What is the future of productivity tools? Find out in today's video.
Hello everyone, Scott Friesen here at Simpletivity. I am very excited to have two of my productivity pals right here on YouTube with me for a future discussion of where productivity tools are going and maybe some of the features that we would like to see three or five years down the line.
Today, I have Carl Pauline and Francesco D'Alessio from the Productive Channel joining me for this discussion. Now, this is a three-part series.
First, we've talked about the past and how did we get started with productivity tools. What were some of the first things that we used many years ago?
If you'd like to see that, I'm going to leave a link to that video, and you can watch it on Francesco's channel. Next, we talked about all of the tools that we are currently using and why we choose to use them right now.
If you'd like to watch that video, I'll also put that link in the description, and you can watch that on Carl's channel. But for right now, we are talking about the future of productivity tools.
There’s no one that I'd rather be talking to than these productivity tool experts. So Francesco, I want to throw things over to you initially.
You seem to be in the know. In fact, I don't think I know anyone else who knows about the latest trends, the latest updates, what's happening in the world of productivity apps.
But beyond just the next week or the next month, what are some of the things that you think are going to happen maybe three, maybe five years from now? Perhaps some of the things that you would like to see.
Future of Productivity Apps
Ivan, I think that the next year's gonna be quite an exciting one for all of us. I think the focus is going to be on something called mod to the productivity applications.
We’ve seen it a couple of times in recent app releases like the likes of Monday, A table, Notion, and Coder. All are very popular modular app sets.
I think that's gonna be a huge rave in the next year because essentially what people want to do, because they've gotten so specific about their software, is actually build their own software. People want to put together these parts to formulate their own task manager or their own note taker or their own board or their own calendar.
That's what's gonna be quite exciting. So that's my sort of behind year predictions.
I think that’s gonna be a big thing. But it is sort of part and parcel of that I think that's gonna grow in the next three or four years and something that will basically learn from you.
They will basically map to your needs and essentially do errands for you. This is a weird thing that I've been thinking of over the last couple of months.
When you're doing your work, it understands you and is able to do micro errands based on your experience. For example, during your day you're doing projects.
You're not necessarily communicating with people, but you're maybe you're a developer, and you're building an application. But during that period of time, you're getting stuff coming in.
You’re getting new work, you're getting things, people you need to email. I believe that those micro errands will be solved by your own application.
Your application will actually be reaching out to those people, stopping you from getting distracted, and keeping you focused on it. So that's my sort of thoughts a bit out there, but I definitely think that that's gonna be where it's going.
When it comes to some of that, you know, that's smart, that anticipation of what you need to get done, do you see anybody right now who is dabbling in that or is maybe going in that direction? Yeah, there's a couple of applications that are using AI and machine learning.
I've seen a lot sort of in the Google space because that's obviously where it all begins. But I think that startups will start to join in.
I know A table is becoming a bit more interactive. Once they are able to add that sort of interactive side of elements.
Todoist, again, I know that Any.do have experimented with an assistant bot that's able to communicate with you and finish micro errands. But again, it's all very buggy at the moment.
I think over time things will just flatten out and become easier. There's always gonna be some trial and error to get these things worked out.
Speaking of Todoist, there are a few people on YouTube that know Todoist better than Karl. Todoist and Evernote, I should say, his tutorials are legendary.
But Karl, I'd like to hear from you whether it's regarding those two apps or really anything in the world of productivity. What do you see in the future or maybe some of the things that you would like to see?
Better Integration
I think we're gonna be seeing a lot more better integration. We saw this back at the end of the 1990s.
Apple and Microsoft were completely separate. I mean you could never have Microsoft Word on your Mac.
You had to use Chorus Work. Am I showing my age again?
But everything was just not compatible. In 2002, when I first came to Korea, I had a Mac.
I’ve never owned a PC. In those days in Korea, nobody had a Mac except really high-end designers.
Everyone was using Microsoft Office. I could never use those documents at all.
I’d say can you send me a PDF? They would say what's the PDF?
This is 2002. We all know what PDFs are today, but back then they didn't.
Then what happened, I guess Steve and Bill got together and shook hands and said look come on guys we've got to be compatible here. Once they all became compatible, I saw things changing rapidly.
You could use Microsoft Word on Mac. You could create your Microsoft Word on your Mac and you can email it to somebody who's got a Windows computer, and they could open the file.
Now I know today we're thinking, yeah, but just 15 years ago that was not possible. I saw what happened when we went totally compatible.
If you look at the productivity fields today, like Todoist for example, we've got integration with Dropbox, Google Drive, and something else. I can't remember, I don't use it, maybe Box I think.
But there's no Evernote link there, and I'm just, I really hope that the Todoist guys are watching this because I would love to get that integration. Todoist and Evernote so that when you drop something from Evernote, I can just drop it into my notes field, and it would just automatically generate the link direct to that note.
Oh, you can do it, but you're hacking it at the moment, right? I think that's what's, over the next few years, we're gonna see more and more of that as well.
I think Francesco is right. There's gonna be quite a lot of applications coming in who are going to try.
I'm not saying they're gonna succeed at this, but they're gonna try and be the be-all and everything. I think that's a very very tough call.
David Allen has always said that is a very tough call to get all three parts of a productivity system, the calendar, to-do list, and notes working together within one app. He says he's been trying to do it since the 1990s and never been able to do it successfully.
I think that's a tall order for most companies because you end up having to compromise. That's where the problem is with trying to be all and everything.
But I think if these companies can move together to having like a much easier or better connection between each other, integration with each other, I think that's where I will see the future going. I hope to see it going that way too.
I can generate a link in Evernote today, and I can paste that into my calendar, which is great because then I can create all the meeting notes, and I can click on the link, and it's there. I would just like to see that a little bit better.
I wouldn't say I'm a techie, but I understand technology to a certain degree. I work with people who are not interested in learning all that.
They just want to type something and send it. If these companies really want to get involved in that integration, that's the area they need to be looking at.
Tap tap, a button choice, Evernote, calendar, Todoist, whatever, click. That's all they need to have to be able to do.
At the moment, I have to go, copy note link, copy paste it into... I mean I can do that, I don't think there's a problem there.
But I'm thinking of the people who are not really into technology. They're not gonna do that.
So if they really want to get our integration in, that's what I think the future of productivity apps is gonna go. Yeah, I think it's really...
Final Thoughts
Interesting that over the years we've seen so much integration between the apps. It’s hard to find a productivity app worth its weight that doesn't integrate with at least ten other services.
Now it may not be the services that you want, but it may be ten popular services or other things that other people are using. I often cringe when I see a tool that proclaims that they're the all-in-one solution.
They're gonna do everything for you because I know we've all had first-hand experience of getting our hopes up, and then we get to one aspect or maybe a couple of components of that system. You're just like, you know what, so many other apps do this better than what you do.
Hopefully, we have some stronger integrations or maybe different types of integrations so that we can get the most of both worlds. To your comment Karl about David Allen still not being able to figure it out to get the right systems together.
I think that's a great highlight of the personal and personal productivity. We all are a little different.
We all work a little differently, so there isn't just one solution. Hopefully, we can find
that right mix.
Francesco, with your comments about some automation and some intelligent AI, I'm really hoping for that day as well. I'm eager for that future because I feel that we're still not quite there yet either.
Although we have a number of tools that proclaim to have smarter notifications, we now all have email that has some type of filtering or we're gonna put things up higher than others because we know what you're reading. I think we all recognize that they have their faults.
They have their drawbacks. I'm looking for that day where we have some smarter notifications, whether that's on our wearable devices when we're out and running errands, or whether that's in front of a desk computer, that our systems do get to learn from us that much better.
I just have one question on that. Sorry Scott, I just had one question.
One of the areas I thought about that myself is that AI and all that stuff. One of the things I think of is if AI is starting to complete tasks for me, I'm gonna feel like I have no control over my life.
Some robot is a bot is gonna be doing things I should be doing, and maybe because I got a human brain logically, I think no no no no. I don’t want to be doing that today.
There's a reason because I'm communicating with a human being, and if I send that at five o'clock in the morning, they're gonna be very angry with me. Just wondering about that control side of that because one of the things I find is when I see everything that I want to do and I choose when I'm going to do it.
That's how I feel in control. But if a bot is making decisions based on my past actions, it doesn't know what my future actions are gonna be or what I'm thinking right now.
The AI side of things is interesting to me, but I'm just wondering where is it actually gonna go. It does sound a little scary at times.
It almost sounds a little bit like 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’m sorry Carl, but that is not your number-one priority.
Have AI telling you what you should be doing today, but are you really sure you want to complete that task right now? I'm sorry Carl, but you have other important things to accomplish.
Exactly, myself impersonating, that's good. I want to thank both of my guests, Francesco and Carl.
Next, I'd love to hear from you. What do you think the future holds for productivity tools and productivity apps?
What are some of the things on your productivity wish list? Be sure to leave a comment below and tell us all about it.
Both Carl and Francesco are going to be reviewing these comments and responding as they come in, so we're looking forward to hearing from you. Once again, I want to thank my guests.
We covered a lot of ground, and I mean that literally. Carl from Asia, we’ve got Francesco from Europe, myself here in North America.
Yeah, we really did stretch the globe for this one. A reminder if you'd like to see part one, our productivity past, or part two, our productivity present, be sure to visit Carl at Carl Pauline and be sure to visit Francesco at the Keep Productive Channel.
Remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
