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Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

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Re: Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

#11

Post by alexandargyurov »

orangefarm wrote: post #5

Awesome to see more people work on integrated productivity spaces! I work on something very similar at Life ( https://life.so ). Since you decided to include notes into your bundling as well (which I did not so far) I am curious: How do you expect people to switch their note-writing habits from Notion, Roam, etc. to your project? It seemed to me that the notes market is extremely competitive already. The design looks…

I built and app called Life Tracker[0] a while back, it's aim was to track your mood and have everything in one place. My blue sky goal was to reach something like life.so.

It's good to see people working in this space, though I feel as if sometimes the scope can be wayy to big. Everyone has different types of workflows, so I guess for a product to be used by a lot of people, it has to allow for as many possible custom workflows. Though at the same time keeping a simple design and easy-to-use interface.

It's hard for me to tell, is life.so Mac only?

[0] https://alexandar.me/lifetracker

Re: Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

#12

Post by rancar2 »

jquintard wrote: post #3
raju wrote: post #2

This looks great! I have been on the lookout for something like this — Agenda ( https://agenda.com/ ) looked like a good start, but it did not work for me. I couldn't quite put my finger on why. I am curious to what your pricing plans are (I am a tad hesitant to move away from my current workflow just to find out that your price model might not work for me. Any thoughts on this? [Edited for formatting]

Hi Raju. We'll definitely put a pricing plan in place at some point. It will likely be something around $10/month for professionals. But we will almost certainly keep a free plan. I can't guarantee it because we are still at the beginning but it is likely.

Hi Julien. Did you mean “can’t guarantee it”?

PS excited to try the product. I will delete this comment after you make the edit. Cheers!

Re: Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

#14

Post by jquintard »

Oras wrote: post #6

Hey Julien, Congratulations on the launch. I quite like the simplicity which reminds me of Todoist. I've been using Todoist for the last 4 years and had improved my productivity a lot. How's Routine different from Todoist? P.S: In your jobs section you're missing the how to apply part. Ex: https://www.notion.so/Head-of-Marketing-03dc3a3a6f0d45989936...

Hey Oras. I've added the Apply part. Thanks a lot for spotting that :) apply@routine.co

Regarding Todoist. It's obviously a great tool. But very generalist. Like Everynote for notes. We're taking more of a specialized direction for busy professionals: people who have a lot of meetings, want to capture non-actionable information (notes), have a lot of things going through their mind that they do not want to forget and a lot of tasks scattered everywhere, from email, chat (Slack/WhatsApp) and project management tools (Asana/Trello/Notion).

With Todoist, everything needs to be stored as a todo. We think this is too constraining. Some information is actionable (tasks), other not (notes). Both should be in a single tool.

Also, it's a productivity tool. It needs to be super fast. I don't want to have to switch to an app to capture something that is going through my mind. Or to copy/paste information from one tool to another. That's why Routine works through a keyboard shortcut that is available everywhere on your desktop. For now, you can only capture information, create recurring event, block time in your calendar etc.

But soon, you'll be able to join meetings, take meeting notes, glance at your upcoming events etc. all through one keyboard shortcut.

Re: Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

#15

Post by jquintard »

bestinterest wrote: post #13

Is this a native Swift app or Electron based app?

The iOS app is native Swift. The desktop app is in Electron.

But we've taken another approach for the Electron app not to become as slow as Slack or Notion. We know many people complain about that.

To give just one example. The parser in our console has not been written manually in Javascript. Instead we wrote it in Ocaml (https://ocaml.org/) and we generate the Javascript. This allows us to have a code that is more reliable, maintainable and faster.

We do the same for many other parts of the product exactly for that same reason.

Re: Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

#16

Post by orangefarm »

jquintard wrote: post #8
orangefarm wrote: post #5

Awesome to see more people work on integrated productivity spaces! I work on something very similar at Life ( https://life.so ). Since you decided to include notes into your bundling as well (which I did not so far) I am curious: How do you expect people to switch their note-writing habits from Notion, Roam, etc. to your project? It seemed to me that the notes market is extremely competitive already. The design looks…

Thanks. Notes taking app tend to be very generic. You can type text, create bullet points and checkboxes. But they it is for you to manually move stuff from one page or section to another to "represent" another day, time or topic. In Routine, every note (being a page or a task description) can contain text, bullet points, media etc. But every checkbox turns out to be a full-fledged task that can be scheduled, opened…

Thank you for the explanation! I'm looking forward to trying it out in practice

Re: Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

#18

Post by jquintard »

rancar2 wrote: post #12
jquintard wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Raju. We'll definitely put a pricing plan in place at some point. It will likely be something around $10/month for professionals. But we will almost certainly keep a free plan. I can't guarantee it because we are still at the beginning but it is likely.

Hi Julien. Did you mean “can’t guarantee it”? PS excited to try the product. I will delete this comment after you make the edit. Cheers!

Hehe sorry about that. Yes I meant cannot.

Re: Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product

#20

Post by orangefarm »

alexandargyurov wrote: post #11
orangefarm wrote: post #5

Awesome to see more people work on integrated productivity spaces! I work on something very similar at Life ( https://life.so ). Since you decided to include notes into your bundling as well (which I did not so far) I am curious: How do you expect people to switch their note-writing habits from Notion, Roam, etc. to your project? It seemed to me that the notes market is extremely competitive already. The design looks…

I built and app called Life Tracker[0] a while back, it's aim was to track your mood and have everything in one place. My blue sky goal was to reach something like life.so. It's good to see people working in this space, though I feel as if sometimes the scope can be wayy to big. Everyone has different types of workflows, so I guess for a product to be used by a lot of people, it has to allow for as many possible cust…

Hey Alex, very cool project! What made you pause working on it?

You are making a great point. There is an inherent trade-off between customisability and simplicity. That is not necessarily a problem though because I think there are different target groups depending on where your product is on this scale. I like to think of productivity software as a pair of shoes where everyone has their preferred size and fit. That also allows different tools to successfully co-exist.

The desktop application is Electron-based, so porting it to Windows will be relatively easy. For mobile we go native though and that's why a native Android application will take some longer.

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