I had never felt that getting more things done in less time was all that important. Moving faster as a pillar of productivity made sense when work was done in factories, but in creative and intellectual pursuits, an obsession with speed can lead to shallow work and mental fatigue.
In the past few years, Silicon Valley's kingmakers decreed this ethos of speed-first productivity as the "future of work" and poured hundreds of millions of dollars into taking our daily work tools like email, issue tracking and file search and rebuilding them for pure speed.
Working faster is a dehumanizing and degrading definition for productivity and an unimaginative vision for the future of work. Real productivity is when you can consistently produce things you find meaningful and of deep value. A future of work worth aspiring to is one that focuses on you and your work, not your tools. For me, that future is one where work can be a source of fulfillment and human flourishing instead of one of burnout and stress.
That's why we spent the first few years of Sunsama's history building product experiences that would make it easier for you to control your workload, energy and focus. Even at a philosophical level, speed was never a foundational value for us and that manifested in the product as laggy interactions, slow loading times and a lack of keyboard shortcuts. For a long time, we accepted this.
The turning point was when we realized that Sunsama had become a daily habit and an app you'd keep open all day long like your issue tracker and (regrettably) email. Once we were certain we were solving the right problems, it made sense to rebuild the product with an emphasis on speed.
This update isn't the "future of work," but we hope it makes planning your day a little bit easier, faster and intuitive so that you put your time and energy into the work that brings you fulfillment.
