How Goal Planners Changed the Way I Plan

The thing that made me start thinking more and caring more about doing the right things was goal planners. Goal planners are a different type of productivity app. They want you to plan out your goals and work backwards from there. The apps themselves are great, and there are a couple of them. The one I used for a while was an app called Griply, and the reason I got into it was that I’m an affiliate and I need to properly test out products before I can share my opinions on them. When testing Griply, not only did I think the product was good, but it also started a habit for me. I started planning differently. I started planning with my yearly goals in mind. To do that, you actually need to spend a bit of time breaking your goals down. Sarah Hart-Unger from The Best Laid Plans podcast calls this “nested goals” in her book (I haven’t finished the book yet), but the nested goal idea is basically the same as my way of planning.

From Yearly Goals to Monthly Goals

What I do at the start of the year is decide on my main goals. I then break my goals into quarterly goals and monthly goals, but I don’t set weekly or daily goals — at least not at the start of the year, when I’m doing my planning. What I’ve learned is that quarterly and monthly goals, once they reach the weekly and daily level, tend to become tasks instead. So I do task planning with my goals in mind at the weekly and daily level. I have a few planning rituals that make this work. This is a system that fits me, my way of working, and my current life situation. It’s worth mentioning that the way I do this might change as my life situation changes, but currently the rituals look like this:

The Yearly Reflection Ritual

My first and biggest ritual is the yearly one. I spend a lot of time towards the end of the year reflecting on the year. Since I’m fairly consistent with my journaling, I can go through my journals and see my thoughts throughout the year: the good, the bad, and everything I’ve achieved. It’s so easy to be biased towards the end of the year, and as someone who struggles with his mental health during the winter, it’s so easy to think the whole year was bad. So my ritual of spending a good chunk of time reflecting on the year isn’t just helpful for the planning part, but for my general mental health too.

Setting Goals That Are Hard, But Not Impossible

Once I’ve reflected on the year, it’s time to set goals for the year ahead. My goals are often clear, since I know what my biggest dream is and I’m trying to work towards that. What I need to work on, though, is setting good goals. Sometimes I set goals that are too hard to achieve, and six months into the year, once I can clearly see the goal is hopeless, I start to give up. I’m not really good at resetting mid-year. Other times it’s the opposite: my goal is too easy, so I achieve it in a couple of months and then have nothing left to work towards. So when I’m setting goals, I try to find the right balance: something that’s hard to achieve but still possible. That’s what I spend most of my time on at the yearly stage.

Breaking It Down: Quarterly and Monthly

Once the goal is set, it’s time to break it down. When setting numeric goals, I try to set a goal based on an average. For example, I need to read an average of a book a month, which makes it much easier not to give up if I miss a month or two when things get hectic or life isn’t going the way I want. I’m still able to pull back and achieve the goals I’ve set for myself. I break these goals down to the quarterly level. To use the book goal as an example, a book a month on average means I should read 4 books each quarter, and I can then break that down again to the monthly level, which means I need to read one book a month.

Where Goals Become Daily Tasks

When it gets to the weekly and daily level, things actually change for me. Instead of high-level planning and goal-setting, my goals suddenly become tasks. To continue with the book example: this means going from reading one book a month, to reading 3 hours a week, to reading 25 minutes a day. It’s at this level that your goals can become something you can actually achieve. A big goal of reading 12 books a year might sound really daunting, but reading 25 minutes a day is something you can look at and think, “this is something I’ll probably be able to achieve.” The goal is still at the centre of my planning, but it’s gone from a high-level goal to a daily task.

Keeping the Goal at the Centre

This type of planning isn’t special, and it isn’t even my idea. But I’m a big believer in it, because it helps keep my goals central. At the start of the year, I decide what my goal is going to be, and no amount of outside noise from the world can change that. This system helps remind me of that. It takes time, but it’s worth it for me. The goal is to figure out what you want, make that a priority, and build a system to help you keep it a priority through the year. That’s what I want this system to be.

I have tested hundreds of productivity apps and a lot of them are great. There are many great applications that can help you feel like you have more control in your own life. But in a time where many people, me included, are tired of productivity and are mostly looking to live more mindful, fulfilled and happy lives, I think there are two productivity apps worth looking at. Sublime and Mymind are two apps that feel different not just in the build of the applications, but also the way the apps market themselves. I also have to be honest: a little over a year ago I got a free upgrade to the lifetime plan of Sublime after reviewing it on my YouTube channel. I also have an affiliate link, but I have decided not to include it in this post, to make it clear that I love this app even if I don’t get anything back for promoting it. I am not affiliated with Mymind in any way.

What makes these apps different

Where most apps try to optimise for productivity and doing more things, which is not necessarily bad, we need that too, Mymind and Sublime try to optimise for something different. It is hard to describe exactly what I mean, but I will try. Sublime and Mymind are those types of apps that optimise for passion and scrolling things that actually matter. They are not social media, but they are what social media would be if it was focused around mindfulness and productivity. This is the time to add the fact that they also have widely different philosophies. Mymind focuses on privacy and does not allow collaboration, while Sublime focuses on shared knowledge. With that being said, I still think both of these are what social media would feel like if it was beneficial.

Both of the apps want you to build your own library of things you care about. The current state of the internet is AI slop, AI SEO posts and rage bait. You might be tired of that. I know that I am. Sublime and Mymind allow you to save all of the fun, important and interesting things you find online. Then having a place where you can see all of the things from the internet that are actually interesting. They combine that with amazing search and AI search features so that you are always able to find the thing you are looking for. It is a place for you to create your digital garden. I think that is the best description. You never garden because you want to be more productive. You do gardening because it slows you down, because it is fun and because you enjoy the act of it. This is the same way I think about apps like Mymind and Sublime. You use the apps not to just be more productive, but because you enjoy the act of taking notes and curating a library of the information you find interesting. If you just want to become more productive and do more, there are better apps out there, but if you enjoy the act of taking notes, connecting information and building your own library, these are two apps to look into. You can decide to use the apps to produce something like a blog post, YouTube video or report. You can use it for your projects or you can not create anything at all. You can use the apps, just because digital gardening is fun to do.

However, I want to mention that I am a big believer that if you are a content creator or someone that creates stuff and shows it to others, having a place filled with ideas and thoughts can make that process easier. I am a big believer in writing things down. I mostly use analog tools for that. But I will say that digital tools are more efficient and easier to use.

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How I have used the apps

With every app I have reviewed I have spent 3-4 weeks actually using the apps in my own life and for my own workflows so I can best explain what the app does, and I have used both of these. I used Mymind as an all-in-one application where all my social media ideas, project management and notes lived, because Mymind allows for that. Sublime does not do task and project management, so I used Sublime more as a digital commonplace book, which I think is the best use of the app.

Mymind: Mymind is a really visual app. If you save a lot of images and like to see things visually, I think there is no app better than Mymind. One of the things I love the most is that all of the different things I save into Mymind get different types, which means that if you save a book it will be a book type with its own style. The same goes for Substack notes, X posts, GitHub repos, images, products and notes, to mention some. Mymind can also work as a read-it-later app with a dedicated reading mode, if you are on the highest paid tier.

When I used Mymind the thing I used the most was the web clipper. I clipped a lot of stuff with the web clipper and got it added to Mymind. Mymind would use AI to auto-tag things for me. At this point AI is really good at that, so it gets things right most of the time. This means that instead of spending time organising things, I can instead spend the time going through my notes and clippings and try to find connections. This is much easier now that you can use backlinks inside of Mymind. These are wikilinks similar to what you see on Wikipedia, and it allows you to connect one idea or item to another. Mymind also has something called Mindnotes, which is a note-taking box on the right side of any item. There you can, for example, write about why you saved something, but what I really like about it is that it is a full-fledged note-taking feature. Anything you can do in the regular note editor, you can do in the Mindnotes editor as well. I have used this to add tasks, to remember why I have written something down or saved something, or I have used it to write my own thoughts when, for example, I have saved quotes. I also use Mindnotes in the book type to write book notes and reviews, which is my favourite way of using Mindnotes.

I am a big fan of the spaces in Mymind. Spaces are the only real way of organising. I have used smart spaces a lot for my projects. The way smart spaces work is that I can create a search query, for example #youtube and #thumbnail or #blue, and save that search as a smart space. If I add those tags to an item they automatically appear in my space. I used that mostly for design projects and also for YouTube video ideas, but they are actually really versatile.

Another one of my favourite features is the serendipity feature in Mymind. If you are a note taker like me, you might have experienced adding a lot of notes to your note-taking app and never seeing them again. That is what the serendipity feature helps to solve. Whenever I had a few minutes I would open up the Mymind app and start the serendipity feature. The way it works is that it resurfaces things you have saved and you can choose to keep it or forget it (delete it). It is a great way to come back to old ideas. What I like about it is just how calming it feels, and that goes for the whole application too. The overall experience of using the app is one of calmness. Mymind really helps with slowing me down.

The thing I dislike about Mymind is that there is no collaboration feature. I can not easily share something with someone else. The only way is the private share link, which allows you to share a post for 24 hours. After 24 hours it goes back to being private and just for me. Mymind is private by design because the founders believe that it needs to be private and just for you, so you do not curate for anyone else. The app is supposed to be a place where you just curate for yourself, and the founders believe that it can only happen if you are not able to share with anyone else. I agree with their philosophy, but it means that you will need another app if you are going to collaborate with others.

Mymind is adding API which allows you to connect it to other apps, but I have not tested that yet.

Sublime: Sublime has been an app I have mainly been using like a digital commonplace book. Instead of adding my own thoughts and ideas, it has mainly been ideas from others. Sublime organises things into collections. I have used the collections for my blog posts and YouTube videos. For example, I have one called “daily planner rankings,” where I have added all the interesting daily planners I want to review. I also have a collection called “productivity apps,” where I have all of the apps I have reviewed, and I organise them on a whiteboard.

The whiteboards are my favourite feature in Sublime. This is just a tldraw whiteboard, so basically a really basic whiteboard feature. If you have tested something like Milanote or Miro, this is not that. This is more of a way to take your collections and the things you have saved into your Sublime and turn it into something more visual. However, even though the feature feels and is really basic, it turns the app from a digital storage place to somewhere you can do your thinking. Apps like Sublime (bookmarking apps) really easily just become dumping grounds for notes, thoughts and ideas, but with the whiteboards you are forced to revisit ideas.

The whiteboard combined with the amazing search was what got me. I could go into a whiteboard and start putting my ideas together, connecting different quotes and things I have read. But sometimes I might have felt like there was something lacking. I might have had three note cards that almost were enough for my blog post or YouTube video, but I needed a couple more cards. That is when the search came in. You can use natural language to search for new ideas, not only in your own library, but in the whole Sublime library. You can go through what everyone else has saved to their library and add that to your own library or to your whiteboard.

The related engine was also one of my favourite features. This is basically the same thing I described, where you can peek into everyone else’s library, but this is at the card level. When you click on a card you can see related cards to the card you are on. You can filter to only see related cards in your library or related cards from everyone else too.

I rarely shared a lot of my cards. You can decide if you want cards to be public or private, and if they are public, other people can see your cards and add them to their library. The way I think about it is that I will share a collection or a set of cards when I feel like the idea is fully built and ready. As long as the idea is not developed I will keep it private, but once it is developed I can share it. Unless the cards are too personal, for example, I have a collection with my own designs, things I have designed for social media, that I will keep private because it feels personal. But I really love the fact that I can share my ideas and that we can build a shared knowledge graph. This is probably the thing that makes Sublime the most special.

I should also mention that there is a new version of Sublime out. This is Sublime 2.0, and I have tested it a little but not enough to give my full opinion on it. There is a change in the user interface, and they now have a feature where Sublime, just like Mymind, will differentiate between different types. It does not support as many types as Mymind, but it is still interesting. I will at some point write more in depth about this new Sublime.

Final thoughts and pricing

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I think some important background information here is that I have often been really insecure. It took me a lot of time and reflecting to stop being so insecure and I still have not fully figured it out.

Earlier this year I decided to take a small step back from algorithms and instead focus on physical stuff. Physical media, notes and planning. I started collecting things again and fell back in love with journaling, pens and pencils. Journaling has been something I have been caring about for a long time. I started journaling back in 2019 and I have journaled every day since. Some days it has been a line or two, other days it has been a page or two. But I fell out of love with the hobby. As someone who has productivity as a hobby I have to differentiate between what I do for productivity and health reasons and what I do as a hobby. The hobby of notebooks and analog tools disappeared. I lost the love for it and that is okay, we fall in and out of love with stuff. We change, that is just how humans work.

But earlier this year I went back. Not to become more productive but to reflect. I find that it is easier in a notebook because of the slow nature of it. That is when I fell back in love with writing, but not only that, I remember how many things I loved doing, but stopped because I was told that I was not good at it. Things like my terrible handwriting, painting, drawing, making stuff with my hands and coding. Things I wanted to do, but I was told as a kid or when I was younger that I was not good at it and therefore I stopped pursuing it. Like we have to be good at all of the things we do.

I recently posted a note about connecting with your inner child and it resonated with a lot of people. This is what I mean by saying that I am connecting with my inner child. I am doing all the things I was told that I should not do because I was not good at it. I learned that I am creative and I am deeply passionate about things most people do not care about, and I am passionate about a lot of things. I am a wandering contradiction. I love fashion, design, drawing and notebooks. But I also love sports, politics and poetry. I love playing sports, but I hate strength training. I love Gossip Girl, but I hate Grey’s Anatomy.

With the rise of the internet we got used to the idea of a niche. People on the internet are one thing. They are a lifestyle influencer or a productivity influencer. They are a business coach or a sports writer. They love reading or they love movies. On the internet humans are one niche and they are stereotypical to that niche. That is where I lost myself. I felt that I had to be one thing in my real life. I am either a sports nerd or a technology nerd. I use digital productivity or I use analog tools. I thought that I was one thing, but I am many. I contain multitudes.

Not only that, I change. What was interesting 5 years ago is no longer interesting, or at least not as interesting. Opinions I had last year changed this year. I am human, which means that I am not one set of interests, ideas and values. I think that is what would make me interesting. The fact that I am a nerd in so many areas of my life. The fact that I listened to forty minutes about pencils, then listened to another podcast about markdown and I could not be happier. I listen to Paul Simon and then to Sabrina Carpenter. I listen to Pink Floyd, then Tate McRae. It might seem like contradictions, but I think that is what makes me interesting.

To answer the question, who am I? I am not one thing and the person I am is always changing. So instead of going back and forward with myself and trying to decide a niche for myself in real life, I have decided to remind myself that the internet is not real life. My niche on the internet is mainly productivity (I am changing it a little), but my life is about more than productivity. It is about running, watching sports, collecting CDs, testing productivity apps and more.

Moving away from digital tools reminded me of that. It reminded me that I am more than what I show on the internet. It has also opened my eyes to living a contradictory life. A life where I listen to songs that do not match. A life where I don’t fit into the personality traits people think come with my interests. It reminded me that the internet is not real life and I should live more of my life outside the internet.

I also learned that it is okay to be me. That even if I am not good at something, or something does not seem to fit me, it does not mean that I should stop. Going offline reminded me of the things I loved when I was a child before the internet and what everyone else said mattered. Back when I did not care as much. That allowed me to accept the contradictions that I might have found in my interests. As well as accepting that me being passionate about Sabrina Carpenter’s new album or pencils might seem silly to some, but it does not matter. It is my happiness and not theirs. They don’t have to live my life and I don’t have to live theirs. With that being said I will still cry over mean comments because I am way too sensitive. (Something I am working on.) In theory though it is my life and not theirs, and they don’t have to live my life, so they should not be able to decide the things I like. That is up to me, because it is up to me to try to find happiness.

With that being said, if you are someone who loves the same things and fits into boxes, that is okay too. I am telling you this story to remind you of being you. However I do personally believe that people have different and even contradictory interests and ideas. I think most people have that if they just allow themselves. There is this cliché quote from Tumblr, I don’t actually know who said it, but it says something like “be yourself, everyone else is taken.” I really believe in that, but I would rather say “be weird, so that you are not cosplaying as someone else.”

When the goal is always to reach another number, to grow a little more and to always create content that everyone wants to read and watch, you will end up getting burned out. Especially if you are like me and you don’t have too many hobbies. I think some background information is probably important. I grew up in an immigrant family in Norway, and one of the most important things I learned is that hard work pays off. I also grew up in a time where hustle culture was big. I have this memory of a background image on my phone: “Pain is weakness leaving your body.” You could say that I was a hustler, and I probably still am. I like having a lot to do. That is something that might change as I grow older, but right now my work means a lot to me.

When I decided to turn the YouTube channel around productivity into a business where the goal was to make money, something changed. My hobby went from being a hobby to becoming somewhere I needed to be productive. I lost my hobby, and I was not able to substitute it with anything else. I would go to work, and when I came home I would work more without it being fun. In my eyes, the major difference between earning money on your hobby and turning it into a business is that you cannot stop doing it if you don’t feel like it. You have to be “productive” even if you don’t have the energy for it or if you don’t want to.

There was also one other thing that made me struggle with the amount of stuff I had to do. I lost sight of why I wanted to become a content creator. I like talking to people, I like affecting people’s lives, and since I have struggled and still struggle with mental health (bipolar disorder), I wanted to help others somewhat. It is not as noble as it might sound. I wanted to do it because it made me happy. When I was younger and hustle culture was everywhere, I wished someone would tell me that there is more to life than work. When I talked about productivity apps, it was not just because I liked productivity apps and I liked the idea of doing more. It was because writing things down was one of the most important things I did for my mental health. It was because when the world felt too fast-paced, my note taking would slow me down. When scrolling TikTok made me sad, scrolling my note taking app would bring me joy and inspiration.

To me, productivity was not about doing more. To me, productivity is about doing the right thing. Living a life that is aligned with my values. Living a life based on my terms. And you might ask why we need productivity, note taking and writing things down to be able to do that? Because we have so much noise. Before, you would get your life choices questioned by neighbours, friends and family members. They would try to give you advice and affect your decisions. Keep in mind that they mostly wanted what was best for you, and still it would make your life harder because you could quickly end up living someone else’s life. Now imagine that, but every waking hour of your day, with everyone around the world, and many of them don’t even want what’s best for you. Every second of every day, we are getting input from people. It gets hard to think. In my eyes, that is where “productivity” comes in. It is rituals that help you think, reflect and align your goals with your values.

What I Have Changed

What happened with my YouTube channel around productivity apps was that I got obsessed with more instead of being obsessed with fun and enjoyment. There is also the fact that every productivity app now is full of AI features, and AI is telling me that I am soon out of a job and I no longer need to take notes either, but that is a story for another post. It is just that AI also affected me. But what happened was that I stopped doing it because I enjoyed it. I instead filmed videos because I felt like I had to. That would be okay if I had a separate channel where the goal was not to grow. Where I did not care about how many views I got or if I filmed videos every single day. I needed a separate channel where the hobby of creating content was the most important. A channel where I post whenever I feel like it and there is no system or plan. The goal is not growth, but I will not stand here and say that if it grows I will end up unhappy. If that channel grows, I might have to use the other channel as a hobby. The point is just that there should always be content channels in my life where the goal is just to create content and nothing more. This post is an example of that. It is not the best post I have posted, it is all over the place and not optimised, but it is real, fun and honest. I am, of course, always hoping that people enjoy reading it, but that is not the goal. I have already accomplished my goal if you are reading this. I have published a post I had fun writing. This is a type of post I want to incorporate more into all of my social channels. I call them fun posts. These are posts that are just meant to be fun.

The second thing I did was simply just doing fewer things. I did too much stuff, and I did way too much because I felt like I had to. In addition, I lost sight of my goals, values and the things I enjoyed, which just made everything so much worse. I also learned a lot more about myself. I learned that I am creative and enjoy making stuff. Designing products, websites and more. Which is something I am going to play around with a lot more going forward. I used productivity systems to realign myself with my goals, dreams and values. I am not here to preach doing more or using another app to become more productive. I am here to tell people my truth, which is that a more mindful approach to productivity can be really beneficial.

I also created a rule around some of my hobbies. Running and sports are things I will never create content around. I might mention them in a piece of content or talk about why they are important to my life, but I will never create a channel where I give tips and talk about the experiences from running. I will never create a channel where following sport is the goal. This is an interest I will keep to myself and those around me. So watching basketball, tennis, football, chess, e-sports and more will always be a hobby and never something I will create content about. I think having a hobby that you will never monetise is something everyone who can should consider.

The last thing I want to say is that all of this might change. We are humans and we change with experiences, so I will change, and my posts will be full of contradictions. In a year, I might say something different to what I am saying now because my values and my life have changed.

For example, I love writing on social media, but struggling with motivation is a terrible excuse not to do your job. So even if I am uninspired and unmotivated, I still have to post. With my digital garden, things can and should be unfinished, they can be half baked. They can be bad and that is okay. That is a little bit of the point. I love taking notes just to make sense of things and to think. I like the act of thinking without an end goal. So I am hoping that sharing a knowledge garden or a digital garden makes it formal enough that I feel some pressure to remember it. Because I have a tendency to start things, do them for a week, and forget about them. So publishing it makes it something I have in the back of my mind, but letting things be unfinished and broken makes it so that I don’t feel too pressured. If life gets too hectic, it is okay to take a break on my digital garden.

Me needing a hobby is not the only reason to create a digital garden. With the rise of AI, I have been worried about the future, about my future. I have been asking what makes me special? What makes me, me? Why would someone choose to watch my content over AI content? Why would someone hire me over an AI agent? Some would say that the reason is taste, and I kind of agree. But I would say that it is my thinking. Not what I think, but the way I think. Why do I like one thing over another? Why did I choose to connect two notes together? Why did I capture this one note and not the other? What am I passionate about? My digital garden is also a description of who I am and what makes me, me. It is not only a place for my notes, but also a place for figuring out who I am. What are my values, my passions, what do I read? Why do I read it? What is the unpolished version of me? Because on Substack, YouTube, and all of my other social media, you get the polished version of me. The version of me I present. While my digital garden is a more unpolished version of me.

There will always be things, notes, ideas and thoughts that I just keep to myself. My actual note taking system is analog and lives in journals, notebooks and local markdown files, combined with Linear and Canva. (Yes, I write my blog posts in Canva or VSCode. I am weird.) But I am trying to replicate my actual note taking system as much as possible. I use an analog Zettelkasten, and my database in Notion replicates that, but some of the notes I might choose not to include in there.

The Tools

You might want to do this yourself, and since I test productivity apps and build productivity systems every day, I thought I would give you my two cents on how you could do this. There are so many ways. You could use an app like Sublime or Are.na. Those are both great, and I actually use Sublime for personal use, mainly collecting inspiration. The reason why I did not pick Sublime as my note taking tool for this digital garden is because it feels much more like a curation tool. I am curating my inspiration, and the Sublime engine actually connects things for me and helps me connect different ideas. That is great when I am working on a blog post or a project where efficiency matters, but my digital garden is supposed to be slow and manual. I have enough efficiency in the rest of my life. I want notes to be forgotten and I want to do things manually, so I chose Notion. There are other great options if you are looking for a bottom up approach. Obsidian with Obsidian Publish is a great choice. That will cost you some money, but I would say it is worth it if you can afford it. I even think you can add your own CSS to it, which is a reason why I might go back to Obsidian later. Other great apps are Roam, Craft (a little hard to work with) and even something like TiddlyWiki, but I think that has a little bit more of a learning curve. Mymind is also a great choice if privacy is important to you.

I think this is something everyone who loves taking notes should consider, and I think you should also keep this away from your main note taking system. Because there will be a little bit of performance whenever you share something, and in your real note taking system you don’t want that. You just want honesty.

Here is the digital garden: Notion

Let’s start with Kosmik shutting down. Kosmik actually came out of beta late last year and it felt like it came a little out of nowhere. Let me be clear, I don’t know what the thought process was and I do not have any information about the thought process inside of Kosmik, but to me it felt a little rushed. It felt like they still needed some additional features. Specifically, I wanted better ways of organising, and it was a feature they promised. To be honest, I did not think anything of them releasing early back then. It is after they decided to shut down that I started thinking that they released a little too early.

Running an application or a business in general is really hard. There is just so much that needs to click in order for an app to be really successful. Not only that, you need a little bit of luck too. Especially in the current stage of productivity applications. Because there are productivity apps coming out everywhere. The competition is hard, and everyone is trying to figure out what AI will mean in the productivity space. Basically, some people think AI will live inside of the apps we use, some people think it will live in our operating system, and a lot of people think that productivity apps are now over and we will do everything inside of our AI apps like Claude or ChatGPT. It is a lot of uncertainty, and that means that it is hard to commit to new applications. For example, if you had committed to Kosmik, you would now have had to move apps. I did that when Spaceduck shut down. In other words, gaining the trust of the users is harder now, especially when it comes to whether or not your app will stay around.

The second huge problem is that the competition is just really high right now. We have everything from huge projects like Tana to small leaner projects like Twos, and you have a lot of apps in the middle of that. There are so many applications out there that it is hard to keep track of, and with the productivity boom a lot of developers have gotten with AI coding tools, we are seeing more solo projects. I have recently gotten an increased number of requests to check out apps by solo developers. There is just a lot of competition. On top of that, a few people are moving away from productivity apps and just using AI by itself. Which means that together with the huge competition, there are also fewer users to get. Which is a terrible combination if your goal is to sell more subscriptions.

There is also one trend that specifically goes against apps like Spaceduck and Kosmik. We are seeing a trend towards applications that are privacy-focused and local. Especially note-taking apps. Apps like Obsidian, Octarine, and Thymer have risen up to become more popular choices among PKM enthusiasts, which makes a lot of sense. It has been a trend we have seen for a while. It is not the application’s fault that these are the trends, but nevertheless they are affected by it.

It also seems like the visual applications that try to target designers or people in creative fields is really hard to do. Before Spaceduck and Kosmik, we saw Clover Notes getting acquired and we saw Walling struggling for a while. While Walling has now gotten a second chance under new leadership, Clover, Spaceduck, and Kosmik are gone. It just seems to be a hard market to reach. For now, it seems like Milanote is the only one that has been able to do it. Maybe together with Mymind, which has also been around for a while, but Mymind really differs from the others by focusing highly on privacy. While the other apps focus on collaboration. All that to say that visual note-taking apps like those ones seem to be difficult to do right.

It is always sad to see apps shutting down. People have often poured their hearts and souls into products, and for one reason or another they have to shut down, which is really sad. Especially when the apps are really good, they just can’t find a user base for their idea, or the competition is too fierce, or one of the other reasons apps decide to shut down. But for users, it teaches us one thing. Don’t jump into every new app that comes around, because that app might disappear. Play around with different apps, test them out, but I would not recommend relying only on an application that is in beta. Because the app might shut down, but not only that, it might also change a lot. It feels weird to recommend that after saying how sad it is that apps are shutting down, but it is the current state of apps. For me personally, I have recommended apps that have shut down and I have recommended apps that now look totally different. It is a paradox, but it is what it is, and there are of course exceptions to that rule.

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What the issue was

The issue was not Readwise. Actually, after realizing the issue, I think I can easily go back to Readwise and still keep reading a lot, taking a lot of notes, and generally doing as well with my reading as I do now. So the problem is not the apps, but the philosophy I brought with me when I was building my second brain. I saw other people’s second brains and they had so many notes, all connected together, and it looked really beautiful. I wanted that, and instead of taking my time building a second brain with things I cared about, I decided to capture everything.

I created a second brain that felt more like a dumping ground than an actual second brain. This is the philosophy I brought with me when I read books and articles. If a book or article could not be highlighted and added to Readwise, I would just not read it. It was a waste of time, because if I did not capture anything for the projects I was working on, I was not being productive. So the reading would be a waste of time if I did not capture everything. This also meant that I would read books and articles not focusing on learning or understanding, but rather on what I could capture. I would read books searching for quotes, read articles looking for stats, and try to find things I could add to my note-taking app. It changed the way I thought about knowledge. Knowledge was no longer something I needed to understand, it was something I saved for future reference. In the end it became annoying and it made me tired. Always analyzing everything you read in order to find something to add to your note-taking app gets exhausting. I lost the fun and enjoyment of reading, and that is what made me stop.

Reading is actually a really fun experience. I spent a lot of time reading the wrong way. I read books I did not enjoy, I read as work and not for enjoyment. It was a shift in mindset that made reading enjoyable again. I am no longer thinking of reading as productivity. I am thinking of reading as enjoyment, like watching sports or TV shows. I spend longer on each book and read fewer books, but I read more. I remember how I would just skim through books to capture as much as I could, and then I could not tell you what the book was about. I would go back to Readwise and see all of my highlights, and I still was not sure about the core ideas. That is different now.

This realization came from watching a couple of YouTube videos. I saw people summarizing books and their core ideas using AI and adding them into their note-taking apps. For me that felt off. There are some use cases where it makes sense, like when I am reading a report I am not particularly interested in and am just looking for one specific piece of information to use in a report, video, or article. For example, I once needed the consumption of Pepsi Max in Norway for a LinkedIn post. I was not going to read through entire reports or articles for that. But I could not imagine doing that with all of my reading and learning. Automating all of it. I then realized that my habit of chasing what to capture was just a version of AI summarization. That is when I figured out that my way of reading was actually stopping me from really reading.

There are real benefits to reading, and I want those benefits. Not only that, I wanted to learn to enjoy reading again, because I used to love it. So removing apps like Readwise, and even my regular note-taking app, for a while helped me build a better reading habit. That habit has since actually helped me create a better second brain. So basically, I had a second brain and app detox, and it helped.

The problem is not the apps. It was me, and the way I thought about productivity. Quitting those apps helped me understand that I was not living the way I wanted. My philosophy of productivity and life in general is to go deep on ideas and things. I want to prioritize depth. Unfortunately, I had not been doing that. So taking a break from apps like Readwise helped me realize how I was not acting according to my own values.

To summarize: I stopped using Readwise for a while. Not because I did not like Readwise, but because I had stopped reading. The problem was not the app — it was the philosophy I had adopted, which was wrong for me. I am not saying that reading in order to capture things is inherently wrong. The problem was that it did not feel like I was living the way I wanted. This connects to the bigger idea of slow productivity and slower living, which in the end gave me back my joy of reading and I am happy about that. At some point I will probably return to apps like Readwise, because it is a really good app. But if I do, I will come back with a different philosophy: one of doing things more slowly and focusing on going deeper. Because that is the life I want to live, and one that I think many others can benefit from too. Live slower, and live in the moment.

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The whole idea of mindful productivity comes from this idea of productivity and planning being different things. I have tried to combine them and called it mindful productivity. The whole philosophy I have around productivity is that the goal needs to be spending time doing the things you want. I am efficient at work because I want to have more time outside of work doing the things I love. Not that I hate my job,I actually enjoy it. But you kind of get the point. Often we are not trying to be efficient when we are drawing, painting, watching a movie, or playing video games. We are doing it out of pure pleasure.

With that being said, I feel like we lately have been trying to make that efficient too. The point is no longer to enjoy a book you are reading, but to read 50 or 100 books. Not that it is wrong to read a lot of books, but I wish we could focus more on enjoying the process instead of chasing goals and always doing more. That is where I believe in this idea of mindful productivity. Being efficient so that you have the time to spend enjoying and being present with the things you love. Let me try to give you an example of where productivity comes in here. I write down everything even on vacations, if I remember something I should do at work, I just quickly write it down. I write it down so I can let it go. If not, I try to remember it when I am on vacation and I get all stressed out and just end up doing it on vacation. When I write it down in my notebook, in my to-do list app, or elsewhere, I know that I have set up systems to make sure that it appears when and where I need it to. So I can let it go. This is not something that suddenly happened. I needed to spend a lot of time learning about myself and force myself to let things go. I am not into productivity just because I find notebooks, fountain pens, and apps fun. I am into productivity because it is vital for my mental health. Every time I feel like my system breaks, I spiral, and it makes sense, because I also struggle with bipolar disorder, but that has been one of the main reasons why I am into productivity apps.

Planning and productivity being two different things is sort of the same as the way I am thinking about productivity. I think dividing them is something I should consider going forward. Not just for planning, but also for things like note-taking. Because sometimes I take notes for efficiency. I know that in the near future I will have to do something with those notes, whether it is a project or something else. The point is that the note is getting used for something soon. Other times I take notes to think, to work through things like a book I am reading. I don’t want to use them for something specific right now, but I am trying to understand a book I read just for enjoyment. There is no pressure; it is just for fun. I do that type of note-taking a lot, connecting ideas with my own thoughts and trying to understand things better. I can do something with those notes, but that is not the goal. The goal is just to deepen my understanding of something I find exciting. It is not important, I don’t have to do it, but I am doing it because I want to. Those notes are different from my meeting notes or work notes. With work notes, I don’t want to spend a lot of time on them. I want to figure out where to use them and what is important. I might even decide to outsource those notes to someone or something (AI) else. They are different and should be treated differently.

I am a big fan of the idea of differentiating planning and productivity, and I feel like this can also apply to other things in productivity, like note-taking. I like differentiating between those things simply because I like to differentiate between the times I should be efficient and the times I should be mindful. That is why this idea I came across on Cal Newport’s podcast resonated with me as much as it did. I feel like I have been chasing efficiency for so long. The goal of being productive has been just doing more, and in some places getting more done is important, but I am fighting to try to avoid living my whole life like that. So the words we use are not important. The important thing for me is to differentiate, so I can live a slower life and so everything in my life is not all about efficiency. That is why I love differentiating between productivity and planning, and it will be an idea I will continue to play around with going forward.