Before I was building a task manager, I was using one. Several, actually.
I wasn't unhappy with all of them. Some were genuinely good. But each one had exactly one thing that consistently rubbed me the wrong way, and over time those small frictions compound.
Here's the honest version of what I tried before I stopped looking and started building.
TickTick
TickTick was my home for a long time. The calendar view is excellent. Seeing tasks laid out by day, next to actual calendar events, made planning feel real instead of theoretical. I liked that.
The problem was the feature sprawl. Habit tracking. Pomodoro timer. Smart lists. Multiple calendar views. Tags. Filters. A separate Today section and an Inbox section that always felt like they were competing with each other.
I kept using features I didn't need because they were always visible. Every time I opened the sidebar, I was reminded of the parts of the system I wasn't using. That's a subtle but persistent feeling of falling behind.
TickTick is a great app. It's just built for someone who wants all of that. I didn't.
Notion
I'll be honest. I wasted two full weeks building a Notion task system.
I made a database with properties for status, priority, due date, project, and effort level. I built a linked view for "Today." I made a "Weekly Review" template. I watched three YouTube videos about the right way to structure a Notion workspace.
At the end of those two weeks I had a very impressive system and a backlog of actual work I hadn't done.
Notion is a workspace tool. It's incredible for docs, wikis, and project databases. Using it as a personal task manager is like driving a semi-truck to pick up groceries. It can technically do the job. It's the wrong tool.
Todoist
Todoist was the most polished of the three. Fast, clean, available everywhere. Natural language date input that actually works. The free tier is genuinely good.
What wore me down was the list format. Everything is flat. A pile of tasks sorted by project, maybe filtered by label. I couldn't see the shape of my day. I couldn't tell at a glance whether I was moving things forward or just accumulating them.
I wanted a kanban board as the main view. Not as an add-on. Not as a premium feature buried three clicks in. Just the board, by default, as the primary way of seeing my work.
Todoist doesn't think that way, and that's fine. It's built for a different mental model.
The Common Thread
Looking back at all three, the pattern is clear.
TickTick: great calendar, too many other things visible at once.
Notion: infinite flexibility, total setup overhead.
Todoist: clean and fast, but list-first when I think in columns.
None of them had a contribution graph. That GitHub-style streak grid showing daily task activity. It sounds minor. But for me, the ability to see at a glance whether I've been consistent or coasting over the last 90 days is genuinely motivating. None of the apps I tried thought to build it.
Why I Stopped Looking and Started Building
At some point you realize the app you want doesn't exist yet. The gap is small, but it's consistent. Every day you work around it. Every day you accept the part that doesn't quite fit.
I'm a developer. I had time on evenings and weekends. The gap was annoying enough to close.
That's why Taskaro exists. Not because the market needed another todo app. Because I personally needed a kanban board with a calendar view, a notes section that doesn't require a folder structure, a contribution graph, and nothing else taking up space.
I built the app I wanted to use. Turns out, other people wanted the same thing.