30/30

Personally, I love it when an app becomes an integral and useful part of my life. This year my resolutions are to be more organized and productive which I started with a system of dedicated time towards writing this blog and other such projects I’d like to get started on. Going hand in hand with this I got the 30/30 app, a productivity timer to help me get some work done. Does it though?

Compatibility: iPhone - iPad

Price: Free

There are a ton of apps out there that aim to increase productivity with todo lists, agendas, calendars and more but they are essentially useless without putting them to use. Like I like to point out, buying a book doesn’t make the knowledge automatic. So getting a dozen apps to make you more productive just because you bought them is essentially useless and actually more harmful since it weighs you down and makes getting tasks done harder.

30/30 aims to use the pomodoro method, a system of 30 minute intervals followed with a 5 minute break before starting another 30 minute work session. Spending 30 minutes a day on a big task at least slowly wittles it down and actually makes it more approachable if you follow up on it. At the heart 30/30 is helpful but bogged down by several problems.

Colorful, no?

First the good. The interface looks nice and you can create a clean list of tasks that you set times, names and even an icon from a very limited list. Second, it’s free? It has good options like start next task upon your command (which I liked because I need to time to wind one task up and start up a new one.)

When it comes to the bad, it gets quite bad. It’s difficult to maneuver this list you make. How do you go back to the start? How do you rearrange them? Why do my tasks disappear because I make the keyboard go down? Why does pinching to add a task have to be so hard? When there’s a longer learning curve for your simplistic pomodoro timer app, that’s not a good thing. I find myself accommodating the app which is not what I should be doing. Oh, it’s working now. Better not touch it or else i don’t know what will happen.

So that’s why I’m looking for a better app. If you have any suggestions, I’d love to hear it but for now I’ll just use 30/30. Hopefully it can’t hear me...

Posted with Blogsy