Coming from Other Apps

Draft: outline only. Structure below; prose to come.

You don't have to abandon your system

• Remap it: most productivity concepts have a Finalist home, usually a simpler one
• The real migration is a mindset shift: from managing a database to planning a day

From Things or Todoist

• Projects become Lists (pin the active one to Today)
• Today view becomes the Daily page, except it's the whole app, not one view among many
• Deadlines and overdue give way to the punting mindset: no red badges, you re-decide daily
• Scheduled/upcoming: tomorrow is a swipe, the month is a tap
• Priority flags become position on the page (top three in the morning) and tags

From GTD

• Inbox / capture: quick entry, Capture, dictation, share sheet
• Next actions: today's page is the next-action list
• Projects: Lists, plus the Planner grid for multi-week arcs
• Contexts: tags ("quick", "deep", "waiting")
• Weekly review: evening review plus Sunday preview (see The Daily Rhythm)
• Someday/maybe: a list, punted out of your days entirely

From Apple Reminders and Calendar

• Keep them: Finalist works with them, not instead of them
• Your reminders and events appear on the day page and stay in their home apps
• Shared lists keep working; family members never need Finalist
• What you add: the daily page around them, tasks, habits, journal, weather

From a paper planner

• The closest cousin: Finalist is the paper metaphor with sync
• What carries over: the day page, flipping pages, the satisfaction of a finished day
• What you gain: alarms, repeating habits, search, every device, weather on the page

What Finalist deliberately doesn't do

• No automatic rollover of unfinished tasks; that's the point (The Art of Punting)
• No nested project hierarchies, no priority matrix, no required reviews
• Not less capable, differently shaped: the discipline lives in the day, not the database

Related: Plan Without Planning · The Five Kinds of Things · Lists & Tags