Hi, I’m Jon. I’m building APPA - The Anti-Productivity Productivity App. It encourages a values-centered approach to productivity. Instead of doing more, we want to help you do what matters. Here I plan to regularly share the insights from my own usage of APPA.

Month 1 of APPA being live! I launched APPA on July 8 and ever since then I’ve used it as my primary app for personal productivity and tasks. It’s replaced my previous hodgepodge of a system made up of Todoist, Notion and a markdown file that lived on my desktop.

For a while I’d been trying to find ways to help reframe for myself what productivity and success look like. I’d often find I’d be creating an endless checklist of tasks that I never end up clearing. And even as things were getting done, sometimes those things weren’t even the important ones that really should’ve been handled that day. The backlog would remain large and I’d be feeling overwhelmed, insufficient, and eventually burnt out.

So I built APPA as a response to that - borrowing and combining various approaches. At its simplest, the app limits me to just 3 top priorities on a given day. I’ll connect these priorities to personal values that drive them. And at the end of the day I’ll take two minutes to go through a structured reflection.

APPA will then reflect this information back helping to uncover patterns in how my days have gone.

Here’s what the month of July looked like:

Value Alignment & Affect Trends

Insights charts for July 2026 showing value alignment and affect trends

One thing that quickly jumps out to me is that positive affect spikes with peaks in value alignment. Looking back at those days the tasks and reflections showed activities that touched on a variety of values. Not only would I have a chance to be impactful on a work thing, but I’d also get a little time in for fitness and make space for connection with family.

On the flip side, the relative dip I’m seeing and feeling towards the end of the month seems like it could be coming from a lack of clarity and intention around how I want to spend those days. Without that it’s been harder to feel like the things I’d done through the day reflected my values in any meaningful way.

Two narrative insights from July 2026 saying, 'Making outdoor play the priority gave family time a clearer place in your day. On July 20, ordinary kid moods felt more manageable during time outside together.' And 'One day this week, start by naming how you want to approach the day. Your reflection showed that a little upfront intention helped you follow through with more capacity.'

To that point, especially on days when I don’t have clear todos for a top 3, I’m trying to fill the rest in with intentions instead with how I want to approach different parts of the day.

Never Missed a Reflection

I’ve never been consistent with journaling, but with APPA, I haven’t yet missed a day. Interestingly I’ll occasionally have days where I don’t log any todos (it’s the summer), but I’ll still come back at the end to log a reflection.

I wonder if it’s due to the charts and the completionist in me wanting to keep it whole. It’s a feeling and behavior of mine I’ll need to keep watch of going forward because I am trying to keep APPA distinctly anti-streak and anti-guilt. 👀

An Unexpected Value

Value energy insight from July 2026 saying, 'On days tagged with Fitness, you tended to have high positive energy with lower negative energy than most values. Adventure days showed the clearest gap between positive and negative energy.'

I’d started the month with one set of values I intended to guide my days with (Presence, Fitness, Impact). And though I did make good opportunities for all of these, I found other values come through in July that were unexpected. “Adventure: to seek, create, or explore novel and stimulating experiences” was one in particular that I did not expect to see. Those days I do remember (spent hiking and exploring a creek) being really positive. Maybe seeking adventure is something I do want to do more of?

Visit https://theappa.app to learn more and download the app.