I have a thing for using apps that seemingly make my life easier, but which ultimately just take a large chunk out of my day. And I mean every day.
Here’s an example: A few days ago I was notified by Remember the Milk, my goto todo-list app, that my pro account is about to run out. So, being the fickle customer that I am, I started checking out similar apps, to see whether some of them were cheaper (not that their price tag of $25 is exceedingly high) or had more features (of which I usually use about 10%) or were maybe a tad prettier (yeah, sorry).
After a few hours of research, I managed to whittle down the number of contenders to just two more. There’s Todoist and there’s Wunderlist.
Now, in my heart of hearts I know that in the end, it doesn’t really matter what app I use. As long as I can put in some tasks and then mark them as done, all is well.
But I get easily dazzled by the promise of work done more efficiently, so I suddenly think that having a desktop app for Windows 10 is super important (Wunderlist and Todoist have those, RTM doesn’t).
Or I can’t get over the fact how smooth Todoist’s natural language processing is, even though I’ve never actually wanted to add a task that said: “Pick up my dry-cleaning every second Monday starting next Monday” (Todoist would totally know how to parse this, RTM and Wunderlist would struggle).
Or I’m thinking that Evernote, the heap onto which I throw everything, hoping it’ll all just magically not turn into utter chaos (it doesn’t), needs to be integrated with my todo-list. RTM has Evernote integration, and even though I get easily confused by having tasks both in Evernote and in RTM, and have therefore rarely used it, I suddenly think I probably couldn’t live without it anymore (Wunderlist and Todoist integrate with Evernote via intermediaries, like IFTTT, but that’s a tad cumbersome).
Now, all this research into a little app that could probably be replaced by some pen and paper, but I’m not even done yet. Since I’ve been an RTM customer for a few years now, I’ve grown somewhat attached to the company. They’re those good people from Australia who started out with this dream of creating a great todo-list app and who am I to stand in their way over lack of a Windows 10 client?
Wunderlist, on the other hand, was bought out by Microsoft recently, and if the purported numbers are correct, they’re now millionaires. I don’t think they’ll need my money (which might be the reason why their free plan has all the features of their pro plan, minus some extra wallpapering. I give them that).
So in the end, I’m back where I started. I’ll stick with RTM, despite their shocking lack of a desktop client (seriously, what an oversight). I’ll pay them their money to get all the pro features (of which I’ll use 10%). And I’ll feel good about it, because I know it’s the right thing to do.
I think.
PS: If you can’t decide on a new todo-list app, drop me a note. I now know everything about them. Everything.
