I quit using Notion for my side projects. Here's what I built instead.

I have 6 side projects running at the same time.

Features to build. Bugs to fix. Design ideas that come at 2am.
Marketing tasks. App Store updates. Server costs to track.

For a while, I used Notion. Then Trello. Then Linear.
Then back to Notion. Then a plain text file.

Nothing stuck.

Not because these tools are bad — they're excellent.
But they're built for teams. I'm one person with a laptop and too many ideas.

The real problem

Every time I opened Notion, I spent 15 minutes organizing my workspace
instead of actually building.

Linear felt like I was running a startup of 50 people when it was just me.

Trello boards turned into a graveyard of cards I'd never move.

I needed something that understood: one developer, multiple projects,
no meetings, no managers, just ship.

So I built it

I spent 3 months building Project Brain —
a project manager designed specifically for indie developers.

The core idea is simple:

• Every project has 4 tabs: Features, Design, Bugs, Notes
• Each tab has cards with statuses: Idea → In Progress → Done
• That's it. No nested pages. No kanban boards with 8 columns. No sprints.

What I learned building it

1. Constraints are features.
The 4-tab structure felt limiting at first. But it forced me to categorize
every task clearly. Is this a feature or a bug? Design or a note?
That question alone saves 5 minutes of decision fatigue every day.

2. Mobile-first wasn't optional.
Half my best ideas happen away from my desk. If I can't capture
a bug fix idea while walking, it's gone forever. Project Brain is
built for iPhone — not "also available on mobile."

3. The tool should disappear.
The best productivity tool is one you don't think about.
You open it, log something, close it. Done.
I measured success by how fast I could get back to coding.

The tech stack

• React Native + Expo for cross-platform mobile
• Firebase for real-time sync and auth
• TypeScript throughout
• Monorepo with apps/mobile, apps/web, apps/desktop (Tauri, WIP)

The hardest part wasn't the code — it was resisting the urge to add
features I didn't need. Every "wouldn't it be cool if..." got a hard no
until the core was solid.

Where it is now

• Live on the App Store: Project Brain
• ~50 users in the first month (mostly indie devs from Reddit and ProductHunt)
• Version 1.1 shipped last week with sync improvements

The honest takeaway

Building your own tools is a trap and a superpower at the same time.

Trap: you can spend 3 months building a to-do list instead of your
actual product.

Superpower: you end up with something that fits your brain perfectly,
and you understand every line of it.

Would I do it again? Yes. Would I recommend everyone do it? No.

But if you're an indie developer drowning in half-finished Notion pages —
maybe give it a try.

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What do you use to manage your side projects?
Curious if anyone else abandoned the big tools for something simpler.

Comments

[Mark Barnett]

The 4-tab constraint resonates. I bounced through the same stack before landing on a simple Todoist setup with one project per app. Fast to update, nothing to maintain.

The piece I hadn't solved was financial tracking across projects. Server costs, domains, subscription tools, app store cuts add up across 3-4 projects and I kept losing track of what each one was actually costing monthly. Built a lightweight tracker for that (Money Me - money-me.com) that just shows what is actually left to spend after recurring costs are counted. Same principle as yours: tool that disappears, log something, get back to building.

Good luck with v1.1. Sync improvements are the unsexy work that makes everything else hold together.