The best free productivity apps might be already built in - Lee Peterson

I recently reset my iPhone and went straight to iOS 14 and I’ve been using Reminders and Calendar. I’ve done my best not to reinstall any third party to do app. After a few days of using Reminders I’m thinking it’ll be fine, I’ll live with basic if it’s free.

I'm a huge proponent of third party apps, but I appreciate Lee's general idea around already having the apps you need. Similarly, Greg Morris hit on a similar point today:

I started paying attention to the triggers that whisked me away down an internet rabbit hole, and by and large it wasn't the internets fault — it was mine. When I was honest with myself and realised that because of my internal triggers I was searching for things to fill my time, the external triggers worked like a charm. I didn’t need to resort to a worse phone, or disconnect myself — I just needed to be mindful of the distractions and make myself indistractable.

If you are having a problem getting your work done or just generally feeling fulfilled, then us nerds naturally look for a new tool to fix things, or drastic actions we can take to change things. Sometimes these work, but often you already have the tools, and it's more of a matter of using them in a different way.