Best Daily Planner Apps for 2024? Motion vs Sunsama vs Akiflow vs Routine

Ah, awesome to hear! Yeah we haven't found a tool that auto-schedules tasks in the same way. Grab a free trial here: efficient.link/r/motion and do let us know how it goes! Also happy to answer any questions you have along the way, always fun to hear how things go!

Awe, this means a lot 🥹 awesome to have you here and excited to see you more around the comments section! Curious what software you ended up going with and what your needs are (individual/business)? Always fun to learn and happy to help however we can if any questions arise!

We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful if you decided to go with Motion: efficient.yt/motion

Awe, thanks Paul! 🙏 (I was going to say friend, but that's your thing 😉) Confirmed that Andra said if we were using Asana still, she'd 100% be a Sunsama user, she's a big fan 😁

@@efficientapp absolutely my friends 👍 I'm dying laughing over here 😂 You are more than welcome to steal my friend thing 😉 Sunsama is pretty amazing. I have yet to find another productivity tool to match the depth of integration of software and philosophy. But it's not for everyone's setup or budget.

Okay, sounds good my friend 🙏🙂😁 And totally! It seems like a fantastic tool for those especially that like physical note taking/to-do lists, as a way to bring tasks to the digital world, but in a more mindful/thoughtful way, similar to the physical note taking way. They definitely know their target customer well as the software reflects that philosophy and ethos incredibly well 🙌 If it allows you to stay more organized and bring a bit more enjoyment in the day-to-day, then we'd say it's more than worth the pricetag! 🔥

@@efficientapp I couldn't have summarized it better myself. Love the simplicity of it.

Routine sounds like a great choice in that scenario! One thing we will mention is they don't allow for recurring tasks currently which is a bit frustrating. Sad to hear it's crashing for you though! Is it the iOS mobile app? Or desktop? If iOS, that just came out and it's sorta like a beta currently from what we understand, definitely let them know by writing into support as I'm sure they'd like to get that fixed! Hope it doesn't spoil the app for you if it's otherwise a good fit! 🤞

Love the UI of Routine as well, they are based in Paris interestingly enough! Super impressed with the product design that has come from there. Regarding Sunsama, definitely a great choice to dive into the daily planner world especially if your team is already using a full project management tool like Asana 🔥 we did actually do a video on best project management software and we awarded Asana as one of our top picks, might be helpful to send that video to the IT team? efficient.tips/yt/pm Funny enough, we actually just made the full switch to Motion from Asana after using Asana internally on-and-off for 8+ years. It's always tough making the leap, but we're happy with the decision thus far! Definitely have someone on your team championing the change/implementation though if you do choose to take the leap, super important!

Super glad it helped! 🥹

Awe, awesome to hear! What'd you end up going forward with? And curious to hear what type of business you just started! Appreciate the comment!

@@efficientapp I went with Motion. Haven’t set up yet been crazy busy! A company for my KZhead channel’s haha we are live right now for the Toronto Raptors live nba game search @Toronto Sports Insider Really enjoyed your content, can’t wait to watch more!

Amazing to hear! Hoping you used the link here so that you can get our upcoming setup course for free 👀 efficient.deals/motion I will say, Motion has worked great for us on the KZhead content creation side of things-have a video coming out in a couple weeks which shows actually how we're using Motion for our own internal processes, so maybe that'll give you some inspo for setting it up! Well done on the consistent content and channel growth! Not an easy thing to do 🔥 keep it up my friend, and appreciate the support! See you around in other videos!

We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful in setting up Motion yourself: efficient.yt/motion

@@efficientapp Thanks for sharing! I will check it out, first few weeks of motion has been great!!

Appreciate your comment, and makes total sense! Fingers crossed that Motion adds a Gantt chart view and then it can check all the boxes-I'm sure it'll come with time. What platforms are you trying to connect together beyond GCal?

@@efficientapp Yea that'd (Asana) be extremely helpful to eliminate another moving part & cost. - Outlook (corporate calendar) - Akiflow (not absolutely necessary but I love the "grab anything from anywhere and instantly put it in inbox") - Notion (I've had the PPV system in there for a while, otherwise I'd use anytype, tana, coda or obsidian)

Whelp, I know the team is aware of the limitation and will likely prioritize more team project management features like that in 2024 🤞 Akiflow is super tempting because of that, we agree! Just wish it wasn't such a manual process to plan out your day though. Ah yes, Notion makes sense for knowledge base/note taking-while we used Coda for a while, we're currently using Slite: efficient.link/r/slite that said, Notion is good as well if you specifically use it for the note taking side of things! Best of luck figuring out what works best for you, looks like you're on the right path my friend!

​@@efficientapp Weird. I replied here but I guess it didn't stick. Ideally I'd like to connect all of them so no matter where an event or task is inputted, it can be shown or updated from anywhere else. Akiflow has been pretty good at that. - Notion: I've built the PPV system (august bradley) for 3ish yrs now so that'd be really hard to change. If I'd known about coda or obsidian 3 yrs ago though, I prob would've used them instead. - Akiflow: grab anything instantly into the inbox. It's very sim to motion but w/ out the ai and proj mgmt functionality. I really like akiflow but if I had to drop it, then so be it. Akiflow's shortcuts are the best I've ever used, hands down. Really wish motion had at least a handful. I haven't seen any so far. - Outlook: Corporate work. Events & mtgs sit well in motion - Asana: Only bc of the gantt chart. I looked into others like teamgantt, etc and it's a PITA to connect that to other platforms

Thank you for your insight and suggestion. I can't even tell you how badly my 60k person company needs something like that. Onenotes and spreadsheets all over the place. It's a DAILY cringe. Did I mention it's daily? +sad laugh+

Awe, so glad to hear, appreciate your comment! Which tool (if any) did you end up going with? Would love to know why!

@@efficientapp I really liked the AI schedule reshuffle you highlighted with Motion so I am going to do their 7-day free trial and see how I like it. I’d be curious to see how Routine works but want to play with Motion first. I’ll report back. Thanks for fantastic appraisal and info! :)

Awesome to hear! Did you happen to sign up using our link efficient.link/r/motion as you'd be able to lock-in the Motion course here efficient.deals/motion Routine is quite simplified as compared to Motion. There's no auto-scheduling, AI, it's just minimal and simple. So depends on what you're truly looking to get out of it, though if you're being pulled toward Motion, not sure Routine is going to really be a contender. Here's a full comparison on them both though: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-routine Be sure to check out the video of how we set up and use Motion as that should ensure you get the most out of your trial period! efficient.yt/motion Excited to hear how things go for you!

Oh my, thank you!🙏

It's actually ALT + Spacebar (OPT + spacebar is MacOS), we have a video coming out in a week and a half that goes more into this 🙌

We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful as it goes into the keyboard shortcuts as well: efficient.yt/motion

Awe, course! Glad we could help and appreciate your comment 🙏 what'd you end up going forward with, if any?

Awesome to hear! And which did you end up going with? Curious to hear what made the difference for you? Recommend using one of our links to sign up for either in order to lock in a discount: Motion: efficient.deals/motion (free course) Akiflow: efficient.deals/akiflow ($10 free credit)

Cool to hear you're sticking with Motion, be sure to sign up here to lock in a deal assuming you haven't signed up yet! efficient.deals/motion

We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion

We need to do a proper write up of this! Working on it, this page will be updated over the coming weeks/month 🤞 efficient.app/apps/amie

So glad it helped! Which tool did you end up choosing? 🙌

I’m day 2 into a Motion trail. It’s good. I’ve given myself til Friday to get into the groove w this tool and if by then it’s not feeling seamless, or near seamless, I’ll cancel it. I do like it so far tho. Thanks for asking 😉!

@kariallen-hammer Glad you’re enjoying it! If you have any questions as you’re using it, feel free to pop them in here and we’ll do our best to answer. Thinking it might be helpful for others to see also if they decide to go with Motion. Otherwise, hope it’s all seamless for you!

@@efficientapp Thought I'd return and let you know I've opted in for the annual Motion subscription. I've used it for a week and have definitely found value in the AI shifting around my schedule when I haven't completed a task yet. I am still building momentum with it, but already it has helped keep me on track with my projects and tasks.

Hey Kariallen! Just seeing this now (YT isn't the best with alerting of comment responses 🥲). Awesome to hear you're getting value from the AI shifting and that you're building up momentum to stay on track with projects and tasks! Stay tuned to our channel as we actually have a video coming out that goes into how we use Motion ourselves along with some best practices that we're super excited to get out! Looking to press publish in a couple more weeks, just finished wrapping up filming and screen recordings, so the editing is coming now, it's a pretty big project 😅 Thanks again for coming back to let us know how it's going, super excited for you!

Awe, this means a lot! What did you end up going with and what are your needs, super curious?

Ayyyy, Jujo, good to see you here-love your videos! So we actually have a video recorded (but not yet edited) on Motion vs Reclaim vs Clockwise. That's a bit away though, so we do have a page that goes a bit more into it on our site: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-reclaim The long and short of it is they are totally different tools. We used Reclaim for about a year before switching to Motion. Motion does full calendar, time management, daily planning, task and project management. Whereas Reclaim isn't actually a calendar you'd interact with, it just shifts things around in the background, and allows you to add some tasks in with basic prioritization. We just wouldn't even put them in the same category at all. We personally use Motion now, but was there anything in particular you were looking for between Motion and Reclaim?

@@efficientapp thanks for the quick reply 😄 I’m on Motion right now but got curious about Reclaim. I’m looking forward to your comparison, and I’d love to see any tips on how to best use Motion in the future if you have some 😉 I love the idea of Motion but I’m still having a hard time remembering to put all my stuff there (which limits how useful it can be) and creating a habit of going to Motion for the calendar instead of quickly opening Gcal in a new tab 😅 Btw, I’m loving your videos! Keep going hard 🔥

Amazing! Not sure if you used our affiliate link but if so we actually have a course we're gonna be editing and giving for free: efficient.deals/motion but we'll have the video of how we set up Motion coming out soon just on our channel 🙌 we think you made the right choice as you'd have a far more difficult time remembering to add tasks to Reclaim 😅 Super appreciate the support, awesome seeing you around my friend!

P.S. @JujoOfficial we actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful in getting the most out of it and building up the habit of using it: efficient.yt/motion

Hey hey! Appreciate your comment 🙌 1. That is correct, they are building out the functionality, just add them to the workspace and you can move them to projects later. 2. Totally, so this is a limitation with many of the leading project management tools on the market like Asana. The reasoning behind this is that if a task is assigned to multiple people, who is actually in charge of getting the work done? You need someone in-charge of actually completing the task. Not sure if you saw Flows though in the Figma Files of our most recent Motion video here: efficient.yt/motion as it shows how a task will soon evolve into numerous tasks that jump between team members when it's their turn to take over the task. It's toward the end of the video. 3. Care to clarify a bit more here? Again, flows may be what you're looking for which is to come out soon. Nope, the free tier doesn't have any restrictions!

Thanks for the additional info and taking the time to respond! I completely understand why more than one person on a task isn't ideal. But with client work as an accountant as an example, you may need both the bookkeeper and accountant to prep for a meeting. And if those happen monthly or quarterly then you'd want visibility of those tasks. For bookkeeping clients, if you create a monthly project with all monthly bookkeeping tasks, the hiccup here is the recurring function. The tasks would not be visible in the project but only the individual side, but if for whatever reason they're not there, we aren't able to change the assignee because it appears under team schedule vs. the project. That means we'd have to recreate the project on a monthly basis. Are there subtasks? Didn't see this capability while playing around with this. Ideally we would want to see where we are at with all tasks, and with subtasks.

It's a tough scenario you're describing, completely understand how you're in a tough spot currently. Hope you're open to me discussing ways that we've worked around this and how to think through things a bit? I could just say "it sounds like you need a project manager that allows you to assign a task to multiple people" but that's not actually helpful in our eyes. Multiple Assignees Workaround: - When Andra and I both need to be involved in a task, we'll visit the task and press ⌘+D which duplicates the task, and then assign it to the other person (at least for right now). Monthly Projects Not Recurring: - When you're describing a monthly project with bookkeeping tasks, completely understand the confusion here, but we'd recommend you actually make said project into a task (instead of a project) for said customer. - Then create a label with the customer's name (or a PO name you use, e.g. NRC for Northtowns Remodeling Corp). That way you can easily filter/sort/organize tasks by customer (instead of trying to accomplish this by projects). - And when custom fields come, you can create a "customer" custom field for a bit more structure instead of using labels. Subtasks: - This is currently done through a checkbox in the description/notes area of a task, shortcut is to type [] and it'll create a checkbox - We then make the task a bit longer (e.g. 4 hours) and then "enable chunking in 30 minute increments". That way we have the overarching task that populates onto our calendar, and then we work through the task and mark the chunk "complete" + check off the subtasks to remember our progress. We've shown examples of the above if you haven't yet had a chance to check out our "how we use Motion tutorial video" efficient.yt/motion Does this help at all? If it feels like using Motion in this way won't work for you then it just might not be the right tool for the job at the moment. That said, we use our Motion account for very similar tasks (internal admin/reconciling/bookkeeping tasks) and also manage legacy customer projects, and we've been able to get away with everything listed above. Some of it is a process/flow working with Motion a bit differently is all.

@@efficientapp Oh wow! This is SUPER helpful!! I truly appreciate the feedback and will definitely implement the suggestions you've mentioned 😊

Awe, awesome to hear that! Appreciate you taking on the suggestions-looking forward to hearing how it works for you in the coming weeks! 🙌

Appreciate the suggestion, so we are focused on B2B SaaS and team software, getting into the world of tools like SkedPal just gets too far into that individual perceived productivity space and isn't really the direction we're looking to take the channel. From a UI/UX perspective SkedPal just feels like it is made by a small team for individuals and it's quite outdated as compared to the tools that were reviewed in this video. For those reasons, we don't feel like it's actually a true competitor in the daily planner/time blocking space and we'd rather spend our resources reviewing more modern software for teams. We just have to determine where our time is best used and our core expertise is tools that allow for growth into small teams and businesses, not just individuals who are often quite price concious.

We agree!! 🚀🚀🚀

We’d say Motion because you can’t track projects in Sunsama or Akiflow more so just group tasks with labels within these tools. For Motion you can have a different Workspaces for all your classes, then set up projects for all the assignments, then auto-schedule tasks for each assignment with deadlines on your calendar. I genuinely wish I had Motion when I was in school! efficient.link/r/motion Heads up, we’re coming out with a free course on how to set up Motion for anyone who uses our link to sign up for an account, just make sure to enter your email in here after using the link above: efficient.deals/motion Also we have a video coming to this channel soon showing how we use it also that might inspire you 👀 The only other tool I’d consider is Sunsama if you are a pen & paper planner type of person because it’s more of a manual planner: efficient.link/r/sunsuma

@efficientapp Thank you so much. As a student at UC Berkeley, I know this will all help so much!!

Awesome to hear! Excited to see how that works for you! Glad we could help 🙌 P.S. The how we use Motion setup video is about 2 weeks away, stay tuned! 👀

@@efficientapp Perfect!!!

P.S. the video has been released! You can watch it at efficient.yt/motion if you haven't seen it yet! Curious to hear what you think! 🤔

This is the best compliment!! We put a lot of research and editing work into our software reviews so maybe we can get there one day 😉 So, the real million dollar question, which tool are you going to try?

I gotta say, a bit confused by what you're saying 😅 you're using Motion but you need to keep Asana open? If you're using Motion there's an option in settings to sync tasks to your calendar. If you're using Asana, I don't totally understand what it is you're saying because Asana doesn't work with Motion or Outlook?

Appreciate the comment, we agree with you regarding all of the integrations that Akiflow has, Sunsama is definitely quite a bit more manual feeling for time blocking, but would love to hear a specific example of this as it would help others out being able to connect more with what you're saying! Appreciate your comment!

@@efficientapp so the thing is while putting tasks on your sunsama calendar the refresh time for the calendar is about 3-4 seconds and the same happens when switching to the weekly view. This just feels jarring and the entire process takes a lot longer

Gotttt it, yeah we can definitely see that. For the person taking a more mindful approach, putting a few tasks on their calendar for the day, this isn't a huge deal, but with a larger number of tasks being added, can definitely see the UX frustration here! Appreciate you following up 🙏

We may take another look at it, although the truth of the matter is it's more barebones when compared to the others in the category and is more individual versus B2B focused, whereas the other daily planners mentioned in this video are meant for business use in addition to individual/personal. We're just trying to focus a bit more on the business side to software as it's where our expertise is and also what is a bit underserved from what we have seen.

We hear you, we have found that the onboarding could be improved as there are some overwhelming areas post-onboarding, but if you are trying to aggregation all of your external tools into one place, there is no better tool that we've found. Sounds like you're more talking about calendar-type features and tasks, have you tried Motion? eff.li/r/motion

@@efficientapp motion is the next app i would like to test

@@efficientapp MOTION: - One of the most expensive. - Very Long cluttering text at the description of tasks ("This event was created by Motion's task manager..."), that unfortunately there is no way to remove it when you choose to surface tasks on your external calendar. - NOT FOR RECURRING EVENTS: When syncing a recurring event with Google, it does not allow to bulk/batch edit it from the Google Calendar because Motion writes into Google Calendar as an individual eventS. This doesn't allow me to remove or edit all of them in one shot, and it requires me to use the Motion app. - Unable to individually setup reminders some time before a specific gcal/calendar event. CRITICAL/ESSENTIAL. - No natural language like ToDoist or VimCaL. It's not efficient as ToDoist and/or VimCaL. - ScreenShot: gyazo.com/81c2fa561fbe18b08e951e413a89d256

We just released a full tutorial of how we use Motion, wonder if you had a bit more guidance on how to best use it if you'll appreciate it a bit more: efficient.yt/motion

Cool, what do you like about it, and how large of a team are you using it with?

Why wouldn't you use Motion to edit calendar events if you used it to create them? You should rarely if ever even need to open up Google Calendar if you're using Motion (on mobile and desktop/web). We have been using Motion for 3 years for recurring events with absolutely no problem. Trying to understand where this is coming from here.

It's a manual auto schedule 😅 it's nothing like the expectation that auto schedule is referring to. You need to manually press X to schedule a task in Sunsama. The point with Motion is every day/hour/minute your tasks are automatically scheduled and reprioritized on your calendar as more important things come up. No action required.

@@efficientapp ahhh gotcha. I see that now.

Yep, it's a bit deceptive, we were confused too when we saw it initially when reviewing it. Then after using it, we felt like it wasn't what we were hoping it was.

Smells like AI 🐠

@@efficientapp Yes, I use Copilot to help me follow along and better internalize your video. And since I already created the summary, I hope a quick cut and paste helps your viewers as well! Thanks for the great content!” 🌟🙌

Daww our pleasure! We love Copilot in Perplexity as well 🙌 Fun to see there is a human behind this, thought it was just a bot, so hi hello welcome! 👋

Also use Glasp & "KZhead Comment Summary with ChatGPT OpenAI" to port entire transcript to ChatGPT so I can have further conversation with the transcript content and also get a summary of all the comments people post without needing to absorb insulting commentary that gets posted on various videos.

Ah! Very cool-we actually know the founder of Glasp actually! What an inspiring background and story he has behind why the product exists. Awesome to see it evolving and to hear about it right here in one of our videos! How cool and what a small world 🤯 Appreciate your kind words and for sharing how you're getting more out of KZhead across the board! I will say, our comment section actually tends to be incredibly nice and helpful-think we got lucky, but hey, comments like yours help, thank you for being here and hope to see you (and Glasp) around more! 👋

Agree. This is a biased review. They need transparency that they're financially incentivized to promote some of these tools over others.

Appreciate the kind words as we put a lot of work into our videos! 🙏 We have this mentioned in the description (adding the snippets to the end of the comment), and we while we totally see your point, we make sure to disclose it for anyone looking (if you click into our KZhead channel/description it's made abundantly clear, it's not something we are trying to hide, in-fact we're embracing and sharing the journey of it all). The truth of the matter is that we evaluate all of the tools on our website and have selected top picks in various categories, this has always happened prior to an investment being made, as the potential to invest stems from obsessing over a tool, giving tons of product feedback, and getting involved with the team in building the product over sometimes years. So while one might think it would surely affect our opinions, the truth of the matter is that the entire reason for investing is because we have such strong opinions about the tools in the space in the first place. *After being customers of Motion we asked them if we could invest, check out the full story here: kzhead.info/sun/jMWmc5iKr2uEeac/bejne.html *The disclosure in the description that I was referencing: "We occasionally get the opportunity to invest in some of our favorite tools, this does not impact the outcome of our opinions. You can read more and learn which software we've invested in here: efficient.app/about" Hope to continue seeing you around as it does mean a lot to us 🥹

Saddened to hear the 50+ hours of hard work put into this video being chalked up to this. Please go watch this episode of our mini series and let us know if you still feel the same way: efficient.link/ateam/2