Finally a Task manager I can stick with?
My business partner from FourteenFish, Phil, would always laugh when I would very seriously and enthusiastically announce I was trying a new Todo manager. He was right, I did have a problem. I love trying new Task managers, Note taking & Calendar apps. Each time I would be excited that this was the one that would help me be more organised and that I could stick with. Each time it tended to last a few weeks (maybe a month or so) before I would default back to a combination of my Inbox, Calendar and Evernote*.
Then I read a book on the Bullet Journal Method. This was great. A flexible system where I could bring together day to day Todo lists, track Habits, my Calendar and Gratitude Journalling. I stuck with this method for several years and my notebooks came everywhere with me.
What always niggled at me though was that is was a paper solution (though the feel of writing with pen on paper definitely has advantages) and if I wanted to refer back to something it could be time consuming to find it. It also just didn't feel write for someone who creates software for a living.
In the spring of 2023 I left FourteenFish to start again on my own. 6 months later I realised I should build a system to try and solve my own problem, a flexible system to organise my life, set and work towards goals, and help me be more productive. That is the aim of Improval.
Like the Bullet Journal method I needed the system to be able to adapt as I organise myself differently depending on what I am working on and like the Bullet Journal method to bring all the different aspects together.
As a Todo manager Improval isn't anything particularly ground breaking. There are some neat features such as linking Todos to Goals or Projects, creating Children Todo lists, and having Todos that wait for other Todos to be completed before appearing. Despite that there will be other Task managers that have more features. The reason I have never been able to stick with them is because they were still a separate system. They might include integrations but that still felt separate and inconvenient.
I have been using Improval now every day for the last 5 months. I am building it to add more features everyday. I hope you might also find it useful and if you do give it a try please do send any feedback.
* I stopped using Evernote about a year ago - the last few years Evernote felt chaotic to me and their prices went up which felt a bit jarring when I felt there were better options available. In fact I have been enjoying using the Apple Notes app for all things note related. I use it with the Apple Pencil for meeting notes and planning but also for scanned documents, written notes etc (though I realise no use if you are not an Apple fan like me).