Professionals Drowning in Tool Overload

“worth making it a habit too, not just before big changes but periodically [re: “Merging Files” Undid Hours of Work]”

“Stop calling it "workflow automation." That's what someone does in an afternoon with three Zapier nodes and a prayer. I design systems.”

“Yeah, some senior leadership at the largest companies struggle to use basic software and do many simple tasks on a computer because they've just asked people to do everything for them for the past 20 years when using computers developed so much. Now AI could do a lot of the stuff they ask others to do and will continue to do more but they just aren't competent enough to use it [re: What is the upside of climbing the ladder outside of money?]”

“Yeah, IT really depends there [re: What I learned comparing project management tools for a Slack heavy team]”

“Really good point on productivity, and I agree. We don't want to claim it measures productivity. It measures adoption, skills and blockers, i.e. where people are and what's stopping them. Productivity would need real delivery data, which is exactly what we can't access. On paying customers: honestly, not yet. So far it's been us and a few companies in our network trying it for free. That's why I'm posting here, to find out whether the client-approval problem is common eno”

“That sounds like the right direction. Making the core workflow genuinely faster seems much more valuable than adding more features. I wouldn't assume the comparison with established software is what's driving people away just yet, though. With ~100 signups, I'd probably reach out personally to a handful of people who tried it and disappeared. Not just ask why they left, but whether they actually needed to create a certificate at the time, what they normally use, and where your workfl”

“Breaking it into daily micro tasks is a smart approach, way easier to keep people on the hook than a vague “use it sometimes.” The tap tracking idea for the editor is gold too, would catch exactly where the UI loses someone. Not trying to pile on but have you run into any issues with the 14 day rule clashing with people who just don’t game every single night? I figure some testers might space out and skip a day or two naturally [re: [Android beta] Mortar Aid: a free companion for PUBG PC and con”

“Exactly. It’s freed my time up to focus on core PM competencies, rather than a bunch of mundane tasks or ramp time. And when I’m confused reading a doc I can literally go through it line by line with Claude if I want, at whatever time of the day, and it’s like having a super knowledgeable partner. [re: Company is all-in on LLMs, and now I finally see where the worry is coming from]”

“We'll see. A lot of the value of any UI is the muscle memory and speed/ease of operation and having a shared understanding of what's happening. Intelligent UI is far from instantaneous right now. Context around a data type may involve interaction that AI may not fully understand. Works well in simple cases like a calendar for sure though. Meta also though Metaverse would be a thing and invested billions. Tech companies make mistakes. [re: Which kinds of software actually survive the next”

“The tradeoff you described is so real, we ended up just picking whatever tool the loudest stakeholder wouldn't complain about [re: What I learned comparing project management tools for a Slack heavy team]”

“A lot of the ‘busy’ work can be done a lot faster. But it is not good at everything and certainly cant work directly with customers. It can influence a strategic vision, but is not always right. It is still just a fancy tool and needs the right context and data to get the best outputs. Our job is now heavily about properly providing that context and data. If you actually test giving the same AI task to somebody with 20 years of experience vs 2- you see very different outputs as the person with 2”

“For a solo operation the biggest win is getting projects, time, expenses and invoices into one place instead of separate tools. When everything talks to each other you stop manually reconciling data between apps. The thing that made the biggest difference for me was having expenses linked directly to projects so profitability is visible without building it in a spreadsheet. And recurring invoices that generate automatically so billing doesn't slip. For tax time, a tool that exports a clean C”

“They're getting stupid dependent on it. My coworker has been given free reign to attempt to build as much software as possible to automate everything everyone at the company does. It's a very hollow feeling to know that you're coworker is successfully and happily building AI tooling that will leave you and your other coworkers redundant. [re: How dependent on AI is the company you work for?]”

“The work happening between tasks is exactly the distinction I was trying to understand. Have you seen any teams actually measure how much time goes into those cross-system updates and follow-ups? I'm curious whether it's a minor administrative cost or something that becomes significant across multiple projects. [re: At what point does PM accountability turn into being the human integration between systems?]”

“The cleanup. Every process we simplified kept its tool alive, because adding a tool is somebody's job and cancelling one is nobody's. We were paying for three things that sent the same reminder at once, each one added to fix a version of the process that had already changed underneath it. The ownership point above is the same failure with the other half. We assign an owner for the new step and nobody for the step it replaced, so the old one keeps limping along and quietly costs money. Wh”

“I've inherited environments where the ERP is basically the center of a spider web, with everything connected to everything else. Integrations are obviously useful, but every connection is another thing to monitor, troubleshoot and potentially break. We've been using Priority and I've found it useful having the ERP handle more of the core business processes while still being able to integrate with other systems where needed. Curious how other IT teams think about this. Do you try to m”

“Best practices rarely take in account their cost and sometimes even are quite wasteful. It's perfectly natural to seek compromises when resources are scarce. Office PC lasts 5 years no problem. Or maybe it's just me... [re: The sysadmin who argues against best practices]”

“Productivity studies need to separate typing speed from total delivery throughput. AI may accelerate implementation while adding review, rework, coordination, or security costs elsewhere. Teams should measure cycle time from ticket start to production, escaped defects, and reviewer load, segmented by task type and developer experience. https://www.aiosnow.com is relevant to this discussion because workflow-level measurement is more informative than counting prompts or generated code. [re: Harvar”

“The best uses I've seen came from watching where people lose time, not from starting with the tool. Common ones: turning call notes into CRM updates and follow-up tasks, pulling data off invoices and intake forms instead of retyping it, drafting quotes from a short description, sorting the shared inbox, and answering the same customer questions from your own docs. One tip from IT work: find out what your team is already using. Someone is probably pasting customer info into a free account. Mo”

“That's a great way to look at it. I especially agree with measuring conversations instead of hours. Coming from a technical background, it's easy to feel productive by building more features. I'm realizing that talking to potential customers and letting their feedback guide development is probably the better approach at this stage [re: I spent months building my business. Now I'm realizing getting customers is a completely different challenge.]”

“The fact that you keep hitting roadblocks probably means the tool is too flexible for what you need. look into Notework, its more opinionated so you get structure out of the box instead of staring at a blank page. [re: Collaborative PM Platforms that are simple, integrated, and easy to use]”

“Plenty of CLM systems to choose from. And most of them can track the bottlenecks, automate workflow, collaboration, alerts, built-in security, customizable access, etc. Depends on the maturity of the company, might start small with 1-3 simple contract types and grow from there. There are straightforward systems for those who don't need a lot of customization and bells and whistles that may be too simple for big global companies. There are highly customizable systems that end up being convolu”

“If a tool comes out that lets you produce things more quickly, then of course the expectation is that more things will be produced.. That's the entire point. It makes certain parts of our jobs easier and shifts our focus elsewhere, but "coding" was never the entire job in the first place. Coding has become a smaller portion of this line of work for years, that isn't new, it's just happening faster right now. There's always a new problem to solve, that's just how it”

“I think this is an important topic. Its much easier to over complicate analytics solution design, then to spend the time to come up with a good design/plan before starting implementation. I often find digital-first (online) companies chase bespoke tools without a notion of building a "stack" which can integrate or at least generate data which can be "joined" together later during analysis. Even if you are going to dump all of those systems' data to a data warehouse, you n”

“The best way to practice is to pick something you use every day and wireframe a specific flow within it. Doesn’t need to be the whole product, just one thing. Like how would you redesign the checkout flow of an app you use, or what would the onboarding look like if you were building it from scratch? Drawing from something real gives you a reference point to evaluate your own work against. Use boxes and lines before you use any tool. Paper or a whiteboard forced you to think about layout and hier”

“Realistically this is going to be a collection of tools and methods. There is not one tool that does all of this cleanly, and even tools that approach 80% coverage of your requirements are more than you would want to maintain and integrate as a solo practice. > I was seeing online about creating my own executive assistant agent, AI chief of staff w/AI workforce, life dashboard, second brain, and daily and weekly review agent. They all sound great but I’m just now learning how to really use AI”

“The challenge you’re going to run into is that all of your versions of these tools are gonna suck compared to the incumbent. You can’t just vibe out a Slack or Word replacement and expect it to meet enterprise needs. And some of your bullet points just appear to be wrappers around the very services you say you don’t want to pay for? How do I save money with you if I still need Gmail, Gcal, and Stripe? [re: Would you drop M365 or Google Workspace for one tool that does it all?]”

“most of the off-the-shelf notion stuff out there is way too rigid, they don't account for how messy a real project gets halfway through something that helps triage scope creep without needing a dozen linked databases would get my money [re: Update: You told me basic templates aren’t enough. So what would you actually pay for?]”

“Yeah i think this is a big part of it. People aren’t just paying for features, they’re paying to solve a problem without having to manage everything themselves. if building it yourself takes more time and effort than it saves, paying for the tool still make sense. [re: We’re entering the “fuck it, I’ll build it myself” era of SaaS]”

“the part about maintaining the system becoming its own project is so real. sometimes we spend more time organizing the work than actually doing it. a simple table you consistently update will always beat a beautiful dashboard you abandon after a week. [re: A boring three-column Notion table saved me from querying the same agent twice]”

“I think the biggest distinction is between building software as a hobby and building it to solve a business problem. Your time has an opportunity cost, and maintenance, security, and reliability are easy to underestimate. That said, AI could still put pressure on SaaS companies by making it much cheaper to build alternatives, especially for niche use cases. I don't think SaaS is dead, but I do think the value proposition will have to keep evolving. [re: to people who says SAAS IS DEAD ? did”

“The biggest hurdle with switching tools is inertia not cost savings. People will stick with something that sort of works for years just cause they already learned the quirks and have their reports set up a certain way. Might be worth trying a free tier that handles one specific task really well. Gets them in the door and once they see the speed or accuracy they'll get curious about the rest. [re: I’m pouring my heart and soul into this project… subscriptions are trickling in, but I’ve got AD”

“that's a solid idea, combining tools can really streamline things. have you tried any specific plugins yet? [re: Alternative to taskforge]”

“Scheduling is only half of it: a toggle you reread isn't necessarily a question you can answer. Before rebuilding all 900, pick 20 things you genuinely need to remember and turn each into one specific question with a short answer. Test yourself before opening the toggle, then revisit the misses sooner. Keep the rest as reference notes. That small trial will expose vague prompts and an unmanageable review backlog before you migrate everything. [re: 900 Notion toggles, zero idea when im suppos”

“With that workload I'd skip the big full stack courses and pick one narrow topic you'll hit at work anyway. SQL performance is a good one: reading execution plans and working out which index a slow query is missing, and it applies to Postgres as much as whatever else you run. [re: Certifications and courses for full stack]”

“in my experience we had a shit ton of work todo before AI, now we have a shit ton of work todo + another shit ton added on top from automation and tooling they want done yesterday and hen quadrupled reviews and 10x the number of bugs we find on review. This is with coworkers using AI responsibly, another team was vibecoding the shit out of their work caused several defects on a very short timeframe and now they intimately know the department leads second name every single day of the week. [re: D”