Five Productivity Apps to Kick-Start the New Year

[MacRumors]

Apps can play a pivotal role in helping to reach new goals, form habits, or simply improve personal productivity – here's five you should consider adopting going into 2024.

Each app we've chosen for this list has a unique ability to aid Apple device users in various aspects of personal and professional development. From sophisticated task management to habit formation, these apps offer a wide range of functionalities tailored to meet the diverse needs of users seeking to make the most out of the upcoming year.

• Things 3 ($9.99 for iPhone and Apple Watch, $19.99 for iPad, and $49.99 for Mac): Things 3 is a popular task manager designed for Apple devices, offering a more robust feature set compared to Apple's default Reminders app. It stands out for its elegant and user-friendly interface and powerful features like project planning, deadlines, Markdown support, and more. These capabilities make it an outstanding tool for anyone looking to bring more structure to the tasks in their personal and professional life at the start of the new year.
• Obsidian (free): Obsidian is a versatile Markdown note-taking application that surpasses the capabilities of Apple Notes with its distinctive approach to personal knowledge management and plug-ins. Unlike most note-taking apps, Obsidian specializes in linking thoughts and ideas through a network of interconnected notes, creating a personal knowledge base that grows and evolves over time. Obsidian's ability to map out and visually connect goals, plans, and ideas could be incredibly valuable going into the new year.
• Streaks ($4.99): Streaks is a habit-forming app designed to help users establish and maintain good habits by leveraging the psychological power of "streaks" or consecutive days of completing a specific task. What sets Streaks apart is its focus on consistency and incremental progress, encouraging users to build small, daily habits of their choosing that lead to significant long-term changes in behavior – perfect for sticking to those tricky New Year's resolutions.
• Fantastical (free, "Premium" subscription available): Fantastical is a calendar application known for its superior functionality and user-friendly interface, distinguishing it from the default Calendar app. It offers a range of features that enhance scheduling and time management, such as natural language parsing and a highly customizable view that integrates tasks and reminders alongside calendar events. This makes Fantastical a perfect tool for anyone seeking to start the new year with better time management.
• ChatGPT (free, "Plus" subscription available): ChatGPT is a conversational AI tool that offers users an interactive platform for various tasks and queries. It can provide assistance across a wide range of areas, such as generating creative ideas, offering productivity tips, helping with language learning, or even providing motivation and mental wellness advice. ChatGPT's capacity to provide instant, informed responses on a diverse range of topics makes it an excellent tool for anyone seeking a reliable and intelligent digital assistant to enhance their daily productivity or learning.

Are there any other productivity apps that you'd recommend to start the new year? Let us know in the comments.

Article Link: Five Productivity Apps to Kick-Start the New Year

 

[JanoschR]

For Pomodoro, I use Focus all the time:

‎Focus - Productivity Timer

‎Focus is the most elegant and professional productivity timer that helps you to get more work done. Available for iPhone, iPad, Mac, Apple Watch and Apple Vision Pro! Move Towards a Happier, Healthier, and More Productive Workday Focus lets you break down your work time into smaller chunks...

apps.apple.com

 

[Artemis70]

I used to have Fantastical, until they moved all of the most interesting features to the premium subscription. I have no problem paying for premium, and do for many apps. But the price for the Fantastical premium subscription was too high (for me) given the benefits.

 

[tomsch]

I am using Formed and Solid Calendar from Solid App Link
Especially Formed is amazing and all the apps are just a one time payment. Simple but amazing UI and they have enough features. Take a look at Formed!

 

[m53rd]

ChatGPT's capacity to provide instant, informed responses on a diverse range of topics makes it an excellent tool for anyone seeking a reliable and intelligent digital assistant to enhance their daily productivity or learning

That’s an interesting way to spell “hit-or-miss.”

 

[Apple_Robert]

I really miss the Fantastical calendar on my phone and watch. Ever since their debacle with moving to sub, I stopped using them.

Streaks is simlple but works. I don't care for their orange layout.

MR, you should have mentioned Calendar 366. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calendar-366-events-tasks/id1265892516

 

[DFZD]

Microsoft Copilot is out now as a standalone app, considering that it offers GPT4 and Image Creation for free, there’s no reason to use ChatGPT Free anymore.

 

[fernelius]

OmniFocus is a great app, too, for managing projects and tasks for those needing more advanced features. They just came out with a significant update that might be worth a review. I’ve been using it for many years.

 

[H_D]

Let me add a few, maybe someone finds some of these helpful
GoodTask
Quite the best task manager if you want to use Apple Reminders and Calendar, like different and super-individual views and can manage a bit of a learning curve. Great widgets, a very nice next-days-views, week, day etc. Superflexible with quick actions to move an event an hour or a day or ... whatever you like, add tags, change the status and so on. Really amazing that no one mentions this, it is the tool I keep coming back to, especially as it has a two-way sync with the Apple-(i)OS-Reminder. So shared ToDo-Lists do work, you can use Siri with Reminders and all that. The only thing I am missing is a duration per task and the ability to automagically plan the tasks for the day à la Butleroy, Sorted3 and Motionapp.

To Do List, Task Manager & Planner app based on Apple's Reminders and Calendars | GoodTask

To Do List, Task Manager & Planner app based on Apple's Reminders and Calendars | GoodTask

goodtaskapp.com

Structured and Sorted:
Structured is simply visually super, it's just fun to see this, well, structured view of the day. Amazingly nice developer and really a joy to watch this grow. My problem with the app is that you cannot move multiple tasks, handling a lot of ToDos is no fun. Sorted3 is not quite as visually wonderful, but a great app to organize your tasks. It was the tool I used for my own tasks before I went back to GoodTasks in order to get a two-way-sync with Reminders. Both of these do sync with Calendar and Reminders, but import the Tasks from Reminders instead of keeping them synced. That is, all of your tasks vanish from the Apple App. Apart from that, Sorted is amazing and Structured is really really neat and fun.

Structured - Daily Planner

Structured combines your calendars and tasks. Set a time and duration for everything you need to do and get a visual timeline of your day, plus see where you have time to take a break.

structured.app

Sorted³ – Hyper-schedule your entire day in one place

Sorted³ combines your tasks, calendar events and notes into a unified timeline so you can hyper-schedule your entire day in one place.

www.sortedapp.com

Ora:
If you need something bigger, along the Lines of Wrike/Kanban/Timetracking, give Ora a Spin. It offers almost any functionality you can wish for for bigger team projects and the pricing of this mostly browser-based Software is very fair, also it works quite well on the iPad in Safari (which most other web-based Project Softwares don't). This is under the radar of many folks I know and really the only thing lacking is deep OS-integration, which none of these web-based solutions offer.

Ora: Get more done. With your team.

A task manager that works wonders. Chat, plan, and execute with your team. Make every task count. Sign up for Ora for free today!

ora.pm

 

[Capeto]

OmniFocus just released their 4.0 update. For anyone who is into GTD or wants a serious task manager, I hugely recommend it.

Streaks is simlple but works. I don't care for their orange layout.

Agreed, Streaks is great for habit tracking. You can change the layout colors as well as the app icon to something that better suits your style

 

[thebmall]

ChatGPT. Woof.

 

[Apple_Robert]

OmniFocus is a great app, too, for managing projects and tasks for those needing more advanced features. They just came out with a significant update that might be worth a review. I’ve been using it for many years.

$150 is a lot of money for the app, in my opinion. There is no option to sign in with Apple and data is kept on their servers.

 

[Quasselstripper]

one sec helped me save more than 800 hours from spending on social media this year. 100% recommend to check it out. It’s genius.

 

[dannyyankou]

Microsoft Copilot is out now as a standalone app, considering that it offers GPT4 and Image Creation for free, there’s no reason to use ChatGPT Free anymore.

The Bing app has had Copilot with GPT4 for a while for me.

 

[Apple_Robert]

With all the Apple nerds on here, I would have thought the participation list would be much longer by now.

 

[DFZD]

The Bing app has had Copilot with GPT4 for a while for me.

Yea but now you don’t have to put up with Bing to use Copilot.

 

[Shasterball]

The article really shouldn't claim that ChatGPT is reliable.

 

[Zest28]

Am I the only one that uses the Apple Reminders and Apple Calendars? I used Fantastical in the past, but they turned into a subscription based app despite having paid for the full version already. I don't trust 3rd party apps anymore.

 

[JD2015]

Am I the only one that uses the Apple Reminders and Apple Calendars? I used Fantastical in the past, but they turned into a subscription based app despite having paid for the full version already. I don't trust 3rd party apps anymore.

I use both Apple reminders and calendars as meets my needs. My only request is for better integration e.g. reminders to show up in calendar. That is what I most miss from not using Fantastical.

 

[danmills]

I am surpised no one has recommended Craft, yet. It is one of the most polished, easy to use, and easy to look at Note taking app. And, it has decent PKM capabilities for those who don’t need the power PKM capabilities of Obsidian.

 

[3xBoom]

The article really shouldn't claim that ChatGPT is reliable.

ChatGPT wrote it most likely, after all...

 

[olavsu1]

What I see here. I see a promo for potentially unwanted apps.

I would appreciate it if someone made a mac version of it:

Hull Designer - Carlson Design

Download our free Hull Designer , a simple, interactive, visual 3-d hull design Windows program for modeling and developing panels for hard chine construction. Find Center of Boyancy, Center of Lateral Area, Length Waterline, and righting moment (pitched or heeled) among other calculations...

carlsondesign.com

and a little better than the original. In addition to the US measurement system, it would be able to calculate in the European measurement system, when calculating cross sections, it would be able to take into account the thickness of the material. The name could also be better, the original name in some places means patients of a special hospital.

 

[Capeto]

$150 is a lot of money for the app, in my opinion. There is no option to sign in with Apple and data is kept on their servers.

You can subscribe for $10/month.

 

[Populus]

What a coincidence! Because right now I was taking a look at three different productivity apps, and one of them is Obsidian!

Namely, the three apps I was researching about were: Obsidian, Logseq, and Notion. The purpose: to build my own wiki/dictionary/glossary. I mean, I know I could install the Wikipedia, but I want to build that data base by myself, to learn better each term and have my own definitions and illustrations.

From those three apps, I think I will settle for Notion, as it seems the easiest app to learn to use. With Obsidian I’ve read that you need to know Markdown, and you cannot drag and drop content. And with Logseq I’m reading many issues and content lost after syncing problems.

 

[paulrudy]

MR, you should have mentioned Calendar 366. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/calendar-366-events-tasks/id1265892516

Calendar366 is awesome. I've used it on all my devices since Fantastical went to a subscription model.

Also, GoodTask, despite a somewhat clunky UI, is a workhorse. Super reliable, customizable, works seamlessly with Reminders (except for tags, which Apple seems to refuse to open up an API for).