The Productivity App Graveyard: Why We Switch Tools Every 3 Weeks

There’s a special kind of shame that comes from opening an old productivity app and finding a half-finished to-do list from 2022 that simply says: “fix life.” And yet, we keep doing it - cycling through Notion, Obsidian, Tana, Linear, Todoist, Craft, Trello, and whatever TikTok’s latest ‘life-changing’ setup is. It’s not a workflow; it’s a personality trait at this point.

What’s wild is that these apps aren’t even *bad*. They’re stunning. They’re polished. They sync across 18 devices and probably breathe for you. But the moment someone tweets a screenshot of a clean Obsidian graph view, your brain whispers: 'Maybe *that* will finally fix me.'

The truth is: productivity apps are less like tools and more like lifestyle choices. They’re vibes. They’re identity. They’re little digital apartments we decorate with widgets, themes, emojis, and custom views until one day… we ghost them without warning.

Psychologists call this 'novelty dopamine.' Tech culture calls it 'Tuesday.' Each new app promises that THIS TIME we’ll be organized, calm, and finally caught up on everything. Then reality hits: no app can defeat the chaos of being a human who procrastinates.

So we delete the app, swear we’re done, and two weeks later download something even more complicated because a YouTuber said it would 'change your entire life.' Spoiler: it will not. But the screenshots will look amazing.

In the end, the productivity app graveyard is just part of modern digital culture. We don’t pick the perfect tool, we rotate through them like fashion trends. And honestly? That might be the real productivity hack: embracing the chaos, making it cute, and pretending it was all intentional.