Great for a visual thinker

I manage a variety of projects, some that last a few days and others that last months. I’ve been bouncing back and forth between paper planners, Excel, Outlook to-do lists, to-do apps like Pagico, tagged note-taking tools like Evernote, and mind maps like Simplemind (great for brainstorming and visualizing all the ongoing things, but not great for project planning). But I never have had a good way to really get an overview on where I am at any given moment, or keep track of the myriad detailed stuff in one place… until now.

After reading some good reviews of InShort online, I decided to take the plunge and buy this app. It’s unlike any tool I’ve used before, and I think it’s going to be the thing I’ve been needing all this time. I’ve made it through the very helpful tutorial (highly recommended as a starting point) and I’m going to spend the day setting up my assorted projects. I see this as a 3D tool for seeing your workload from all angles— you can easily visualize at a macro level all the stuff you have to do in either flowchart style, hierarchy style, or gantt chart style, or you can zoom in and see the intricate details of each piece. And unlike a mind mapping tool, this gives you a more linear way to plot out and track the course of a project from beginning to end, and tick off tasks as they are complete.

I love that there’s a way to keep up with stuff that you’re waiting on from someone else. With other tools, it’s easy to let a task fall in the cracks once it’s off your plate and onto someone else’s. This makes those types of “waiting on” tasks much easier to follow up on.

Although I haven’t heavily used it yet, I am giving this app 5 stars right off the bat for its vision, which is unique in this marketplace, and is ideally suited to visual thinkers and planners like me. I’m sure I’ll run into things that could be improved, but I’m so grateful to have stumbled on this gem of an app.

Stewart Design about inShort