I've installed and abandoned more productivity apps than I can count. Notion, Obsidian, a couple of task managers whose names I've already forgotten. Each one started the same way: a weekend of setup, a folder structure I was proud of, a quiet promise that this was finally the system.

Then a Tuesday would arrive. A real deadline. And I'd open a plain text file instead, because it was faster.

The setup is not the work

That's the part I kept missing. Configuring a tool feels productive. You're organizing, tagging, building templates. It scratches the same itch as doing the actual work, but nothing ships.

My teammate told me last week that she spent an afternoon rebuilding our shared doc hierarchy after we'd already agreed it didn't matter. She knew it didn't matter. She did it anyway. I understood completely, which is probably not a great sign.

Complex tools invite this. Every extra knob is an invitation to fiddle. A simple tool doesn't give you enough room to hide.

Features pile up for the wrong people

Here's something I noticed while building Huanjian: the loudest requests come from people with genuinely unusual workflows. They're a tiny slice of users, but they're the ones who write in. So features get added for them, and the tool slowly gets heavier for everyone else.

Nobody does this on purpose. It's just what happens when you listen to whoever emails you.

The cost shows up in small ways. Every option is a decision. Every decision is a moment where you stop thinking about the thing you're making and start thinking about the tool. Ten of those in a session and you've spent real attention on nothing.

There's a study I half-remember about jam — more flavors on the table, fewer purchases. I'm not going to pretend I know the details, but the shape of it matches my life well enough.

What simple actually gets you:

  • You can hand it to someone else without a tutorial.
  • It doesn't break when you ignore it for two weeks.
  • You stop maintaining the tool and start using it.
  • Constraints make some decisions for you. That's not a limitation, it's relief.

I care about that second one more than I used to. Anything with a plugin ecosystem, a sync layer, and a custom database needs periodic tending. Skip a month and you come back to a mess you have to clean up before you can work. That's not a tool. That's a small pet.

When complex is actually right

I don't want to pretend simple always wins. If you're doing the same complicated thing every single day, complexity pays for itself. A video editor is complicated. A CAD program is complicated. Nobody wants those simplified into a notes app.

The test I use now: how often do I need the advanced part? If it's once a month, I'm not learning it. I'll find a worse way to handle that one thing and be fine. If it's every day, I'll put in the time.

Honestly I'm not sure where that line sits for most people. Mine has moved a lot over the years, mostly toward simpler. I used to have strong opinions about note-taking methods. Now I have a text file and a calendar, and I've stopped thinking about it.

One more thing worth saying. Simple tools tend to be boring, and boring is underrated. The tool that never surprises you is the one you can forget about. That's the goal, I think — not a system you're proud of, but one you don't have to think about at all.