How my life changed forever as a result of one productivity tool

Tech stack: quill, paper, desk…and don’t forget the ink. (Library of Congress photo)

In early 2021, I was working on Instagram for a client when I came across an ad for an app that somehow gamified getting work done while also making it more zen.

Intrigued, I looked it up. The app was Sunsama, and I’ve been using it ever since. I wanted to share my experience because, though it feels strange to write a blog post that’s essentially a testimonial for a product, it feels even stranger to keep my experience to myself. No affiliate links or anything, just my honest assessment: Sunsama changed my life for the better.

Sunsama integrates all the different digital inputs in your life — your calendars, your to-do apps, your project management software, your email inboxes — and makes them accessible in one place. You can get a clear sense of your workload so that you can plan your day — not a hypothetical, idealized day, but the actual day you plan to have, with the work that you actually plan to get to.

Right away, I appreciated being able to see my tasks and my meetings in one place. After all, these are all things I have to do today — it makes no sense to consider them separately. You can pull your meetings onto your task list, putting everything in the order in which you wish to do it with a handy Kanban interface.

Alternatively, you can drag your tasks onto your calendar, allowing them to fill the gaps between meetings.

I generally focus on the first way: including my meetings in my task list. I find this approach to visualizing my workload and schedule to be really satisfying.

What makes this integration of tasks and meetings even more effective is the fact that Sunsama encourages you to create a time estimate for each of your tasks. When it’s time to do the task, you press the “START” button and the system begins tracking your time spent. Then, you can compare how long you thought the task would take with how long it actually took, allowing you to improve your estimates with practice.

Thus, if I have a forty-five minute gap between meetings, I can slot two twenty-minute tasks into that gap and make a game out of trying to complete the tasks in that time. Timing the tasks makes them feel more “real” and makes me much more motivated to do them. If you took Sunsama away from me today, these I would still carry this improved way of visualizing and organizing my tasks combined with realistically assessing the duration of each.

But there’s still another layer I’ve been able to apply: Comparing the planned time for the entire day to the time I actually spent. That’s been interesting. I’ve discovered that I can be completely wiped out after only four hours of work, and other days I can sail through nine. I’ve also found that the maximum amount of meetings I can handle comfortably in a day is about four hours.

And this presents an opportunity for another game: How much can I reduce tomorrow’s workload? If I plan my day successfully and stay very focused, I might just be able to start tackling the next day’s tasks. I get “credit” for them today, and then tomorrow starts looking more and more appealing.

And this presents an opportunity for an even more exciting game: What can I add to my to-do list that I’ve been meaning to do forever but have managed to put off for years because it felt too big or never seemed quite urgent enough? If tomorrow only has three hours of tasks and meetings booked, surely I can spend an hour of development work on a new project I’ve been dreaming of. Once I add it to my task list in Sunsama for an upcoming day, it feels real. I’m committed. After fourteen months of practice, I have confidence that the things I put in Sunsama will get done. Therefore, this thing will get done, too. Finally.

Again, now that I can visualize my work this way — now that I can picture it in my mind as a matrix of commitments that will take a certain amount of time, some of which much take place on a particular day and time — I get to keep that skill, with or without Sunsama. I now know that I can work on several different projects over the course of a week, making time for each one. It is no longer a question of whether I will do a given thing, but when. And now I know how to confidently choose when, how to put myself in the frame of mind to do that work, and how to make space for reflecting on the day’s accomplishments.

Ironically, I can live without Sunsama because the app has changed the way I think. Luckily, though, I don’t have to. I can simply keep using it, eager to go from this:

To this:

I am kind of a weirdo and what works for me won’t necessarily work for everyone. But if you are frustrated by the days that seem to keep slipping by you despite your best efforts to stay on top of your work, I’m telling you that it doesn’t have to be that way and that you, too, can find a sense of confidence and intention in your process. If it isn’t Sunsama, it might be something else. You can figure this out.

What do you rely on to make your life work? I’d love to hear what tools have made a difference for you.