5 Reasons to Avoid a New Productivity App Today

Are you looking for reasons to avoid a new productivity app? Productivity apps have made massive inroads into the business world, with many organizations picking up the likes of Trello, Jira, Asana, and many others.

These productivity apps also have certifications, educational resources, and much more, which begs the question of how productive they are. With that in mind, let’s take a closer look at some reasons you might want to avoid a new productivity app.

What is a Productivity App?

Productivity apps are platforms intended to streamline and improve the function of a workplace. These apps often see use with the likes of DevOps but have seen usage in fields not at all related to tech.

Productivity apps generally provide a means to track milestones, have tasks assignable to team members, and more. Realistically, they should improve efficiency with your employees and teams as a whole. However, misuse or inundating your workplace with multiple apps can lead to issues.

What They’re Used For

Productivity apps are designed for businesses to quantify and assign tasks, as well as provide useful metrics. Having well-maintained software suites that help tracks tasks as well as visualizing data is a huge benefit for any organization.

Previously, this was the domain of more manual processes. You’d have employees crunching the numbers to provide performance metrics, project managers on staff to handle the actual timeline, and a lot of other smaller moving parts to keep things rolling.

Using a productivity app isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but there are cases where adopting more than one can lead to too much of a good thing.

Reasons to Avoid a New Productivity App

Here are seven reasons to avoid a new productivity app.

Reason #1: The Data Migration

One of the largest reasons to avoid a new productivity app simply comes down to how time-consuming it is to migrate all of your data. When you consider the size and scope of an organization, there is no doubt plentiful data to be integrated into a new workflow.

Migrating this data takes time and effort, especially when considering it might be an unfamiliar system. Productivity apps aren’t simple to use, so you’ll be hamstringing your business for a long period of time when you consider using a brand-new app.

Time is money for any business, and as such you might find your employees wasting time instead of actually working on deliverables.

Reason #2: Learning New Systems

As previously mentioned, productivity apps like Jira, Asana, and Trello all have their own certifications and educational resources to learn. It is heavily suggested you learn these systems to use them to the fullest potential.

If your business is already pressed for time, this is one of the best reasons to avoid a new productivity app. You’ll have to devote time, energy, and personnel to better integrate an app into your workflow. While the benefits can seem like a massive boon, it can also be a hindrance.

Reason #3: The Boost in Productivity Isn’t What it Seems

Integrating a new productivity app into your business can see only incremental increases in overall efficiency. In fact, if your business is using more than one productivity app, it can actually lead to a decrease in efficiency.

Think about it, if you have more than one app, you have multiple individual systems to learn. Your employees are going to have to swap between these systems on the fly to handle various tasks, mark off completed jobs, and communicate with team members.

This is a massive waste of time and one of the better reasons to avoid a new productivity app. It is better to curate tools and apps with an actual purpose, rather than trying to chase the efficiency numbers to new heights.

Reason #4: Context Switching

What is context switching? Context switching refers to the shift in mentality from moving from one task to another. The mindset you’ll have when performing a task is going to be vastly different from communicating with your team.

Context switching actually can lead to decreases in productivity, and will occur when using more than one of these apps in a workplace. Most productivity apps are intended to act as single solutions, complete with communications.

If you’re having to swap between more than one, the mentality needed for each is going to vary. This decrease in output is one of the best reasons to avoid a new productivity app.

Multi-tasking can be detrimental to the mental well-being of your employees, and context switching between multiple apps only exacerbates things.

Reason #5: Too Many Productivity Apps Can Lead to Mental Overload

Using a tool for managing tasks and perhaps another for more dedicated communication channels is a good practice. If you’re using multiple apps with overlapping use cases, this can lead to issues. It does lead back to context switching and the mental fatigue that can set in when using multiple apps.

Your output is going to suffer greatly if you’ve got a slew of productivity apps, and adopting a new one to the workflow can lead to some severe mental repercussions for your employees.

Alternatives to a New Productivity App

So, what are some alternatives to a new productivity app? Here are a couple of ways to actually increase your workplace productivity.

Learning Better Productivity Practices

There are a number of ways to actually increase your productivity while still maintaining the same toolchain you’ve got integrated into the workplace. One of the easiest ways to handle things is to simplify your workflow, meaning there is less time for busy work.

Busy work would be like using multiple productivity apps, rather than having a set workflow to handle tasks for every team. Capitalizing on your peak hours is another sterling example, meaning you’d forego meetings during the hours when your employees are most alert.

Perform Maintenance on Your Current Productivity Apps

What does it mean to perform maintenance on your current productivity suite? That means you’ll clean up and file away completed tasks, prune unnecessary categories, and otherwise make your apps simpler to use. This has the added benefit of educating you and your employees on how to best use the software.

Productivity isn’t meant to evoke webs of complex applications that take real effort to use. You should be performing regular maintenance and educating your workforce. Productivity can be elusive if you’re chasing a dragon in a new app, it is better to do your best with what you have.

Closing Thoughts

You don’t truly need a new productivity app, especially if you have one already in the workplace. Most productivity apps can handle a slew of different tasks, so stick with what you have. Learning your tools effectively is going to have far better returns than having multiple overlapping pieces of software.

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