I am not a huge fan of calendars or day planners. My dad tried to gift me a day planner at age 14. It didn’t go well, as the moment ended when my dad chucked the day planner into the trash. As a teenager, I was not about to look like an overachieving adult. No sir. I wanted to fit in, to be cool. No one I knew carried a day planner, and I wasn’t about to start the trend. He took my rejection personally. I was too immature to see or understand how a clunky notebook would help me. The tabs, dates, and general nerdiness of the “Day Planner” were dorky and uncool.

Fast forward to being a grown-ass adult, and I’m scouring the internet for a day planner/productivity booster. I still harbor reservations about such tools. They are only as good as the person willing to use them. (The best tool or software is useless if unused. Big Tech spends billions every year to drive user adoption. The more a company uses a product, the harder it is to make a change.) I know my choice of which app is less important than my dedication to using it.

All of the personal productivity apps are similar. They start with easy to achieve goals and build on those easy wins. Using quotes, social status, and notifications, each system is designed to keep users focused on their goals. The science is solid. Start small, reward achievement, repeat. Most apps give the user simple choices in problematic areas- sleep is a big one. And, they all offer a free trial week. I downloaded a few before I settled on Productive. We’ll see how it goes.

My goal is to make some major shifts in how I spend my time. I want to be the most productive in the areas that matter most. Turns out, I’m encountering the most resistance in those areas. So, time to shift my approach. I often underestimate how practical solutions can remove old hurdles. Perhaps an app designed to track my goals is needed? I don’t know if it’ll work, but I’m will to try.