Some thoughts after using Agenda for a year

evaluation
#1

For me, using software is a bit like having a relationship. If I still am engaged with it daily after a year that’s a really good sign. I get very enthusiastic about various todo apps or even other notebook apps, but at some point they lose their luster.

The main sign that Agenda is here for the long run for me is that I find myself writing in it every day. It’s become like a multi-facted journnal for my business. Whenever inspiration hits, which luckily is quite often, i record it immediately in Agenda. I have a tag called #bigThoughtOfTheDay and there’s very often one or two of those every day. It’s great to be able to do a search and retreive all of those. Agenda is one of the few programs I’ve ever used that I find myself reviewing my entries on a regular basis.

It’s clear for me that Agenda has a specific purpose and I don’t try to make it fit all of my needs. I don’t see it being an Evernote replacement. For me, Notion has become my digital filing system.

With the news of imminent reminders integration, I have gone back to using GoodTask, a reminders-based Todo app and Agenda will play an ever bigger role in my productivity.

Here’s my constructive feedback for Agenda and how it could be even better:

The pages tend to all look alike (I’m not attaching many images so it’s mostly text. Yes, there are various text styles but it’s still just all text. So things like allowing us to mix and match font colors and sizes within a note. Maybe changing the background color of any notes, horizontal dividers. Something to take away from a very attractive but somewhat monotonous look and to help certain important sections stand out.

The other thing, and maybe @drewmccormack could address whether this is something that he is considering, is to be able to search and collect paragraphs into a search result. This will become more important with reminder integration but it would really offer a whole new set of possibilities for Agenda If I tag a paragraph now I get the full note which in my case can be very long. Being able to return just the paragraphs would be amazing.

#2

Thanks for sharing!

To answer the question about search results with just paragraphs, yes, that is certainly in the roadmap. Stay tuned!

#3

I’m definitely implementing the BTOTD tag starting today and maybe going backwards is the least stressful way to do this. Thanks, @stevew.

#4

Really enjoying this particular tag. You can do this at your leisure as you roll back in time and acknowledge stuff which happened recently but might have forgotten about. I can later create a compendium which helps with, for example, avoiding repeating mistakes during travels (tourism, business etc); in other words, can serve as clear-cut reminders of life lessons from past experiences. Serves too to follow-up on interrupted conversations, etc.

#5

Ah, subjectivity, the most plentiful resource :wink:

This was a really thoughtful review, IMO, and I agree that further categorisation (“dividers”) could be helpful.

Personally I’m really happy with the pace that the Agenda team are moving at. They have conveyed a good sense of direction and appear to be delivering against that in a meaningful way. A great team, and business model, for others to consider.

Good thoughts, Steve :slight_smile:

#6

I definitely like the idea of assigning a project color and having the notes be that same color too instead of yellow.