It’s Time To Ditch The Cult of Personal Project Management

How I Stay Organized Without A To-Do Application

Jon McEwen
3 min readJun 4, 2022
Photo by Marvin Meyer on Unsplash

I’m not a stranger to the cult of to-do and note-taking applications for keeping your work organized. Over the years, I’ve tried a few different platforms for tracking items and ensuring things didn’t slip through the cracks.

First, I used Dropbox Paper.

At the time, I needed to manage mountains of small tasks. Dropbox Paper quickly became my go-to solution because it was an open canvas.

I could quickly jot down notes, add to-dos, and check off items.

Then, I used Evernote.

When I moved into a data role, I began using Evernote. The clean UI was appealing, and UX promoted being proactive about documentation and task management.

Evernote represented a shift from Dropbox, though, in terms of purpose. I started using Evernote not simply to track my tasks but also as a space to improve my conventions around documentation continuously.

Then Came Notion

And that shift in purpose led me to seek out Notion.

With Notion, I could track tasks and take notes with as much granularity as possible. If I needed…

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