steps involved that it falls into the productivity fallacy for me: It's increasing my executive disfunction and makes it harder and cumbersome to add tasks instead of reducing it.
One app that really works for me, does one thing and does it well is for example Due: https://apps.apple.com/de/app/due-erinnerungen-timer/id39001...
Not affiliated in any way with the app or it's creator.
When it comes to apps like these, less is more for me.
One huge insight was a notation to keep track of blocked tasks (usually by other people) and what/whom to "poll" periodically to check the status.
Ideally I would like to have git available on iPhone and Apple tablets then I could use my repo that I have notes in on laptops and android phones.
Well I am pissed by poor text editing on iPhone anyway so I will go back to android and then I can go back to text file with git on private repo.
I'd like to introduce you to Working Copy
- https://apps.apple.com/us/app/working-copy-git-client/id8966... - https://workingcopy.app
* read and write access to ALL gists
* read and write access to ALL repos, public and private
* read and write access to SSH public keys
That's a no from me.
It has never made sense to me that Apple has a separate "Reminders" app that's completely divorced from the Calendar.
I don't want stuff in multiple apps. I tend to disable notifications very aggressively because otherwise my phone is "dinging" every few minutes. I would prefer that all my notifications for tasks/due dates/appointments come from the Calendar.
Breaking down tasks into actionable steps
Separating things out that really have a firm due date from those that really need to be taken care of but not by a specific date
I also keep a maybe someday list of things that may never happen and may outlive there being a good reason to make happen. I did what I liked to refer to as a value renovation project on my house this summer and there were a number of projects whose cost and/or effort just exceeded their utility.
Checklists in Apple Notes also works well for this if you’ve already bought into that ecosystem. I only wish it could track list items, so I could get basic stats on velocity.
I'm working on my solution to this, that I call a "process manager." You have prompts that are composed of the prompt text, a recurrence pattern, and some prefill or "carry over" state. Essentially, a human version of a Turing machine.
Each day has a list, of the prompts that are due to show up that day. You can print it from your phone, and keep the paper folded and always with you.
Processes > projects. Our life is naturally process based. If you use food as an example, it's not enough to go grocery shopping once or make a meal once. Instead, "staying fed" is a never ending process. You can subordinate those tasks to that process, though.
So processes like that need to be managed, and currently there aren't any tools for that I know of.
I launched it on Testflight yesterday if anyone wants to give a spin: https://testflight.apple.com/join/2VNkUqy9
I am planing on adding more powerful features, like the ability to script the prompt instead of having it be static text.
Nestful is built on a different but similar premise called Spontaneous Productivity:
With that said, Reminders remains just a tad basic for me for full life/project management. I just need deeper nesting! Currently in "My Lists" you can only go 2-deep. A folder then a list. I need folders inside folders.
I've been playing around with Twos App (https://www.twosapp.com/) for a month which replicates Bullet Journaling. But it is too complicated I think for my needs. I don't need my notes/journals inside my todo's app.
Eg it’s easy to know when something’s due, but really hard to know when to work on what —- what to do when. Saying “schedule easily” sort of buries the lede.
I wonder if a leading panel talking about the frustrating churn of planning ( implicitly trading the urgent against the important) would activate more people and also provide the right keywords for finding the app via search
They look very similar.
I liked the on-boarding. I don't like the first screen being a pitch for a subscription, but I get that you probably need to sell hard to get subscriptions.
I've recently launched a small app on the app store and it's no where near as polished! How long have you been working on it?
I get your point about the subscription screen. It's something that I've been experimenting for a while. I found many users activate the subscription during the onboarding, that's why I keep it.
I've been working on this app for almost 5 years at this point. Also, congrats for the app. Feel free to share the link, I'd love to check it out.
I think this is the toughest part for me as a technically inclines person - selling. It's something I want to become more comfortable with.
> almost 5 years at this point
Well done persisting. That is a lot of hard work! Any tips on keeping up motivation? I've been working on my app for only a few months now and had to dig deep a few times to keep going.
> Feel free to share the link, I'd love to check it out.
Thanks, I'm still working on making it a bit more marketable, but here it is: https://dingdongdoorbell.com/
But I'm not interested in another rent payment, full stop.
- Org-mode allows you to annotate tasks with DEADLINE: and SCHEDULED:, they will show up twice on your agenda. The deadline will have a countdown date.
- Things tasks don't appear until they are scheduled (⌘S), but you can additionally specify a deadline (⌘⇧D), and they will appear with an "X days til due" label.
I'm planning to add supports for iPad and Mac in the future, probably PWA too if there is enough demand for it.