I've been building software for about 4 years now. And for most of that time, my workflow looked like this:
- Jira for task tracking
- Notion for docs, wikis, meeting notes
- Slack for everything else
Three tabs minimum, always open. Context switching all day.
The problem nobody talks about
Everyone debates Jira vs Linear or Notion vs Obsidian. But the real productivity killer isn't which tool you pick — it's having too many of them.
I'd create a task in Jira, write the spec in Notion, then paste the link back into the Jira ticket. When someone asked "where's the doc for X?" the answer was always "let me find it." Half my day was just navigating between tabs.
And syncing? Forget about it. Notion docs would get stale because nobody remembered to update them after the sprint changed. Jira tickets referenced Notion pages that no longer existed.
What I tried first
I went through the usual suspects:
- Linear — great for tasks, but still needed something for docs
- ClickUp — tried to do everything, felt bloated
- Monday.com — too much drag-and-drop, not enough keyboard shortcuts for my taste
None of them solved the core problem: I still needed multiple tools.
What actually worked
About 8 months ago I started using Blocpad — basically a workspace that combines kanban boards, a slash-command editor (like Notion), and wiki pages all in one app. Everything syncs in real time.
The thing that sold me honestly wasn't some killer feature. It was just... not having to switch tabs anymore. I create a task, write the spec right there in the same place, and my team can see both without asking "where's the link?"
Some things I actually like:
- Tasks and docs live together. No more pasting links between tools
- Real-time presence — I can see who's looking at what, which sounds small but actually reduces a lot of "hey are you working on this?" messages
- The editor feels snappy. Not Notion-level polish yet but honestly I care more about speed than animations
Things that are still rough:
- No mobile app yet (they're working on it apparently)
- The onboarding could be better — took me a bit to figure out the slash commands
- Missing some integrations I want (GitHub is there, but I want better Slack integration)
The actual lesson
Look, I'm not saying everyone should use what I use. The point is: if you're spending 20+ minutes a day just navigating between your tools, that's a workflow problem worth solving.
Before you add another tool to your stack, ask yourself if you can remove one first. The best productivity hack I found this year wasn't a new app — it was having fewer apps.
Currently building a SaaS and sharing the journey. If you're into #buildinpublic stuff, I post updates on Twitter too.
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