How Modern Task Management Fails
3 Simple Mistakes
- at -
3 Levels of Design
Surface Level - the Color RED
The two most popular, most well-known task management apps (Todoist and Wunderlist) have built their brands on the color red, but for all those clicks in the app store (red stands out more than other colors), they're making their users less focused. Red is the only color that has been demonstrated empirically to hinder performance in accuracy, memory, and focus.
Feature Level - No Reset Button
Customer retention is one of the most important factors in the success of a productivity app, yet the biggest players don't make it easy to come back after a break. Instead of a simple process to get back on track, users are confronted with a wall of incomplete and outdated tasks that signal a lot of work to be done before starting again.
Information Level - Prioritizing Tasks Over Time
Even if all their issues were fixed and missing features implemented, every one of the major systems has a problem that goes straight to the core of its design - time.
We use productivity apps because they help us get things done more efficiently (that is, in less time), but their genre is called task management, not time management. Time is treated as metadata to tasks when they should share at least an equal footing.
Some systems (Asana and OmniFocus) have realized this and tacked on band-aid features, but they can't stop themselves from being about tasks without redesigning their core systems. Time will have to wait its turn.
Why It's not Going to Get Better
Task management is the quintessential value proposition of the productivity industry, and one of the key needs of every ADHDer.
The simple, foundational problems that occur at every level of productivity app design demonstrate that the well-paid designers of these systems either don't know about them - or don't care. You may have noticed that the issues I outlined above are not exclusive to those with ADHD, but that raises a question: why aren't companies competing on this basis?
My hypothesis is that non-ADHD people don't feel the productivity pain point as easily - they don't need more than simple task organization and calendar-syncing, and those who do (entrepreneurs and other makers) tend to build their own systems anyway, usually on top of the existing ones. Thus, Todoist and its competitors provide the basics casual users demand and a canvas for makers to build their personal setups.
Modern productivity apps are not systems, they're tools - they compete on UI and flexibility, not UX and results.
The result is a sea of beautiful, general, shallow apps trying to appeal to everyone. In the end, productivity has no incentive to change, and ADHDers get left in the dust.