Everyone has a productivity system in their head that no app quite matches. That is the opportunity: an app for one method, one job or one kind of person. The ideas below are deliberately opinionated — the more specific the method, the more useful the prototype is to test.
Build the one closest to how you actually work, then remix it until it fits.
Only three things matter today.
A daily planner where you can only add three tasks for today: a big morning setup screen, a focus view with one task at a time, an evening review with a satisfaction rating and a history of completed days.
Plan the day in blocks, then follow it.
A time-blocking app: a single-day timeline from 6am to 10pm, add blocks with a category colour, a "now" line that moves, and a summary of planned vs actual hours per category.
What went well, what to change.
A weekly review app: guided questions (wins, struggles, lessons, next week's focus), previous reviews in a timeline, and a simple mood and energy chart across weeks.
Urgent vs important, drag tasks into quadrants.
An Eisenhower matrix task app: four quadrants (do, schedule, delegate, delete), add tasks and move them between quadrants with buttons, and a "do now" list generated from the top-left quadrant.
Save articles, keep the best lines.
A reading list app: saved articles with title, source and estimated reading time, a reader view with highlights, a highlights library grouped by tag and a weekly reading-time chart.
See what this meeting costs in real time.
A meeting cost calculator: add attendees with hourly rates, start a live timer that shows the running cost, an agenda checklist with time per item, and a summary to share after.
One button to start deep work.
A focus session app: choose a duration and what to block (shown as toggles), a full-screen focus timer with a calming animation, session stats and a streak of focused days.
Remember birthdays and last conversations.
A personal relationships app: contacts with how you met, birthdays, last contact date and notes, a "reach out this week" list based on how long it has been, and a quick log of catch-ups.
Swipe emails into four buckets.
An email triage app: a stack of emails you sort with big buttons into reply, delegate, later or archive, a reply queue with a timer per email, and an end-of-session stats screen.
Start and end the workday deliberately.
A work-from-home routine app: a start-of-day checklist (plan, water, posture), a mid-day movement reminder, an end-of-day shutdown ritual and a weekly view of completed routines.
Goal, scope, owners, dates on one screen.
A project one-pager tool: fill in goal, success metric, scope, owners, milestones and risks, see it rendered as a clean one-page brief and keep a list of briefs with status.
Connected notes for thinking.
A note-taking app with backlinks: notes that link to each other with [[double brackets]], a backlinks panel per note, a daily note, search and a simple graph view drawn in SVG.