A New Way to Get Things Done, Mobile App Helps People Visualize Their Days

Find yourself struggling with balancing multiple tasks at once?

A Toronto-based software developer aims to help people prioritize and achieve multiple tasks with a new app that allows them to “visualize their day.”

Gabe Rozenberg, a freelance developer, designed and recently launched One List, a free iOS app, to assist people with day-to-day productivity. “One List keeps your day-to-day life organized in a single, prioritized list,” Rozenberg says. “It automatically sorts and colour-codes everything so you can easily visualize your day.”

Developed on his own, One List stems from Rozenberg’s personal struggles with prioritizing and the balancing act. “I’ve struggled for a long time with productivity and constantly achieving my daily goals,” he says.

Rozenberg is no stranger to the world of mobile app development. He cofounded Crater, a startup that allows people to create and pre-fund ideas for content creators, and served as a developer with Tiny Hearts, an app studio working out of Ryerson’s Digital Media Zone. “So I was toying with the idea of developing something myself to help with productivity.”

After a busy summer abroad, Rozenberg got serious with his idea. “This summer, I was fortunate enough to work remotely while travelling across Europe,” he says. “Although travelling and working was an exciting experience, I found it incredibly to difficult to keep on top of my busy schedule. I tried many different productivity apps like Clear, Wunderlist and Any.do, but they weren’t cutting it, so I did what any software developer would do: I built myself a solution.”

Rozenberg’s solution took about five months to build. “It started off with me trying to build the basic interface, like pulling the tasks down,” he explains. “Once I got back from Europe, it was another month of development and I spent another two weeks adding themes.”

Now, it’s available on the App Store for anyone to download for free.

Here’s how it works: upon downloading and opening the app, you pull down to create tasks and due dates. You have four levels of priorities: low, medium, high, and urgent. Then, One List automatically creates a single, integrated list.

While One List uses a simple coloured block idea similar to Clear, One List also has some added features, such as colour-coded priority blocks, and the ability to build daily reminders, and customize colours and themes. 

“Inspired by Clear and Google Material Design, One List is simple, visually appealing, and clutter-free,” Rozenberg explains. “Each priority is colour-coded. The most important tasks are in the most standout colours. So you can really visualize your day.”

For instance, he notes, “I may have a block of important stuff like ‘booking a doctor’s appointment,’ ‘finishing a project I’m working on’ or ‘cleaning my room.’ I can see what’s standing out in my day. It makes you really think about how important a task is.”

Rozenberg reports that he’s now working on an Android version of the app. “It’s made me more organized and my life a little easier,” he says. “I hope to get everyone organized.”