Best Productivity Apps 2023

Motion is a tool that I've been looking for ever since Sunrise Calendar was acquired by Microsoft, more than a decade ago. Since that faithful day, I've been on the never-ending journey of evaluating every single calendar/scheduler/task manager on the market, in search for what I once had.

We believe that Motion is creating a new category entirely, and while you'll see us compare it with the best project management software on the market, you'll see that it isn't just a traditional project manager. And with that, let's dive in:

Features & Differentiation

Rating: _A+

Motion isn't just a calendar, scheduler, or task manager. It's really an AI assistant that takes all of this unique information, and uses it to build your perfect day:

Other project management tools require you spend chunks of your day re-evaluating deadlines and shifting back work. Not to mention, they have no actual reference of your calendar, so actual focus time available doesn't even take into account when you're in meetings... 😅

That's where Motion is different, and in some ways, in a category of its own. What they are doing is unmatched in the project management space, and when you compare Motion vs Asana amongst others in the category, you see how outdated traditional task management tools truly are.

They've also taken this whole time management category and leveled up your project management software with a baked in calendar scheduler that takes into account all of your tasks and hard deadlines, along with time blocking to only recommend the best times for you to meet with others, ensuring that you can still get your work done on time. Something that no other project manager can do.

User Interface (UI)

Rating: _B-

Motion has a functional calendar/task interface that has your most important tasks on the left, and a calendar on the right. When comparing Motion and Cron, you start to see where the UI could be improved:

The plus side here is that the UI could be improved with some pretty minor tweaks, like making it more obvious as to what the current day is, having less harsh and lighter color pallet for events and tasks (in both light and dark mode), displaying calendar text in a more useful/way (versus getting cut off sharply), amongst other modifications.

We have faith that the team will make the much needed improvements here, and since it would require such minor modifications, we can't weigh this section too heavily against Motion. With these modifications, we feel Motion can pretty easily get to a _B+ rating in this category.

User Experience (UX)

Rating: _B

The main benefit of Motion, and how it differentiates from every other project management tool on the market is you add your tasks to it, then you forget about it. It will automatically schedule your tasks into your calendar to ensure that you get them done by the time they need to be completed.

With other tools like Asana, you need to manually reschedule your tasks manually on a daily basis, wasting anywhere from 20–60 minutes per day—something you don't even need to think about with Motion.

We would have actually rated Motion as an _A in the UX area back when it was a Chromium extension, because it would do incredibly impressive things like automatically pulling up your calendar when visiting a calendly link within the browser, showing you in Motion what times work best for you.

The problem was, there's just too much limitation as a Chromium extension versus being a fully standalone app, so they made the right directional move, they just need to bring some of these super thoughtful experiences back to the desktop app.

Motion is always a keyboard shortcut away (OPT + C), and that's one of the things we love most about using it. Once you're in the app though, it would be nice to have less clicks to get to where you're trying to get.

There's also a few times where you'd actually want to open back up Google Calendar, in things like proposing a new time for example, or editing a team's calendar event (even if you're invited to it), so fixing these things will greatly improve the UX. We're confident that they can actually get this up to an _A in the next 6–18 months.

Mobile App

Rating: _B-

Motion has an iOS and Android app that is fully-featured, including the full calendar functionality, along with your complete project task lists, and quick access to booking links while on-the-go.

Things we'd love to see to bring Motion up to an _A is a proper widget to replace the need for Google Calendar entirely. Some quality UX improvements could be made with having a way to more easily create tasks from other apps, by say sharing a screenshot to Motion, or highlighting text and sharing it with Motion (or even using Siri/Google Assistant to create tasks while on-the-go).

One little knit-pick is the time it takes for the mobile app to load, although this is something that the team is aware of, and we feel pretty confident that the mobile app will hit _B+ category in the months to come.

API & Integrations

Rating: _C+

We have to hand it to the team at Motion on this one—they launched an API, and then almost immediately spun up a Zapier integration to make their API even more accessible to others, something that newer tools in the space haven't invested in which makes Motion stand out, and something we greatly appreciate.

The API is surely to improve with time, adding in more functionality, although it does allow for the major things you'd want to use it for already, like create/find/update of tasks, and most importantly, creating the magic auto-scheduled task.

The one thing that the API is lacking though is on the appointment scheduling side of things. For example, you can't get the same type of API functionality that a tool like Calendly will give you on that front, although you can actually build some of the same functionality (like logging new appointments into your CRM upon booking) using a tool like Mailparser alongside Zapier (although I will say, it's not that straightforward). 😅

If Motion added in API functionality for their scheduler, we'd put Motion's API at a solid _B, which is all you'd really need it to be.

Competition

If you're anything like me and just starting the quest of your own (or in the middle of it), let me save you some time: you'll likely stumble upon calendar tools like Cron, Vimcal, Magical, Fantastical, Woven (acquired by Slack), and many more scheduler-focused tools like Calendly, ChiliPiper, and Cal.com (amongst many others), along with no shortage of all-in-one task management tools (e.g. Sunsama and Akiflow), heck, even "time management" tools like Clockwise and Reclaim.

Well I'm here to tell you that I've tried them all—extensively.

Each and every tool mentioned does some aspects to time management well, but fall apart when done together.

And that's where Motion is different. Motion is more than just a calendar, scheduler, or task/project manager—it is a platform for time management. Because at the end of the day, we're all just managing time—sometimes by way of projects and tasks, and at other times meetings and events. Motion understands this fact first-and-foremost, and with a small sprinkle of AI, you're given your perfect day planned out for you, no rescheduling or rearranging necessary.

Final Thoughts

We've actually fully switched to Motion from Asana after using Asana for 7+ years.

If you're looking for a deeper dive comparison on the project management of Motion, you can check out a deep dive project management comparison that covers all of that here.

That said, I've finally found what I've been looking for. (Oh and there's actually quite a bit more to the story if you're interested in hearing more)

Arc is a browser. In simple terms, it's a replacement to Chrome, Safari, and Edge, but oh, also so much more... A big part of what makes Arc great is actually the fluidity and experience when using it.

If you try it out, you'll know what I mean.

Your browser has mainly just been in the background, right? You don't think that much about it, it's more just a tool to access the internet. Yeah, that's where Arc changes that—what if a browser could give you moments of micro-delight in the day-to-day usage? In fact, why don't other browsers?

Features

Arc's team have totally rethought the bookmarks and the "tab experience", along with introducing a feature called "Spaces". Spaces allow you to stay focused and easily segment your work while easily organizing tabs are important to you in folders.

For example, set up a personal space, favorite your YouTube, Spotify, WhatsApp, and Gmail tabs—from there, they function like mini apps. Now, with the swipe of 2 fingers, you're in your work space. All of your favorite apps are swapped out with your work apps, and you're logged into all of your work accounts:

No other browser lets you segment work to this degree. It's so powerful, yet such a simple implementation. Tough to truly explain without experiencing it yourself.

What clicked for me, is when someone explained the following to me (when I was at the time an avid user of Chrome): With Chrome, Google is in the business of ads, so they are actually incentivized to give you a crummy tab management experience. Why? Because what happens if finding the tab you're looking for is difficult? You open up a new tab and search Google again (and you're shown more ads).

So it's more that the UI/UX in many ways by the industry leader is built in such a way to optimize for displaying ads. Arc on the other hand is building features that give you a better experience, first-and-foremost.

Competition

Every single person that uses a computer, uses a browser. It's probably the most competitive software market in the world, and Google pays Apple some $20bn per year just to have Google set as the default search engine in Apple products.

Because of that, this can't be covered in just a single section in a post. Here's a full write-up on how Arc compares to the top browsers on the market.

If you're curious as to Arc vs Chrome or Arc vs Brave, you can see our thoughts there.

Learn More

If you're intrigued, want to know more, and see more of the features/benefits in GIF format, go check out this article where we've done a deep dive on why we think Arc is the future of the internet.

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I'll preface this by saying that I've used LastPass, 1Password, Bitwarden, and even—only IT companies would recognize—IT Glue & MyGlue (a premium solution starting at $150/mo).

I first started using LastPass over a decade ago, got most of my family/friends on it, and eventually even customers as well (as a way to securely share passwords between companies).

The thing is, LastPass got acquired by LogMeIn and started becoming stagnant. It also went through what felt like a never-ending series of major data breaches over the years to follow.

This was when I started seriously evaluating alternatives (like Dashlane), as I knew it was going to be a heavy lift to switch—consisting of migrating myself (personal + work), family, friends, and even some customers all over to it from LastPass and MyGlue respectivel

For those more technical (or running an IT company) and considering IT Glue/MyGlue—it's great, but as a password manager, it's overkill. It's more of an IT infrastructure documentation tool, which they acquired a password manager, and rolled it into the mix. So you're paying a huge premium if you're planning on only using it as a password manager (as I was during the later years of pivoting away from the MSP side of the business).

Differentiation

Dashlane started as a password manager for consumers (B2C)—as at the end of the day, people need to manage passwords their many passwords across personal/work—and in the past few years, they've been focusing their efforts in building out the B2B (team management) component of Dashlane.

This is important because having used password managers built for companies, not people (e.g. IT Glue/MyGlue), you see first-hand that a powerful password manager is nothing if the end-user doesn't actually, well, use it... User-adoption is the most critical factor for a password manager to be successful.

That's where Dashlane stands out, because they were first-and-foremost a B2C company that built an exceptional end-user experience for everyday people, and have moved to the B2B market. This gives them a unique advantage in the space.

Take the mobile app (for iOS and Android), it's far and above the most modern and visually appealing of all the other password managers I've listed here.

That said, there is one area that lacking a bit with Dashlane (likely because they haven't been in B2B as long), and that's their API.

API

The clear winner in this category seems to be 1Password from what I've been seeing. For example, if you try using a tool like Raycast that has a 1Password app on their store, you'll see that it's a native integration (looks like Raycast). But then the same app made for Dashlane is really just a shortcut to open up the Dashlane app.

So that makes it pretty clear that 1Password has a proper API, while Dashlane hasn't quite gotten there yet. To be fair, it is a bit uneasy trusting a third-party developer with API access to your password manager, although I'm sure it's fine, especially in the Raycast example because all of the code is open-source and can be audited.

Security

Once you're using a password manager like Dashlane, you can also set up 2-Factor Authentication (2FA) from right within the existing password that you save for a site. So instead of using the insecure SMS 2FA (which won't work if you're without or in spotty cell connection, which also brings with it sending delays of up to 5 minutes. Not to mention being prone to spoofing, phishing, and social engineering attacks), you can instead set up a time-based code, which will even autofill when logging into a website while still adding a second layer of security (e.g. if your password leaks, someone still cannot login to your account without the additionally changing code). From over a decade in the IT space, I know all too well that never does higher security also mean higher convenience, but with Dashlane, it actually does:

Final Verdict

If a powerful API is important to you, 1Password is probably where it's at. If you care more about having the most modern UI/UX and a team that is constantly evolving the product, Dashlane is our top pick.

Dispatch was one of those apps that I didn't even think to look for because I never thought I needed it. Until I used it...

Let's be real, Slack is an overwhelming mess. You get mentioned all the time, have tons of DMs, while channels are just popping off left and right at all hours of the day.

So what do you do? You start muting all of the channels, and then you start missing everything. What if you could set simple filters which split your inbox to "Important" and "Other", all while all useless messages got auto-read (archived)?

That's Dispatch. It allows you to work through your Slack environment like email: [e] to archive messages, [h] to snooze them for later. Within the first minute of using it, you'll be wondering why Slack wasn't just built like this from the get-go.

It's like Superhuman for Slack (genuinely, if you're using Superhuman and not Dispatch—go and give it a whirl right now, you'll never be able to go back):

It also has super powerful team collaboration features. Have a shared Slack channel? Cool, @mention your team members and have private side comment threads without the external team members ever knowing.

If you're in any way trying to use Slack for internal or external support (inviting customers/clients), then you must be using Dispatch. Slack wasn't built for that. Dispatch was. Few apps have I actually bought the annual subscription so quickly (within 3 days). It's just magical.

Link shorteners are something that most people don't even realize that they are interacting with on a daily basis. That said, most everyone has at some point used Bit.ly to create a short link at one time or another.

I've been using link shorteners for over a decade at this point (back when we were called "CyberBytes", I had even registered the short link cyberbyt.es by pretending I lived in Spain 😅).

Having used self-hosted (open-source) short link services like shlink, to paid solutions like Short.io, I've never actually had a good experience with what's out there.

Short was the most recent solution we used, but it just feels like it was built by an engineer with little front-end chops. The UI/UX is clunky, basic features like search are super convoluted and kludgy + rarely work.

Enter Dub. It's both open-source as well as a hosted solution, built by Steven Tay, a crazy talented open-source focused individual who has taken to the same frustrations as I've had in the space. Difference is, he's a full-stack developer with amazing product chops.

There's no actual enjoyable, or impressive link shortener on the market, until now. If anyone is familiar with the story of Fathom Analytics, I'm willing to bet that Steven does to the Link Shortener world with Dub what Fathom did to the Analytics space.

Tech Stack

Dub is built using the most modern software tooling, leveraging Vercel Edge Functions + Upstash Redis.