Ivy: Plan. Do. Reflect.

I’ve been using Ivy since the beta, and Semantical is probably the best developer team I’ve interacted with. The team over there really cares about this app, and is willing to spend weeks hunting down a bug with you to make sure Ivy is in the best state it could possibly be. More importantly though, Ivy’s workflow is just PRISTINE. I used to use time blocking as my main strategy for tasks, but it got overwhelming. I found that I was spending too much time working in my task app compared to actually getting things done. So the simplicity of Ivy has been absolutely incredible for me. Would recommend this app to anyone. Period. Even people who are afraid that the system might be “too simple:” give it a try. You might like the zen of it.

I’ve tried many todo list apps over the years and Ivy is the one that just truly works for me. Instead of tasks endlessly piling up, it allows you to plan your day each morning and stay on top of things. My favorite part is how it automatically moved completed tasks to review, so that they don’t just pile up and make me feel overwhelmed. I love how it had a calendar integration letting you see when you can do things, not just what you have to do. When I first opened the app it seems deceptively simple, but it has all of the features I need. Tasks that you count (ie water plant two times), tasks with duration, notes and reminders for the task, etc. It’s probably the most polished app I have ever used, which is not an exaggeration at all. Everything is insanely snappy, fluid, and well designed. As a member of the beta I can tell you that the developer is extremely responsive to user feedback and puts a lot of craft into the app. Don’t let the lack of reviews fool you. I never write reviews but just had to write one for this app since it’s had such a big impact on my life. There’s a reason all the reviews are five stars. Personally I’ve found Ivy to be better than Things 3, Todoist, TickTick, etc. just because of how simple and polished yet powerful it is. So give it a shot, and kudos to the developers!

I’ve used pretty much every mainstream planning app but something that I dislike about all of them is that either tasks you don’t finish roll over indefinitely (cluttering your daily tasks space) or they disappear into the void. This app strikes the balance. Tasks do not roll over; you get a clean day. But they also don’t disappear out of sight out of mind because of the planning mode that helps you choose your tasks for the day. Microsoft Todo has similar functionality but it’s become very buggy and lacks polish, and I don’t like that you can’t set recurring todos to “after completion”. You can in this app! The only thing I wish this app had was a way to make lists or categories, but a perfectly usable workaround has just been to integrate it with the Apple Reminders app. In Ivy each integrated todo maintains the Reminders list name as a label under the task. So basically I use Reminders for organizing my master list of todos and Ivy for planning things out.