The personal organizer software problem is a tricky one. It is unique in that even the slightest inconvenience or diversion in the workflow can render the application unusable, because the very purpose of the app is to offload that sort of trivia from your mind.
Because everyone has different habits and thought patterns, there is no one workflow that suits everyone and the cognitive overhead introduced by a flexible workflow, while tolerable in other kinds of applications, is show stopping in a PIM app. Workflow for a particular person may also vary between contexts e.g. work, home, hobbies, socializing, etc.
As such, I fully encourage the proliferation of todo apps with slight variations in design. However, I believe that we will ultimately need something highly adaptable that can be "programmed" to the detailed specifications of each user. What sort of "programming" would be both remedial enough for the layperson and flexible enough to cover the entire domain remains a mystery.
Very well said. I built pat.io for that very reason - other things had been unusable for me. Hopefully we do see the advent of a truly flexible, adaptable system sooner than later.
Because everyone has different habits and thought patterns, there is no one workflow that suits everyone and the cognitive overhead introduced by a flexible workflow, while tolerable in other kinds of applications, is show stopping in a PIM app. Workflow for a particular person may also vary between contexts e.g. work, home, hobbies, socializing, etc.
As such, I fully encourage the proliferation of todo apps with slight variations in design. However, I believe that we will ultimately need something highly adaptable that can be "programmed" to the detailed specifications of each user. What sort of "programming" would be both remedial enough for the layperson and flexible enough to cover the entire domain remains a mystery.
FYI, I use this: http://todoist.com