
Ask HN: Productivity tools- Useless, useful or incomplete? - adamwong246
I&#x27;m trying to gauge the zeitgeist around productivity tools- todo lists, mindmaps, time trackers, pomodoro timers, trello variants, habit builders, Omni-*, etc<p>This is because I am building an app, called &quot;tymtu&quot;, in my spare time that would enter into that crowded arena. Tymtu is thus far without a clear category or well known description,  so I&#x27;ll just describe it as a product management tool, where you, the user, are the product. But it aims to fill the same role as many pre-existing tools and it should be classified as a &quot;productivity tool&quot;.<p>So my question is &quot;Are these sorts of tools truly useful to you? Or are they just distracting noise? Do you believe that there is some undiscovered country left to conquer? Is it a fool&#x27;s errand to attempt what so many other&#x27;s have failed?&quot;
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hanniabu
I think there's room IF it's done properly, just as Slack has proven. The
question is what needs to be done for it to be done 'properly'. Maybe it's
combining several types of productivity tools in one making it more convenient
to use both because everything is all in one place and because of better
ui/ux. Our maybe it's dropping all the nose from current tools by getting rid
of the features that puerile don't really use. It could also be a combination
of both those by combining the best features of the most useful tools and make
them easy to use.

A few tools I would like (not sure if they exist or not):

* StayFocused type of app that blocks chrome apps * StayFocused type of app for Android/iOS * Desktop app that will keep focus on a chosen application for a certain amount of time (for instance if I'm writing a report on Word, I can't take my focus out of Word and use any other programs because of that) * Maybe an app that I connect my credit card to and at the beginning of every day, I'll start with $10 'in escro'. Then throughout the day it'll donate x amount to y charity for every z minutes I spend on sites I have banned. This concept can also be combined with any of the previous.

