My 3-App Digital Productivity Setup

"These are the primary productivity apps I use daily to help me get more done and steward my time more effectively." - Reagan Rose

ℹ️ Today, we have a guest cross-post from Reagan Rose of Redeeming Productivity. Reagan has a heart mission to help people get more done for the glory of God. He is the creator of Redeeming Productivity, husband, & father of two.

With the proliferation of productivity apps available these days, choosing your productivity toolset can feel a little overwhelming. It’s all too easy to flit from app to app, searching for the magic bullet that will transform our messy lives into an oasis of order and organization.

But, as I wrote last month, ​the perfect productivity app doesn’t exist. So, there is wisdom in resisting the urge to try every new product that promises to revolutionize your life. Nevertheless, with a bit of restrained experimentation, you can likely find a set of tools that meets your productivity needs.

With that caveat in mind, I wanted to share the three primary productivity apps I use to organize my life.

Notion

Notion¹ is my hub for nearly everything.

I use our Christian Productivity Planner​ workspace, which allows me to manage everything from my morning routine to long-term goals, projects, daily tasks, sermon notes, Bible reading, and more in one app. I love having everything in one place, and Notion is powerful enough to allow me to do just that.

The Christian Productivity Planner

I also use Notion as my content calendar to plan videos, newsletters, podcasts, events, and posts in the Redeeming Productivity Academy. The collaboration tools let me easily work with others on these things.

Redeeming Productivity content calendar in Notion

Fantastical

I’ve been using this Apple-only calendar app for many years. I love the simplicity of the design and the natural language input for creating events, and it has just the right tools I need to stay on top of my appointments without getting bogged down.

Fantastical has apps for Mac, iPhone, iPad, Watch, and even Apple Vision Pro

Last year they added a Calendly-like feature called “Openings” that lets you create preselected times for people to book appointments with you. I use this to book podcast appearances or quick meetings. And it saves me a lot of back-and-forth.

The “Openings” feature in Fantastical

I tried switching to the Notion Calendar for a more integrated experience with Notion, but moved back to Fantastical after a few weeks just because it’s so familiar to me. Will probably try Notion Calendar again in a year or so once it’s developed a little more.

Logseq

When I built the Christian Productivity Planner for Notion, I had initially planned to move all of my notes into the library, but I have found that having a messy sort of “scratch pad” for ideas is still very useful. And that’s where Logseq comes in.

Logseq’s journal feature creates a new page for each day.

Anytime I have a stray thought or idea I’d like to save, I usually dump it in Logseq. If you’re wondering where I get all those quotes for each edition of the weekly newsletter, it’s because I have a system for saving and tagging quotes I find in Logseq. That’s a good illustration of where having a notebook like this can come in handy.

Logseq is like Roam Research or Obsidian, an interconnected note-taking app based on Markdown. There was a lot of hype around these apps circa 2021. While I don’t think they are the panacea they promised to be, I still find it helpful to have a place where I can dump messy thoughts without worrying about cluttering up my Notion workspace. That’s where Logseq comes in for me.

Honorable Mentions

Those three are my productivity workhorses. But I use a few other apps daily or weekly to augment these. Here they are in no particular order.

• Rize – Time tracking

• Freedom - App and website blocker for focus

• Brave - Privacy-focused web browser

• Raycast – App launcher for Mac

• Backblaze – Computer backups to the cloud

---

Cam Pak, creator of faith.tools, here now… It’s always inspiring to learn about tools that help people on their day to day. Sometimes the tools aren’t overtly for a Christian audience but rather are used by and are helpful for Christians.

Some apps that help me focus and get things done are:

• Reflect - A simple, powerful daily planner and note-taking app.

• Async - For sending audio messages to people, versus texting.

• Humane Ai Pin - To have less screen time and more time for family, prayer, and solace.

We’d like to thank Reagan Rose of Redeeming Productivity for this post! Reagan writes about “personal productivity from a Christians worldview for the glory of God.”

There is wisdom in living a productive life, so that you can be prepared to step into the good plans God has for you and your sphere of influence. If you’re looking for productivity wisdom that’s God-honoring, check out Redeeming Productivity.

---

✍️ I need you! Yes, you.

• Share your faith.tools experience — and add your review to the faith.tools testimonials section.

• Help determine the next feature on faith.tools — help me help you.

• Want to share your Behind the Scenes story? – share your story with the faith.tools community and help promote unity among those in faith and tech.

1. The Notion link in the header is an affiliate link for Redeeming Productivity.