Why I created my own Productivity tool
The reason I created ThenNext was very simple. I could do it better!
The reason I created ThenNext was very simple. I have always been looking for an application that would improve my productivity. Over the years, I've tried many different solutions, and none worked for me. This left me with only one solution: Create one that does!
But let's start at the beginning.
The year 2018
Seven years ago, I created the first version. And I will not cover that one, the second, or the third one because they were nothing special. However, this changed with the fourth iteration. Version 4 worked for me. It had a few problems, but this was the first version that didn't drive me mad after a month of heavy use. It was imperfect, but this was the version that worked for me.
I am a chaotic person by nature, even though I put a lot of effort into organizing everything. This, to the dismay of my friends and coworkers. The problem, they say, is that I do too much. So, it's natural for me to have many varied things that must be done. I highly value staying productive: Doing things that bring value. However, due to the amount of tasks, I highly value getting them done because if there is one thing worse than a lot of tasks, it's a lot of unfinished tasks.
The term productivity is about producing. And that was the problem I had with most of the applications. They were very good at inputting tasks, objectives, goals, etc. But they were highly unsuitable in keeping you moving towards a result. They heavily emphasize a rigid structure, even though the real world is a gigantic and complicated chaotic mess. There is always that moment where the structure you had suddenly no longer works.
Most days started with me rearranging my task list, only to find out that by the time I had organized my task list, half the morning was up, and I had received emails that informed me that half of my tasks were no longer needed, and priorities had shifted again. After I updated everything, it was lunchtime, and I had to get in meetings to explain why the delivery date had moved, which resulted in the deliverables. This is not strange, but it becomes annoying if you have more than a few tasks. Organizing ten tasks is easy, but it becomes more than a hassle when you have more tasks and need to allocate resources.
During that period, I looked for various solutions until I came across an application called TaskWarrior. Initially, it looked similar to every other solution I tried. The most significant advantage was that it worked through the command line. Since I use the command line a lot, it was always quick and easy to use for me. With a single command, I could search, create, update, delete, and complete tasks. It was great until I had too many tasks.
This became very noticeable in the command line because I had to reach for the mouse to scroll up to the tasks off-screen. And at one point, I had to scroll 4 to 5 pages up. Fortunately, TaskWarrior does have a great feature, and that is that you can hide tasks until specific dates. But then again, so do other applications. And then, I noticed another feature in TaskWarrior that changed everything for me. You can make one task depend on another task. That way, I didn't have to keep updating the due dates of tasks because someone else was late.
Once a task is finished, it will make the other tasks visible. It didn't become visible until you finished that other task. This is what got me thinking: Until this point, I had always been busy organizing tasks so that I knew what needed to be done, but what if I could hide them due to their relation with another task? So, I made heavy use of this dependency system. It was a bit of pain because I had to remember the IDs, but after a single morning, I only had a few tasks that required my attention. And although the world remained a complicated, chaotic mess, I no longer spent hours organizing the day's workload. However, TaskWarrior had a few issues. It heavily depends on remembering IDs, which I would forget after seconds. Due to it being local, it was hard to collaborate with it. The lack of a nice user interface also made it hard for me to search for hidden tasks. I had to show everything or find some keyword to make it appear.
That was 7 years ago. I also wanted to have something I could show other people. And although I was very comfortable in the technical world of command lines, most people won't be. So, with version 4, I created something similar to TaskWarrior but more accessible, with a heavy emphasis on hiding tasks that were not important right now. And although it worked well, I found two problems. First, I disliked turning off the filter to show all the unfinished tasks. And for some reason, I kept forgetting the order in which tasks need to depend on one another. This often results in keeping the later task in view while hiding the tasks that should be done first.
Imagine not knowing how to use your own application even though it was not complex. I tried fixing it, and although the application was visually appealing, it just kept getting confused and frustrated. It was no fun seeing a list of 5 items expanded to 100 because you had to turn off the filters.
And in the end I got so frustrated with how I kept doing it wrong I stopped working on it.
Now let's move forward 7 years
The start of my own company
A few months ago, I decided to start my own business. I set a clear goal from the beginning: to develop an application that would make it easy to organize work with as little overhead as possible.
I've always believed that building an application is not a simple process, going from A to Z. It's building, testing, going back to the drawing board, trying again, giving up, expressing frustration, and restarting from scratch until you finally figure out what makes a product good. So, it took me five versions to create something I'm pleased with. It's simple and straightforward.
I have already used it for a few months, and it kept me focused and on track for what I needed to do. I spend a few minutes at most organizing my workday.
This is because ThenNext tries to keep you focused on getting a task done instead of keeping you busy with organizing and planning. If there's one thing I've learned over all these years, it's that planning is always changing. It's never as simple as "We'll make a schedule for this week, and the schedule will be perfect and require no changes."
There are certainly methods to make that possible, but let's face it: Most people and companies never actually do that unless they put a lot of time and energy into it. I know this because I was often the one who had to do that kind of planning. ThenNext is different in that regard. It doesn't provide some strict structure. All it does is make certain you have a task that can be worked on.
The solution: Make it visual! Funnily enough, I already did this seven years ago. Back then, I had post-its all over the wall telling me when to do what, and I moved them around as I saw fit. Now, there were three problems with that.
- Those post-it bills didn't stick after a while and fell down. They regularly fell off the wall.
- My wall had limited space
- The wall contained all of the tasks
In developing version 5, I introduced a map on which you can place things. It is similar to the Kanban concept, where you have different columns and swim lanes. But if I'm very honest, that doesn't work. There have always been situations where a task doesn't belong in one column or another or needs to be in three swim lanes at once.
Thus, ThenNext allows you to place tasks anywhere on a board. It also allows you to have multiple boards where the exact same tasks can be placed while keeping their connection. Originally, I thought that eventually, I would need to introduce Kanban, but when I started using the application itself, I noticed I had zero need for that.
The position at which tasks are placed determines so much. If a task was at the top, then that was more important than the task way down. A task on the left side often needs to be done earlier than on the right. There comes this strange awareness that you will move the tasks toward the left as they are being picked up, and it feels like the tasks are moving toward you instead of you forcing them to go from one state to another.
I was always working on my current task or creating a task that had to be done first, then linking the tasks together so that the other task was hidden. Then, I started working on that task, and once I completed it, the old task reappeared. I then moved it to the left as I added the additional tasks that needed to be done. This moving around and the automatic hiding quickly became my favorite functionality.
This product works well for me. But I also did some research, trying to find out what allows someone to be productive. And it's pretty funny, nay painful, how much time and energy has been put into coming up with systems that apply a rigid structure to scheduling, which introduces additional overhead.
The answer is very simple. Just make sure that you're constantly working on what needs to be done effectively. And don't spend your time attempting to organize when you could be working. Obviously, there is a little bit more to it. But if you have ever spent a lot of time planning only to realize that your planning is invalid, you know how frustrating it is to go back to the drawing board to start over.
The nice thing is that ThenNext, as it is now, is actually not yet finished. There are still a few features that I would really like to have in there. And one of them makes me nervous. Because if this feature works, there is a good chance it will become the killer feature that the competition will attempt to copy. 😁
