Launch HN: Routine (YC W21) – Tasks, notes and calendar all in one product
I became an entrepreneur in 2010 and struggled to maintain control of my work environment which quickly became very chaotic with many email/chats to answer, a ton of meetings to schedule and attend, time to find to focus on important tasks and hundreds of thoughts going through my head that I needed to write down somewhere not to forget.
Over the years I improved my own workflow, from sending myself emails, to todo apps, to GTD, to programming my own small tools with keyboard shortcuts.
Talking with many busy professionals (entrepreneurs, investors, managers etc.) we quickly discovered that everybody had the same problems: they cannot stay in control of their time, they rely on manual "hacks" based on a single product (e.g Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion or else) to do almost everything and they hate context switching between apps.
Given how many people are unhappy with their workflow, we decided to build Routine to become a productivity operating system (so to speak) and solve these problems.
In particular, we find it super annoying to be forced to switch between todo and notes taking apps. We believe some information is actionable (tasks) while others are not (notes). We see no reason why they should not be stored in the same system. This is why we decided to include notes (daily notes, meeting notes, topic-based pages etc,) and tightly-bound them to tasks. In Routine, tasks can be enhanced with a media-rich description (i.e a note) but notes can also embed checkboxes which are full-fledged tasks that can be scheduled, delegated and more.
Another problem with existing tools is that they do not take into account your work preferences. Maybe you prefer to concentrate in the morning and take meetings in the afternoon. Or maybe the opposite. Routine allows you to define such time preferences when it comes to deep work, internal and external meetings, administrative work etc. Routine will then take those into account whenever you want to schedule a meeting or block time in your calendar in order to work on an important task. Think of it as Calendly for all the activities in your life (not just meetings).
We also think that existing workflows are just too slow. Switching to your browser to then click on the Google Calendar tab to be able to look at your next meeting is just too much work. Likewise when it comes to taking meeting notes or writing down a task to perform later. Such actions should not take more than 3 seconds, in particular since you perform them several times a day. This is why we've made Routine controllable through a single keyboard shortcut. Just invoke CTRL+SPACE anywhere on your desktop to pop up Routine's console which can be used to capture a thought, create a calendar event, glance at your calendar, take notes and more. This way you do not need to switch apps and lose focus!
By combining these concepts, you can for example turn an email into a task and secure time in your calendar to make sure it gets done; just invoke the console over Gmail and type "... for 1h in Focus" (with Focus being the name of one of your pre-defined time slots).
The app is still in heavy development. For now we've been focusing on having a strong backbone with tasks, notes and calendar. Some of the features above will be shipped in the next release. We have the core concepts but we need time and your feedback to help us find the right direction. So if you feel information is spread between too many tools and that you are constantly wasting time switching between apps, let us know what you think, ideas you have and recurring problems you face.
Feel free to give it a try (note that we are in the process of rebranding and the app is not up to date yet!):...
94 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 160 ms ] threadI 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]
PS excited to try the product. I will delete this comment after you make the edit. Cheers!
Do you have any plans towards building Routine in that direction?
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 clean and beautiful. Congratulations to your launch and I will try to sign up for early access later.
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 to enhance with a description (which in turn can contain subtasks) etc.
We've basically closed the loop. Every note can contain tasks. And every task can be enhanced with a note. And then we tight those notes and tasks to what is happening in your life.
If you are in a meeting, you can take notes that will be linked to this meeting and its participants. If you create a checkbox (action item) in such a note, it becomes a task that you can postpone for later or schedule right away.
Notion is best for teams and does not have this notion of task, nor is it well integrated with your calendar. Likewise for Roam which is more for people who love to take tons of notes: researchers, journalists etc.
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
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.
> What made you pause working on it?
I lost interest in building it, I still use it everyday but now I'm just waiting (hoping) that I'll eventually get back to it.
I've signed up to the beta, definitely keep me updated :)
Apple is clearly moving to having iOS apps work on the Mac. Do you think the iOS Routine app would work on the Mac?
I think it will take quite some time to reunite both world. But maybe indeed, eventually, we'll have only the iOS app that will run on both iPhones and macs.
Note thought that there will always be a big difference in experience. On desktop, we want the experience to be center-ed around the keyboard shortcut, the console and natural language.
On iOS (at least for most people), it's faster to use a well-crafter UI/UX than typing natural language. Though again, in the future, we might go in the direction of voice.
Time will tell :)
Are you assuming a phone here or including the 12" iPad Pro with a keyboard?
You can probably tell Electron isn't my favorite way to make Mac apps.
I totally understand that Electron's memory footprint is not acceptable for very small apps that only serve as a utility. For Life though, which is supposed to replace 2-3 other apps, a memory footprint of ~300mb seems fine to me. In-app performance is also good.
I cannot say anything about the iOS Routine app because I have not tried it yet.
I would love to also have notes built into it - that way I won't be context switching and could (presumably) add tasks from within notes.
I've signed up for your app - looking forward to seeing it!
I would have appreciated a "We're not ready yet, sign up to be on our waiting list". I immediately unsubscribed.
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...
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.
How do I change the Ctrl + Space hotkey? It's my language switch. So, I'd like to keep it and change Routine's.
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.
I've installed it and before moving it to my app folder, I tried to run it (I always do this with new apps). A popup appeared with the title "A JavaScript error occurred in the main process" (weird behavior), I didn't read the content at first, so I closed it and reopened the app again (fast fingers reached cmd-q). Later I read the message asking to move to the App folder first.
Regarding OCaml, using such a strongly typed language enables heavy abstractions without a runtime performance tradeoff, leverages the static optimizer of the OCaml toolchain and outputs optimized javascript (asm like). This is, I would argue, hardly achievable by writing directly plain javascript. Note however that there are other tools that target javascript with similar benefits.
I'm forever flummoxed that Outlook on Mac handles Gmail and Google Calendar just fine, as does Windows Mail, but not Outlook for Windows.
Edit: works pretty well as an app added inside of https://wavebox.io/
Also, with the whole supplychain security, why not just also promote your webapp, instead of a bundled electron app?
###
In order for Routine to provide the value you are looking for, it needs access to some of the Google APIs, most specifically the following:
Google Account
Google Calendar
Google Tasks
Google Drive
Your data privacy is paramount to us. We will NEVER share, sell or use your data in any way that could violate your trust in Routine.
The reputation of the founders (Julien Quintard and Quentin Hocquet), the investors and its employees are on the line. We hold ourselves to the highest of standards
####
No it's not, as I have no idea who you are. Also, you might say you'll never share, but what about some misconfigured backend? The investors invest in your company and take no liability. That's the whole purpose of a limited liability company
As for why we use Google services. It's because most professionals do use Google Calendar. Some don't, we understand. We might serve them in the future but we have to start somewhere.
We advertise the desktop app (instead of the Web app) because Routine is intended to be used through a desktop-wide keyboard shortcut so you can capture thoughts and tasks from anywhere. A Web app requires that you switch to your browser, then find the right tab and click it to then be able to interact with the Web app. We believe it is too slow for a productivity tool. But some people do not have a choice (Windows) this is why we've answered them.
If you do not trust our service, we understand. We don't force you to use it. It's obviously your right.
But just to make things clear (which we explain in the Privacy section), all tasks are stored in your Google Tasks account. All events are stored in your Google Calendar. And all your notes are in your Google Drive. This means we store no data on our servers (for now at least).
Why not just release a macOS version on the appstore? Or, if you've created a swift version anyway, use that codebase for a universal app? There are also quite a number of apps that allow myself to 'convert' it to a 'native' app, with the exception of some features of course (such as global hotkeys).
Both desktop and webapp versions don't work for me (401 from google apps, not gmail), and show a blank screen. Login -> uncheck some checkboxes -> retry and check the boxes -> still blank.
Note: This could be create completely (afaict) using the built-in cal/task integration features of macOS/iOS, and would allow you use all supported calendar/task-services. For example, noteplan simply uses that, and will support dropbox as storage in later versions I think (it was removed from the beta version)
Let us check the problem regarding your 401 and come back to you. Sorry about that.
That's why advertising the service around privacy is being criticized. It's a business. It will do business things. Saying it won't do those things is a distraction...like this conversation.
People who seriously care about privacy are not using Google to manage their information. They are not even your potential users, because they don't use Google.
Not storing data on your servers is a sound way to reduce your liability and attack surface. But that's an operational tradeoff that comes with a business dependency on Google's terms of service.
In B2B sales, not storing on your servers is a feature. But it's not really privacy. It's security.
But since we are asking users for their Google credentials, we thought it was more transparent to explain, for each service, why we needed it and what it meant. We prefer to be transparent than just ask for a bunch of permission without explanation as other services do.
And yes we are tight to Google because it was simpler for us to start this way. Again, most of the professionals we target use Google Workspace. In the future, the service could evolve and support other services like Outlook.
Just have standard terms of service.
A snowflake is always “for now.”
Placating people who don’t like your ToS is not connecting with people in your market segment.
Your market segment is people who don’t care. Your differentiation is treating them better than you can get away with.
Again I don’t have any issue with what you are doing.
I think privacy theater is a waste of your time and energy.
My Google account only has a first name so when I tried signing up got this error
{"reason":"invalid JSON OAuth response: missing required field family_name","method":"GET"}
1. https://noteplan.co/
I would even say that it shouldn't exist as a free app on the App store.
I really like the design, and how minimal you've kept it. I've been working in this space with Amna [https://getamna.com] and I know how hard it is to get the design right. It's soo easy to keep building UI for everything.
One thing I found frustrating was closing out of the "console" when I was clicking out of it. Since it was invoked with a mouse, my hands weren't on the keyboard.
I'm looking forward to where this is going!
For now, you can hide the console by re-hitting CTRL+SPACE.
- Complex recurrence is key. I exercise 4 days per week. I only process my inbox (GTD-style) on weekdays. I triage bugs twice per week.
- Need to be able to view more than one day at a time on the calendar, and add tasks to specific days in that view — I plan out my weeks.
- Looking at future dates, it still shows my tasks scheduled for earlier dates. This makes planning difficult.
Ergonomic feedback
- Keyboard shortcuts (including arrow key navigation) does not work if you are focused on the name field of the task in the list. This means I can't really navigate, open, archive, reschdule tasks without using the mouse. Or at least I can't see how to. Might have to change hotkey scheme (use control or option?) as well, as command+A, for example, should probably still select all text in a field.
- I should be able to click out of the console — I keep trying to click or alt-tab out of it, like it’s spotlight, and it just hovers empty in front of my screen until I click to refocus on it and hit escape.
- When I've thought of building this myself, a key feature was adding tasks to the day's calendar (like, "I plan to work on X from 2-3:30pm").
Currently I use Asana for it's calendar view (note: this is not a calendar integration) and great keyboard shortcuts.
Anyway, congrats on the launch!
Recurrence is something we will improve. But you have pretty specific ones :)
We will actually add a planning view with a full week. We are definitely aligned on that. Stay put.
For the future dates, yes indeed it's not ideal. We are in the process of fixing that. Well spotted.
For the navigation, again, need to improve you are right. You need to ESC to come back to arrow navigation for now.
Clicking out of the console is not easy to solve unfortunately. We are on it as well. What you can do is either focus on the console and press ESC. Or you can hit CTRL+SPACE once more and it will hide the console.
We do support "do something on DAY at TIME for DURATION" but it's still a bit buggy. We need to improve it :)
Thanks for all the feedback.
unbundled (calendar/task/notes) applications are still available if that's your preference.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/2xxcvc7r54mrnua/Screen%20Shot%2020...
Also, maybe it’s just the logo, but the design looks really similar to sorted3.
Regarding iOS, you can find it here: https://apple.co/399lDrW
Is this really that big of a problem? This is the second YC startup in this batch that is trying to fix this. I’m usually already in the browser, and if not I can cmd-tab into there in seconds. From there it takes me literally less than 2 seconds to type “cal” + enter to look at my Google calendar.
Half an app, barely a business. Why did YC back this?
This comes up a lot on Launch HN posts. The answer is always "YC backs teams, not ideas". They liked the founders and think the founders have potential.
If this is how the founders choose to use that potential, then so be it. Maybe they will make a success, maybe they will pivot. YC will back them up and help them either way.
I like seeing my calendar, notes and tasks in the same place. I think that going forward contacts should also be part of the app. If I take notes during a meeting, they should be linked to my Routine
Main thing I use in the app is the calendar to join meetings in a click
Best of luck, many commenters on HN seem to really undervalue the "it just works" aspect of things. It looks nice, seems to do something I am really anxious for help with, and not much more. I can see myself paying for this (potentially :) - need to get it working first!).
One perhaps funny anecdote for you - I am recently an engineer-turned-manager and this type of unified task/meeting management is one of the growth areas I've had to focus on most over the last year. Thought I'd let you in on a potential niche^2 market that might be a good fit for a blog post or something similar down the road.
Relating to your last comment, I would be great to chat. I'd love to get your input: julien.quintard@routine.co if you want to reach out directly.
Thanks
- Section: Agenda-view
- Feature: in the "free time" blocks where no event are scheduled, have the option (+) to create a new event in that free block of time.
- Source: viewed on web app
Hopefully that makes sense!
Thanks. Very clear.
Notes are related to people, accounts, opportunities, or other relational objects. Tasks are related to people, accounts, opportunities, and so on.
A type of a note could be call, SMS sent, received, note could be a task, and yes you can and should mix all the different types inside.
In my opinion best is to make the main table to be anything, of any type as that way you can just add a new type and continue with development. An entry in the same table could be a note, but also task, but also reminder or calendar. And why not make it a hyperlink to directory, DJVU file, PDF file, specific page in PDF file, EPUB, "Follow-Up" related to person, assigned task related to person Joe while assigned to person Jane, task assigned to group of people encompassing Joe and Jane and relate to company ABC LIMITED or Markdown, or plain text, or spreadsheet, allow uploading of files if you have not done so previously, a message ID that user can click, a video, or video to be played with specific times, or encrypted password, or the annoted WWW hyperlink, or online video, etc.
I can suggest to learn from other similar systems:
Monica - Personal Relationship Manager https://github.com/monicahq/monica
Joplin https://joplinapp.org/
Turtleapp note taking application https://turtlapp.com/download/
TiddlyWiki - note taking in a browser https://tiddlywiki.com
The PARA Method: A Universal System for Organizing Digital Information https://fortelabs.co/blog/para/
Org mode - your life in plain text https://orgmode.org/
Project Xanadu https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Xanadu
Semantic Synchrony https://github.com/synchrony/smsn
Cherrytree - hierarchical note taking application with rich text and syntax highlighting https://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/
Hypothes.is Annotate the web, with anyone, anywhere. https://web.hypothes.is/
Doug Engelbart Institute - Boosting mankind's capability for coping with complex, urgent problems https://www.dougengelbart.org/
Draft OHS-Project Plan https://web.archive.org/web/20070704185333/http://www.bootst...
Few comments: - Can the Desktop/Mobile tasks/events/agendas sync, or is this currently being worked on?
- I want to be able to add a calendar event and be able to view it as an agenda (on the daily agenda), viewing an event or a task on the side seems to be counter-intuitive.