Ambitus
The hidden cost of switching apps
27 October 2026 · Robert Stollar
Yesterday I wrote that every app I used was an island. Today: what that actually cost me.
It never showed up as a bill. It showed up as minutes.
To work on one project, I need four things in front of me: what to do today, when it's due, the notes behind it, and the list of what's still missing. With separate apps, that meant four windows. The task said "Send the client the workflow plan." The plan was in a notes app. The deadline was in the calendar. The checklist of what the client still owed me was somewhere else again.
Each switch was small. Find the window. Find the right note. Remember why I opened it.
Then there was the moving. Copy a date from an email into the calendar. Copy the same detail into the task. Paste a table into a note and watch it fall apart. Export, import, and check nothing got lost on the way. And sync. One app updated at once, another a minute later, a third only when I opened it. Ticked off on the iPhone, still open on the Mac…
None of this is a disaster. Together though, it's the unproductive extra to be able to do the work. That's what I wanted gone. Not by making any one app better, but by putting the pieces in one place. To get them to work together.
In Ambitus, today's tasks, the calendar, the lists and the notes sit side by side, in one window, on every device – iPhone being a little special because of the screen size.
Which two apps would you merge, if you could?