I spent, between 2015 and 2024, $1,612 on productivity apps. The math is, by my standard, embarrassing. The current stack I use costs $0 per month, and I get more done in a day than I did at peak subscription. The $5.6 billion global productivity app market — per Statista, 2024 — is not selling productivity. It is selling the feeling of productivity. The two are very different.

Below is the list of what I tried, what I cancelled, and what replaced it. I have changed my mind about several things I used to believe about getting things done. I have opinions on what to skip. There is a brief history of how "productivity" went from a 1970s business-school concept to a $5.6 billion app industry. And there is, at the end, an honest summary — because anyone who tells you an app will make you more productive has not, in fact, looked at the receipts.

The list: what I cancelled

Eight paid productivity subscriptions I held at peak in 2023 that I no longer pay for.

1. Notion Plus, $10/month ($120/year). Cancelled October 2024. I had been on Notion since 2020. At peak, I had 347 pages, four workspaces, and an elaborate "second brain" structure I had copied from a YouTube video. I spent, on average, ninety minutes a week maintaining the structure. I spent, on average, twenty minutes a week using it. The replacement — Apple Notes (free) and Apple Reminders (free) — does everything I actually used Notion for. Total cancelled: $360 over three years.

2. Todoist Pro, $7/month ($84/year). Cancelled March 2023. I had been on Todoist since 2018. At peak, I had 412 active tasks across seven projects. I had, by my standard, 287 of them overdue. The replacement — Apple Reminders (free) — does what I used Todoist for, with the advantage that I cannot accidentally build a $7/month anxiety empire inside it. Total cancelled: $420 over five years.

3. Things 3, $50 (one-time, Mac and iOS bundle, 2022). Cancelled/expired 2022. Bought again 2024. Returned. Things 3 is, by every review I have read, the most beautifully designed to-do app ever made. It is also $50 for software I used, on average, eleven days before I forgot it existed. The Cultured Code team has been making Things since 2009. The app is gorgeous. The app is, in 2026, irrelevant to my life.

4. Evernote Premium, $10/month ($120/year). Cancelled February 2022. I had been on Evernote since 2014. At peak, I had 9,400 notes, organized by 47 tags, in 23 notebooks. I had not opened Evernote in 147 days when I cancelled. The replacement — Apple Notes (free) — holds my notes now, without the $10/month tax.

5. ClickUp, $9/month ($108/year). Cancelled November 2023. A trial of one month I extended into fourteen months. ClickUp is the most ambitious project management tool ever built. It is also, in my experience, the one with the steepest learning curve and the worst onboarding. I spent more time configuring ClickUp than I spent doing the work it was meant to organize.

6. Linear, $8/month ($96/year). Cancelled January 2024. A "minimalist project management" tool popular with software teams. Linear is, by every developer I have asked, beautiful. Linear is, for a writer who is not a software team, irrelevant. I bought it because a Substacker I respected said it changed her workflow. The Substacker, by her own admission six months later, had also stopped using it.

7. Asana, $11/month ($132/year). Cancelled August 2022. The project management tool used by half the marketing teams in New York. Asana is, by every measure, well-made. Asana is also, for a person who works alone, eleven dollars a month for software that exists to coordinate people who do not, in my case, exist.

8. TickTick Premium, $3/month ($36/year). Cancelled September 2024. The cheapest productivity app I ever paid for, and the one I held onto the longest. TickTick is, in 2026, the best-designed app in this category for $3/month. I cancelled it because I realized, after six years of paying, that I was not using the premium features. I was using the free tier wrapped in a $3/month ribbon.

Total spend across the eight apps over the years: $1,612. Total current monthly spend: $0.

The list: what I actually use now

The current stack. Free. Quiet. Effective.

1. Apple Notes, free. I have, in 2026, 412 notes. I do not tag them. I do not organize them into notebooks. I search them when I need them. Apple Notes syncs across iPhone, Mac, and iPad. Apple Notes holds images, PDFs, and voice memos. Apple Notes is, in my experience, what Notion was trying to be in 2018, minus the $120/year.

2. Apple Reminders, free. I have 23 active tasks across three lists: Personal, Work, Errands. I check it three times a day. I close items when they are done. Apple Reminders does not gamify completion. Apple Reminders does not send me a "streak" notification. Apple Reminders does not, in 2026, try to make me anxious about being unproductive.

3. Paper notebook, $15 (2024, ongoing). A Muji A5 softcover notebook, $15. I bought it at the Muji store in Brooklyn in October 2024. I write the day's three priorities in it every morning. I cross them off when they are done. The notebook does not sync to anything. The notebook does not have notifications. The notebook is, in 2026, the most effective productivity tool I own.

Total annual cost: $15 (one-time). Total annual savings vs. the 2023 peak: $276.

What I have changed my mind about

A few beliefs I held in 2018, when I first subscribed to Todoist, that the last six years have killed.

I used to think the right app would unlock my productivity. I bought, between 2015 and 2024, eight productivity apps. None of them unlocked anything. The unlock was not in the app. The unlock was in deciding I was going to do three things that day, and then doing them. A $0 paper notebook does this as well as a $120/year Notion workspace.

I used to think productivity apps saved time. They did not. They moved time. The 90 minutes a week I spent maintaining Notion was, by my standard, time I would have spent doing the work Notion was meant to organize. The 23 minutes a day I spent opening Todoist was time I would have spent doing the things Todoist was reminding me to do. The productivity apps were, in the end, productivity apps for productivity apps.

I used to think I needed features. Natural language processing. Recurring tasks. Subtasks. Dependencies. Calendar sync. Reminders for the reminders. Every feature I tried made the app more complicated and me less likely to use it. The $0 Apple Reminders has, in 2026, exactly the features I need: a checkbox, a due date, and a list.

I used to think productivity was about the tool. It is not. Productivity is about showing up. The 1970s business-school definition of productivity — output divided by input — is still, in 2026, the correct definition. None of the apps I paid for increased my output. Some of them decreased my input time by making me spend that time configuring the tool instead.

I used to think I needed a "second brain." The second-brain movement of 2021-2023 — popularized by YouTubers and Substacker productivity gurus — promised that the right app would externalize my memory. What I actually externalized was anxiety. The 412 pages in Notion were, by my standard, a $120/year museum of intentions I never acted on. Apple Notes is the simpler version. Apple Notes has 412 notes because I delete the ones I do not need.

I used to think productivity was a personality. The productivity-app industry has, in 2026, a strong personality cult. There are podcasts about it. There are Substacks about it. There are YouTube channels dedicated to reviewing it. The cult wants you to identify as "a Notion person" or "a Things person" or "a paper-notebook person." I am, in 2026, not a person. I am a writer with a notebook. The notebook does not need me to be a personality.

What to skip when productivity shopping

If I were advising a friend who was about to download their first productivity app in 2026, I would tell them to skip these categories entirely.

Project management tools. Asana, ClickUp, Monday, Trello, Linear. These are designed for teams. If you work alone, the team features are an anchor. The team features are, in 2026, the most expensive feature in the productivity industry.

"Second brain" apps. Notion, Obsidian, Roam Research, Logseq. The second brain concept is, in my experience, a way to charge $10-$15/month for software that replaces what a $15 paper notebook does. The brain is the brain. The second brain is, by 2026, the first brain's expensive diary.

Premium tiers under $5/month. TickTick Premium, Todoist Pro, Microsoft To Do. The premium tier under $5/month is, by 2026, the entry point to a higher tier. The free tier does, in every case I have tried, what the premium tier does.

Any app that gamifies completion. Streaks. Celebrations. Achievements. Productivity apps that gamify completion are, by 2026, dopamine delivery systems. The dopamine is the product. The productivity is the marketing.

Anything with a "review your week" feature. Weekly review prompts, monthly check-ins, AI-generated summaries of what you did. The review is, by 2026, an excuse to stay inside the app. The review is not work. The review is, in most cases, more time spent in the tool than on the actual work the tool was meant to organize.

Time trackers. Toggl, RescueTime, Clockify. Time tracking is, in 2026, a way to make you anxious about how you spend your hours. The hours were going to be spent. The tracking does not produce more hours. The tracking produces, in my experience, less work.

A brief history

The productivity industry is, by every measure, a 20th-century invention. Until the 1950s, the standard American workplace did not have a "productivity" department. Workers were managed by foremen. Output was measured by piece count or hours billed. The word "productivity" entered the business-school vocabulary in the 1950s through the work of Peter Drucker, the Austrian-American management consultant who wrote The Practice of Management in 1954.

Drucker's definition of productivity — output divided by input — is, in 2026, still the correct definition. Drucker did not, in his writing, suggest that productivity was something you could buy. Drucker suggested, repeatedly, that productivity was the result of clear goals, good management, and trust. The productivity app industry has, in the last twenty years, replaced Drucker's framework with a different one: productivity is something you buy, one subscription at a time.

The first personal productivity software was, by 1980s standards, modest. Lotus 1-2-3 (1983) was a spreadsheet, not a productivity system. Microsoft Office (1989) bundled Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. The "personal information manager" — the precursor to the modern productivity app — emerged in the early 1990s with products like Lotus Agenda (1989) and Microsoft Schedule+ (1992).

The modern productivity app industry — the one that sells $10/month Notion workspaces and $7/month Todoist subscriptions — was, in large part, built by three things: the rise of knowledge work (1990s-2000s), the smartphone (iPhone 2007), and the COVID remote-work boom (2020-2022). Each of these added, by every measure, real demand for tools that helped people organize their work across devices and locations. Each of them also, by every measure, added real cost.

The 2020s productivity industry is, in 2026, in retreat. The "subscription fatigue" movement of 2023-2024, the rise of free built-in tools (Apple Notes, Google Docs, Apple Reminders), and the publication of several high-profile exposés on productivity-app dark patterns (2024) have, in my experience, restored the relationship between output and tool cost to something approaching sanity. The $0 stack I use in 2026 does, in my experience, more work than the $1,612 stack I used in 2023.

The honest summary

A productivity stack is, in the end, three things: a place to capture notes, a place to track tasks, and a place to write down what matters today. Everything else is, by my standard, "an excuse." The $0 stack I use is, in 2026, as functional as the $1,612 stack I used in 2023.

What works for me: a free notes app, a free reminders app, and a $15 paper notebook. That is it. The total annual cost is $0 recurring plus $15 once. The total value, in my experience, is incalculable.

What does not work for me, and may not work for you: the idea that a more expensive app means more productivity. The $1,612 stack was, in 2023, an aspirational purchase. The $1,612 stack is, in 2026, an embarrassing receipt folder. The productivity industry is, by 2026 standards, the most successful anxiety-generating industry in the modern knowledge economy. The honest summary is, in the end, this: the industry is selling anxiety. The $0 stack, when chosen correctly, does not.

Nine years in, my productivity stack is, in my experience, more functional than it was when I started. I have spent, in those nine years, approximately $1,612. I could have spent approximately $0 and had the same output. The math is, by any honest accounting, embarrassing. The math is also, in the end, the only thing that matters.