Simple Still Wins

I used to use a very basic productivity tracker. It served me well for years until the site ceased to exist and I was forced to look for another solution. There are obviously many trackers out there, but the problem is none of them fill the hole left by the one I loved.

I was reflecting on what specifically made that one so special. Here's what I learned.

It was as close to a simple page of ticks and crosses as possible. It was genuinely mobile and desktop friendly — I could add a tick just by touching a box and remove one by doing the same. There was no friction at all. I could customise my goals but not overcomplicate them. I had flexibility, but the way of tracking was simply ticks and crosses.

Then there were the small design choices that made all the difference. Rather than a plain tick icon, it had a green circle around the tick and a red circle around the cross. It sounds trivial, but it just makes it easier to see when you're scanning a screen. The little boxes where you enter the ticks and crosses were self-adjusting, so you could flexibly enter as many as you wanted for each habit. No rigid grids. No limitations.

Sometimes the most basic — even primitive — apps are the ones that are most loved.

It just goes to show that it's not about building more functionality. It's about making sure the things you go there for are extremely easy and require minimal thought. We use trackers to track. That's all. We didn't ask for analytics or data or AI suggestions. We just want to track, and an easy way of doing that.

Applying it as a general lesson: make it easy for the main thing, whatever that is. Easier said than done, I know. But actually, in a crowded market of productivity and tracking apps, even years after the one I used shut down, people are still writing posts on Reddit asking for alternatives, sharing lists, and trying — and failing — to replace it.

Simple UI that just works. That still means something.