You don’t need a new productivity app (if you have a Google account)
You don’t even need a todo app (e.g. Wunderlist, Todoist), an app to scan documents (e.g. Camscanner) or even an app to take notes. Everything you need has been under your nose for a long long time…
UPDATE: Google recently added some neat URLs to be used as shortcuts for creating new documents, slides, spreadsheets etc. Check them out!
The requirements
First of all we all use apps in different ways so it shouldn’t come as a surprise that requirements for what a good todo or note taking app is differ from person to person. These are my personal requirements:
A todo app should:
- Support web and mobile (mobile app should be fast).
- Support one time and periodic reminders.
- Support tagging/colors or allow for lists/folders.
- Support setting and sorting/filtering by due date.
- Star/pin a task (similar to moving a task to “Doing” on a Kanban board).
- Allow to export items in an open format (JSON, HTML or similar)
- Reliable sync.
- (Optional) Calendar integration.
A note app should:
- Support web and mobile (mobile app should allow taking a quick note easily).
- Support tagging/colors or allow for lists/folders.
- Allow to attach any type of file, preferably with very high or no size limits.
- Support formatting (preferably Markdown).
- Allow to attach any type of file, preferably with very high or no size limits.
- Allow to export items in an open format (JSON, HTML or similar)
- Reliable sync.
As you can see there is a big overlap in terms of requirements between the two apps, that’s why when I discovered Notion I thought I had found the Holy Grail of productivity apps. Unfortunately their mobile app is still not as optimized as I would like it to be, which is the primary reason why I was wary of moving all my tasks and notes over to them.
I started experimenting with Google Keep to take notes but the lack of formatting was a huge turn off. Also I couldn’t understand why a note taking app would have reminders…
Using Keep as a todo app
So I thought: why not use Keep for tasks instead of notes? It clearly has a lot more features than Google Tasks itself! So from now on notes in Keep will be called “tasks”.
- It supports periodic and location based reminders.
- It allows attaching almost any kind of file (a big plus).
- It allows to dictate the task (and the voice recording will be automatically attached to the task).
- Time based reminders can be used to mark the due date of a task.
- By clicking on “Reminders” it allows to sort tasks by due date.
- It allows to pin tasks to the top.
- It automatically integrates with Google Calendar, showing the reminders as events.
- It allows to add notes to the task itself (duh).
- It allows to draw, which is pretty cool!
I just couldn’t find a reason why Keep couldn’t replace Wunderlist for my todos. So a week ago I did the switch and it’s been great! I don’t miss Wunderlist at all. The only shortcoming was the lack of a feature to import from Wunderlist. In my case I patiently copied the few periodic tasks I had setup in Wunderlist and the few remaining tasks left to do.
Now I had to find an app to take notes. Initially I tried separating tasks and notes in Keep by tagging and/or color coding but 🤮 too messy.
So I started looking into various alternatives (other than Notion): Trello (good support for Markdown and attachments but app a bit slow), Simplenote (cool publish feature but no attachments), Bear, Inkdrop, Evernote…
And then it dawned on me. I’ve always had the solution under my nose.
Using Drive (Docs) for taking notes
This is the biggest revelation. Google Drive (specifically Docs) is an excellent note taking app. There, I said it.
- The mobile and desktop/web apps are blazing fast.
- Everything stays in your Google Drive so notes are just other documents.
- You can take notes quickly and just leave them in the root to organize later.
- It supports folders.
- It has great formatting on both desktop and mobile (and you can import/export Markdown with other add-ons).
- Super fast to scan documents, with a great UX.
- Virtually no limits to what you can store (files of any kind up to 15 GB for free or $1.99 for 100 GB)
- Great integration with other apps (through add-ons or Zapier/IFTT) and can create your own add-ons with Javascript 🤤.
- You can search in PDF and images.
- You can convert a scanned document into an editable document (web only).
- Android widgets that make it super easy to access Drive, create a new document or scan.
- Easy sharing with anyone with or without a Google account (via sharing links).
- Decent integration with Medium (thanks to the fact that everything in Docs is HTML, where do you think I wrote this article?).
And best of all both Keep and Drive are free.
I won’t bring up privacy issues but I would definitely discourage anyone from storing sensitive data on any medium unless they are absolutely sure that nobody has/had access to the encryption keys ever (at the time of writing you are probably more likely to win the lottery).
And, at the end of the day, if you use Gmail why wouldn’t you use Drive?
As you can see the combination Keep + Drive works wonderfully and I consider my search for an “all in one” productivity app concluded.
If you have any other requirement not covered here please do share it in the comments.
