That's the goal! 🙏 We appreciate that you appreciate it. Our goal is to be opinionated, in the same way that a close friend would ask us for software advice-we wouldn't sugar coat it. That said, we're always open to having our opinion changed, it would just take a lot, or helping us see where a given software fits into the competitive landscape (and us validating that). We know we could "make more money" partnering up with the behemoths, like Salesforce or Monday, but we love software, we want to enjoy the software that we use, and the behemoths have actually been the reason that we have developed these strong opinions in the first place. There's nothing worse than people just saying "oh you're a business, you need Salesforce", we're like... Does your business have people in it or machines? If it's people, do they actually ENJOY using Salesforce? No they don't, so let's look at something that fits the business and the people working there better. Let's make software enjoyable again, and that comes from being opinionated, which may offend some companies at times. We're not meaning offense, we're just being candid. Apologies for the ramble, this comment just struck a chord-appreciate you 🙏
Haha I mean don't get us wrong, we're super impressed by what Notion has managed to build... But we very much think people are trying to use it for everything, when they shouldn't be. It's not the best solution on the market for most things. These "all-in-one" tools are a strange category. It's like, "I can't figure out what we are, so let's be everything to everyone!"-where has that worked in any other industry over the long-run? 🤔
+Big sigh+ Soo... as a 3+ yr notion user (and others like anytype, coda, etc.) this is tough. Even though the PPV system (august bradley's) has been a life changer (literally), I'm now looking at other platforms. I just started using akiflow. Its speed, shortcuts, quick adds, etc are amazing but now that I'm seeing reviews on reclaim, skedpal and motion - using ai's help looks like a no-brainer. @@efficientapp
Ah yes, we're fans of Akiflow and Sunsama, although the manual-ness of it all didn't fit for us. Not sure if you saw our Daily Planner video that goes into this: efficient.yt/planner But yeah, I definitely recommend checking out Motion. If you do, be sure to lock in our course for free (probably going to be selling it for $400 otherwise) if you sign up for motion here: efficient.link/deal/motion We'll have some content coming out soon with some best practices for setting it up. Also happy to make a recommendation on if Motion or something else would be best based on your needs and you sharing your current stack via a Loom video here: efficient.link/audit Appreciate your comment and I'm confident you'll figure it what works best for you!
I love how you actually give an answer! Most people review different softwares and at the end always say... "I cant tell you which ones right for you, thats for you to decide" lol
Haha we made it a point to not have a video like that because we hate when we see it. Have some opinions people, please! 😬 glad you enjoyed it and appreciate your comment! 😁
20 years experience speaking here: first question should be, "which platform does your Project Management Organization leadership prefer?" if the answer is "uh, we dont have a PMO leader" then that's your first challenge. the software will not run itself. it is a tool that a good leader can deploy to get max gains out of the rest of your teams
Yes! GREAT point 🙌 That’s why we prefer Motion, because it’s “easier to self-manage” but this will only work with teams up to a certain size. Thank you for watching! 🙏🙏
Your insight highlights the importance of organizational leadership in implementing project management software effectively. Identifying leadership preferences ensures alignment with strategic goals and enhances adoption across teams. A strong leader can leverage the software as a tool to streamline processes and optimize team performance, ultimately driving project success.
Totally, I mean it's a mixture, right? Having someone internal as a champion to lead product adoption is crucial, but also, the better the tool, the more you should be able to get some small wins when using it solo which brings people onboard to fully adopting it. The sheer number of companies using Salesforce, but their team HATES using it is incredibly high (the far majority, in our experience at least), so great, upper management loves it, but sales reps don't enjoy using it, so they don't, and the "data" that upper management is reporting on isn't even accurate. So again, it's a mixture of both. The tool needs to be useful to the individual, making their job easier, as well as for managers to derive insights from and manage the team. Of the bunch in this video, Motion does seem to do this the best: efficient.link/r/motion
Great opinions on each. But unless money is no object for you and your business, there is a HUGE hole in this. Cost is never mentioned. If you're solo Motion is $39/month. STEEP when some of the others have free versions with every feature you need (IMHO).
Thanks for the comment Brian! So we are, first and foremost, a B2B software review channel, our target audience is businesses and teams. With that, part of running a business means you’ll have software costs and we don’t encourage teams to evaluate tools on price alone (or even a primary driver) - unless a tool literally starts at thousands of dollars per year, we won’t mention it as a part of our reviews. With that, Motion is actually $19/m on the annual tier and $12 per user for teams. For small teams, Motion and Asana are nearly identical per seat as compared to Asana (paid annual). P.S. it's $34/mo when billed monthly, not $39. Not to mention, if you move to their "Team" plan, you get 2 seats for $20/user/mo, so maybe get a friend to go on a team with you if you don't have a business and save 40%? While there is a "free" tier in Asana for example, it's incredibly restrictive feature-wise (just about everything you try to do prompts you to upgrade). We used it for 7 years and were paid users on the advanced tier the entire time (it was literally more expensive than Motion). If the free tools do everything *you* need, then there’d be no reason to consider another option! For us, we’re a small team (2 people) and couldn’t get away from using the free tiers on any of the tools in this video. And for what a tool like Motion does for us in terms of peace of mind and organization, and helping us get work done, it more than pays for itself (like with all the tools we use).
You're 100% right when you talk about apps trying to do too much. It's a modern curse. I don't want every app to let me "message my coworkers", because I don't want to be getting messages and notifications from a thousand apps!
Haha can so relate! Internally we had to come up with some rules to essentially say "when it's this type of message, use this tool", because every tool does the same thing in some way-it's a lot! For example, a CRM has tasks, but our project management tool has tasks too... So do we create the task in Motion? Or in Copper? The decision we've made internally is, if it's a relationship-focused task (e.g. reach back out to x about y) then it goes into the CRM tied to the person it's related with. Anything else goes in Motion. So we're finding that even when you thoughtfully pick software that doesn't overlap, there's still some overlap, and that's when internal standard operating procedures need to be made (if you're small, don't need to write them up, just needs to be a general ethos), of which tool should be used when. Also Slack DM's are good for quick message exchanges without much structure, but if you're actually moving project work forward, maybe a comment inside of the task within the project manager is a better place to post that Loom video you recorded so the entire team can see it and can reference it back when you're in the type of work that the comment relates to, otherwise a Slack DM could just be disruptive. It's a delicate balance and just getting more difficult with so many tools moving to all-in-one because they all want to own your entire work stack! Haha
Absolutely, the proliferation of features in apps can lead to information overload and decreased productivity. Simplifying app functionalities to focus on their core purposes can enhance user experience and reduce distractions. Prioritizing efficiency over excessive features is key in navigating the modern app landscape.
Our team brought in ClickUp and has had much success with it. The projects we work on are extremely complex so we do require a tool with a lot of customisation that can be tailored to suit the niches of our project. I can see how someone would be easily overwhelmed by the functionality of ClickUp.
That makes sense, how large of a team is it that you work with? And did you have a full-time internal and/or external champion helping you set it up in the way that you needed it configured?
Our aim with any software reviews we do is to be opinionated and direct to the point! We don’t want to be another channel/website that says “at the end of the day, it’s up to you as there is no bad choice”, we’d rather tell people what is actually working for us and businesses we work with. Appreciate you commenting!! 🙏
I love how you are jumping for joy about Notion. 😂Jk. I feel the same way. Notion is FAR too overwhelming and confusing for me. I am a solopreneur who uses 3 tools to manage my tasks and projects. Much like the screenshot on Motion's website, I am using Todoist for task management, Google Calendar for calendar appointments, and ClickUp for project management. Ugh, I'm overwhelmed talking about it. Motion ads have been on my social feeds for a month. After seeing this video, which confirms everything I've thought about these tools, I'm secure in signing up for Motion. Thank you for your thorough overview, Andra. 🧡
Awe! So appreciate your comment and can totally relate with what you're describing, sounds just like what I was doing when I was solo as well 😁 Quick tip, if you sign up here, you might even be able to message their support and ask if they'd be open to extending your trial by an extra week, if they ask why, just say Efficient sent you 😉😁 efficient.link/r/motion
Finding the right tools that align with your needs and preferences is key to staying organized and productive. It sounds like Motion will be a great addition to your toolkit, offering a more streamlined and intuitive experience. Best of luck with your productivity journey!
I recently hit the wall with the extended stress of juggling the various tiers and projects in my life that I decided it's time to outsource this to a better solution and give my brain a break. I started down the notion rabbit hole even buying a template for it without really knowing how expansive the program was. First impressions were it could be really robust but I wouldn't get full benefit from it without first becoming a notion wizard... Motion then became a leader and your videos have really solidified that for me. Really appreciate the breakdowns and I expect Motion will be a powerful ally as a solo-preneur managing private life, work, youtube content launch and competition prep / training for areas of interest. Thanks so much and keep up the great work.
Love it! So glad we could help! And we use it for RUclips content launch as well, flows work SO good for that. Definitely be sure to claim the course, hope you made sure to use our link when signing up, here's the deal and how to claim it for free: efficient.deals/motion
Thank you for getting to the point on each of these. This is the video I have been looking for to help me with which move to make in choosing between Asana and Motion. You gave me the exact information that I needed. Thank you!
Curious how things are going for you? We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion
Hahaha, we hear you 😅 there's a lot vying for your attention. Use us for tasks! For notes! No projects! No embed everything inside of us! Use us for everything!!!! Curious what you end up settling on?
Rookie mistake! Was the first time filming with my phone and I realized after filming that I was looking at myself instead of into the camera. Recorded something last week and tried to look into the camera during that one, we’ll see if it’s any better! Thanks for being here & the comment! 🙌 Glad the video helped!
You did a great job. I noticed you looking off to the side and wondered if it was intentional. It didn't actually bother me you're beautiful and came across very professional.
Really helpful and concise review. Thank you so much. Ive been using Asana and a paper planner and 3959 sticky notes as a solopreneur, but i keep seeing Motion ads and it looks like it really solves my morning routi-- *ahem* time waster of migrating yesterday's to-dos to today's list
Haha we hear you! We were in the same boat, spending a good 20+ minutes per day (sometimes an hour), manually re-evaluating for the nth time priority and importance to push our tasks back. With Motion, it just recommends a new date/time automatically and takes away so much of that DAILY friction: efficient.link/r/motion
Transitioning from multiple tools to a more integrated solution like Motion can indeed streamline your workflow and save time on daily tasks. With its features tailored to solopreneurs, Motion could be just what you need to boost productivity and stay organized. Good luck with your transition!
The point you made about Notion not having any guardrails is a frustration I’ve shared in. It might be great for someone who is willing to learn it and wants to have all of that functionality. But I feel like it should “just work”, and it should know what it needs to do and be intuitive. But then on the other hand you have Monday which is much more structured - and pretty, that was my draw to it - but they as a contrast have a very certain way of how they think it should work, which is different from Notion, but they’re doing it in a non-intuitive way. I need to give Asana another try. I used them AND Monday and found I liked Monday better, but I’ll have to check again.
Appreciate you sharing this, because I feel like not many people are talking about it... It's even one thing to invest the time into learning, it's another thing to train your team on, and have them be successful without the clear guardrails. Every corner you run into edge-cases when trying to build something like Notion into a project manager. And the tough part is, it doesn't make sense to put guardrails on Notion, because it defeats the entire point of what Notion is trying to be (the all-in-one flexible tool). And I've heard what you're saying a lot in the past, Monday looks nicer than Asana, I even know a team that uses Asana but created a Chrome extension to make it look more like Monday 😂 But yeah, I'd say give Asana a shot if you have a large team, if not, why not try something new and see if Motion can give you a bit more of something that maybe you weren't even considering before? The AI scheduling component is really something that we can't live without having gotten used to it, and it doesn't seem like Asana or Monday are going that direction for some reason 🤷♂️
Your frustration with Notion's lack of guardrails and the contrasting structured approach of Monday resonates with many users seeking intuitive productivity tools. Exploring alternatives like Asana could offer a balance between structure and flexibility that aligns better with your preferences. It's always worth revisiting tools to find the best fit for your workflow.
So I actually used Akiflow for 7 months or so alongside Motion early on. What I liked about it was it integrated with Gmail and Asana, alongside other tools. So what Akiflow is really trying to be is a task aggregator tool with a calendar at the core. It was quite a manual process though adding all of my various tasks onto the calendar for when I wanted to work on them. Same with stared emails from Gmail, etc. Ultimately, I ended up just getting too overwhelmed with tasks in using Akiflow, with things getting out-of-date. It just became too manual of a process. I realized that versus trying to use an aggregator tool, I should instead just use a tool that better handles it all in a single platform (Motion), and actually get rid of Asana + not rely on Gmail for turning emails into tasks, and instead just use Superhuman to help me triage through email, etc. Not super bullish on these calendar task aggregation daily planning tools, it misses the full picture of projects and dependencies and true prioritization of tasks. It's so manual, whereas a tool like Motion has all the context, and auto-plans each day. We really should add it to the site and do a more proper write-up for it here: efficient.app/comparisons/project-management
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, that should get across why we need a tool like Motion as opposed to a task aggregation tool like Akiflow: efficient.yt/motion
While both Motion and Akiflow offer compelling features, Motion's focus on simplicity and intuitive design resonated more with my workflow needs. It ultimately comes down to personal preference and which tool aligns best with individual work styles and requirements.
Was just catched by your title - and hooked. I agree, Notion is one tool for everything - except for something special. I did the mistake and bought a complex project management notion template and tried to figure out how to put my daily project work into it. No chance. I use it now as knowledge base. For that use, I guess it's cool. I will give Motion a try, your hint that tasks could fit into my schedule automatically is mind blowing - and exact what I was wondering why other tools don't have it (my todo-list was done with ToDo from M$, really a super stupid tool). Thank you very much for that video!
Amazing the title caught you? Or the thumbnail? 👀 So glad you commented, yeah, that's the exact situation you described is what we see so many people fall into. Totally understand the temptation of complex templates. We call out this a bit in our recent to-do list video actually: efficient.link/yt/todo Be sure to claim the Motion deal by using our link to sign up if you do give it a shot: efficient.deals/motion Thanks for your awesome comment and excited to have you here in the community our new friend!
This review convinced me to switch to Motion from Notion. I have a question - Does the Motion iPhone app provide notifications? I’ve missed some important tasks because of this. I LOVE the desktop app but I work remote a lot.
Awesome to hear! How are you liking it so far as compared to Notion? Always curious to hear what people's experience is that have used both. Mobile notifications will come by end of year, they just completely re-built the mobile app from the ground up a couple months ago and are planning for feature parity with the desktop app very soon. Completely hear you and relate here re: working remote. A couple more months if you're able to stick it out 👌
@@efficientapp Appreciate this - I love the desktop app! Notion has turned to a space where I build out a project but Motion is my new go to that manages the projects. Notion just doesn’t have the management tools that I was needing. I’ll stick it out! Looking forward to seeing you do a Mobile app review soon
Awesome to hear! I will say that we're planning a bit more Motion content based on the reaction to this video, that said, we did just update the written review of Motion on the website here: efficient.app/apps/motion That said, super exciting things seem to be coming to Motion soon, so we're definitely going to be creating more content around it as they release!
Love to hear it! Keen to hear what you think! Be sure to use this link efficient.link/r/motion and let support know that we sent you and they might even extend your free trial if you ask them nicely 😉
Thanks for the no fluff review. My only issue is “I wouldn’t recommend it” should be better qualified. Like, I wouldn’t recommend it for…..(insert your industry and team need that it didn’t meet) I’m with you on Asana and I teach my clients how to use it for Government Contracting but we switched to Monday where we manage several businesses operations. Monday handles Our Coworking Space, Consulting Company, online school, and Venue Rentals. The forms, automations and integrations are INCREDIBLE for us.
Appreciate your comment! Okay, that's fair-so we wouldn't recommend Notion, Monday, or ClickUp as the BEST project management tool for… anybody 😁 Don't get us wrong, we know it can be used and many do use it, the point of this video (and our channel) is to be incredibly opinionated about software for businesses (as there's no shortage of channels that talk about X is great for Y, but not Z). We're generalizing in a sense, but the "generalization" is coming from looking at the tools available in a specific category. So what you're describing (Monday handles your Coworking space, consulting company, online school, venue rentals, etc. etc. etc.) what you just described is potentially 2-3 different business functions/businesses/tools. So what you'll get from our channel is "you should use this (best) project management software + this (best) CRM to run your business", whereas what you're pointing out is using an all-in-one tool that does many things (not all of them well), but the all-in-one component of it is worthwhile to you in your business, which we completely understand, we just disagree with the premise that Monday is the best project management software on the market, because it isn't. It's more of an all-in-one tool, for which we aren't particularly fans of. That doesn't mean it won't work for people or that you haven't been able to get use out of it, for that we can completely see and understand where that's coming from. Not sure if that makes sense? Not trying to invalidate any of the success you've had with Monday, we totally believe it and are happy it's what is working for you, it's just not what we are going to particularly recommend to businesses for all of the reasons above. Appreciate you being here, and people don't hate us! 🙏
Appreciate it! You can read our in-depth write-up about Trello here: efficient.app/apps/trello Along with the history of Project Management and Trello's role in it here: efficient.link/pm
Stoked to hear this! And thanks for your comment 🙏 so we've explored Microsoft Projects, although we're a Google Workspace company (and most of our customers are as well), and once you start messing with the Microsoft solutions, they want you on Teams and all things Microsoft. What I can say though is my brother works at a larger company 500+ employees, and they evaluated Microsoft Project vs Asana extensively, and even embraced Microsoft Project for a month, before switching back to Asana as it was too limited for what they were looking to use. He now personally uses Motion to get his work done (more as his daily planner), and manually updates Asana, as their team is already too reliant on Asana at this point to switch again. Regarding Zoho Projects, we're just not a huge fan of the Zoho suite. Explored it deeply (as how could you not consider it?) But once you go Zoho, they are much like Microsoft, in that they want you to use Zoho email, Zoho CRM, Zoho all the things. The Zoho suite does a lot, but it definitely pales in comparison to built-for focused category solutions. Personally, I'd like to use the best tool for the job, not settle for "good enough" for all my tools, while watching startups like Motion/Routine/etc. popping up and innovating into a space, only to where you have to watch from afar because it's not part of the full cohesive "Zoho" or "Microsoft" core stack. Not sure if that makes sense? But we've done more of a deep dive on the all-in-one tools space here that you might be interested in: efficient.app/comparisons/all-in-one
@@efficientapp wow, thank you for such a comprehensive reply, much appreciated! I know exactly what you mean by Microsoft and Zoho slowly tractor beaming you into their entire ecosystem bit by bit 👍
Appreciate your comment! Are you referring to the Motion + Slack integration video? We have it linked in the description, although it's not a setup guide, it's just showing off what we've built with it (we're an integration company). Depending on how comfortable you are with integration tools like Zapier though, you could build it. You can try giving Motion a shot with a free trial here: efficient.link/r/motion And experiment with their Zapier integration to connect it with your other tools. Thanks for your comment!
Appreciate the kind words! We actually have a video coming out comparing Reclaim with Clockwise-in that video we explain how they are substantially different meant for different use-cases. You can read the write-up comparing Motion vs Reclaim though: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-reclaim Motion is not pricey when viewing it as a replacement to a paid Asana + Calendly. For personal usage, sure, as you're looking more at TickTick and ToDoist, but those tools are not powerful enough for actual business and team collaborative use-cases. As business project management software, annual license, Motion is completely reasonable price-wise. So it really depends on what you're specifically looking for. We're a business and write content primarily about business software.
I spend an ungodly amount of time looking at 10 different to do lists for 10 different projects and trying to figure out what should I do next or what order I should do things in to make the absolute most of the limited time that I have and it ends up burning up the few brain cells that I have left. A software that can answer the question “what do I need to do next?” relatively accurately and can automatically reschedule itself is sounding pretty promising to me! …. and yes, I am aware that those are run-on sentences… It is a written representation of the entanglement in my brain. If motion can help, sort it out, imma go d/l it right now 😆
Haha yes! It should be able to help with exactly that! Be sure to claim our free course if you use our affiliate link to sign up though! efficient.link/r/motion Full deal details here: efficient.deals/motion
Thanks for the kind words and for your comment! Okay, so this comment inspired me to do a write-up of Trello on our website, you can check it out here: efficient.app/apps/trello But yeah, the main gist is that Trello was an innovator of kanban board view for project managers over a decade ago. They dominated the B2C space, and moved a bit into B2B. With Atlassian acquiring them though, it feels like their UI hasn't evolved in the past 6+ years. They just seem stagnant now and definitely aren't innovating in the space. You can read more at the link above though, hope it helps! - Alex
Solid write up. I just found this channel but you seem really legit? So Trello could still be a fine choice but they're simply stagnant. Still a great choice if you use all the other Atlassian stuff. Dare I ask about your thoughts on Miro?
Totally missed this reply until now! We've used Miro in the past to map processes or when we needed to create visual aids. We found it *pretty* good, buggy at times, but if you need a whiteboard type of software we'd say go for it, it's one of the best out there. A few years ago, our knowledge base software Slite (efficient.link/r/slite) introduced a sketch feature and we just use that now as we were really only using the barebones of Miro.
Awe, thanks! We're trying to do more of them, glad it helped! Did you end up moving forward with any of the tools mentioned in the video? Or just checking it out?
Thanks, appreciate your comment! 🙌 Motion doesn't tie in budget management (at least yet), but it's very deeply tied to hours around tasks (and thus projects), so you can set budgets in that sense. How much time did you actually take based on the budgeted hours in a sense. It's not a direct reporting type of feature though, just to not set the wrong expectations 👌
Wanted to check-in on how implementation was going? We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion
We already have a CRM we use for ticketing, creation of projects and we track time, progress, start/end dates, budgets, etc. within the CRM. So I've found it difficult to find a PM tool that is really good at everything else. No sense in creating extra / duplicate work for people. I want to use templates for simple project task plans based on project type (for consistency), a good visual representation of milestones and progress, a simplified customer/client view of their tasks and minimal view of our internal tasks, while having a very detailed tasklist, checklists for our internal views. Basically, I want to hide all the minutia for the clients and keep it simple for them. Also important is document sharing, notes, and chat. What tool do you think I should take a hard look at?
Love the way that you're getting the most out of your CRM 🙌 Which CRM are you using btw? So sharing projects with external members is not something that Motion has (at the moment anyway), so we'd recommend Asana. With Asana you can share entire projects or specific tasks with someone external: blog.asana.com/2012/03/guest-accounts-asana-for-clients-contractors-and-consultants/ All that being said, it sounds like your CRM is doing most of the heavy lifting internally, does your team mainly want a project management tool to share the progress with clients? Or is the CRM busting as the seams in terms of tracking projects internally also? Asking because setting up a PM tool just to share progress with clients is a pretty big lift. Obviously we have no idea of your industry or business or how critical sharing the process is, but as an overall thought we've seen that most customers won't even log into third party tools to view progress, and they'll just ask you for updates on email anyway. We tried going down this path (sharing larger projects in Asana with our clients and adoption didn't last very long). Another idea if you wanted to go down this path is that you could integrate your CRM in with Asana so that templated tasks are created upon deal/opportunity stage change for example, and this can be how you share the progress with your customers, but again, a huge lift and I'd be 100000% percent sure they want it/will use it if you go through the trouble of setting this up. For collaborating on actual work fore example, we typically recommend a shared workspace. For example, we have a shared workspace which each of our customers for collaboration on a software called Slite: efficient.app/apps/slite. In general, tough to say without speaking further, but from what you shared it seems like you're using your CRM better than most folks so first I'd be wondering where the PM tool will help the most internally, and then thinking about the external collaboration aspect secondly. Hope this gives some food for thought!
@@efficientapp well, we have been using Microsoft Sharepoint to create sites for project collaboration with documentation. We can freeze changes and not allow customer to make any changes after a certain date, and have notes automatically stored in OneNote. The CRM is Connectwise - commonly used with IT VARs and MSPs like us....but we do sort of use it for a lot, and it seems to restrict how we want to work based on it's constraints and limitations. We use smartsheet for actual project / task plans, but it's kludgy, and I dislike how everything is just a spreadsheet. The more I look around, I am concerned that a single PM tool won't do everything well. I worry about buy in and duplicating efforts, and working in a platform the rest of the company doesn't have visibility to.
Ahhhh this all makes sense, had me at Connectwise. Yeah we actually used to be an MSP, I was using IT Glue religiously and saw deeply how critical every tool needed to integrate with an IT CRM like Connectwise. They feel like the Salesforce of CRM. Not super intuitive, but integrated with most IT tools. We were never more than just a couple/few people using it, so I had gotten away with NinjaRMM (I think now goes by NinjaOne now), Copper CRM (not using ConnectWise), and IT Glue. Now that we're no longer an IT company though, dropped IT Glue because it was insanely expensive, picked up Dashlane in its place which covered most of our use-cases in the new integration business, and kept using Copper as our CRM. Duplicate work is a huge thing in the IT/MSP/VAR industry, so yeah this is a totally different scenario than I had thought initially. Completely empathize with trying to modernize the IT services stack, it just feels impossible and why I ultimately left MSP, in many parts because of the software stack just feeling old/not modern. But yeah, using Smartsheets sounds like a bummer, another older software that was built for enterprise companies and just isn't very innovative anymore. Hope you can figure out something that works for you and is also more enjoyable to use!
Appreciate that! And this is an interesting one... While they are promoting 3.0 like it's a huge release, and we'll admit it does look better, it still suffers from the same point as the video mentioned. They aren't just focused on project management, but rather they are more of an all-in-one tool, which leaves it feeling overwhelming as everything is vying for your attention. If there's one area that we wish they improved with v3, it would be their daily planner/calendar functionality. We believe this to be so core to actually improving the end-user experience of task management and getting work done, when managing large projects. That said, we were just visiting family and friends over the holidays, and one of my closest friends has been using ClickUp at his startup (30 employees or so) for the past 2.5 years. We asked what he genuinely thought about it and we were told he really disliked it as it's just trying to be too much with too many features and not enough focus or TLC in the areas that are important. We're updating our ClickUp review on the website for 2024: efficient.app/apps/clickup but I will say that it's software that we have higher expectations of because of their size, scale, resources, and time in the market, and it feels like they are lacking focus and true innovation in the space. v3 just feels like a face lift of the main dashboard, without focusing much on the core functionality/stability.
Such a helpful review. I've been trying to use Notion as a PM tool since starting my business a year ago but find it so difficult to be truly productive and organised with, Motion sounds a much better fit for my business.
That's so great to hear! And you got it, Notion was infrastructurally built to be a knowledge-base and note taking tool, so the foundation doesn't lend itself to project management, AKA why you're probably feeling the way that you are. Give Motion a shot and see if that works, though make sure to sign up here for a free trial: efficient.link/r/motion and then claim the exclusive deal on our site (given you used that link to sign up you'll be eligible): efficient.deals/motion (just our way of helping the community further!) Super curious to hear what you end up thinking about it and how it compares to your experience with Notion!
Thanks! Copy/pasting from a different comment that we answered because we haven't added it to our site efficient.app yet: Basecamp is an odd one. They're probably the most outdated and stagnated of all the ones listed in the video. They actually totally stopped building the product a few years back, and prevented new customers from even buying it. It wasn't until recently that they realized maybe they should start allowing new customers onboard, but the product hasn't changed much (aside from 3-4xing the price). Their userbase is primarily legacy customers that used it as an all-in-one project manager and communication tool, but just using it, you quickly see how old and outdated it feels, and the methodology they used to build it. Not a tool we're excited about because of that, I'd genuinely be wary considering them when the competitors in this video haven't stopped putting their foot on the gas. Hope this helps!
We actually have a video on that coming out in the future, (it's already filmed), although it's just lower in the queue due to our mini-series launching soon (trailer dropping tomorrow in-fact!) That said, we did a pretty extensive write-up on Motion vs Reclaim if you're interested in checking that out? efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-reclaim
Oh wowies! I REALLY appreciate that you discuss the minusses of the softwares, too. This really helps me with my decision on what to use for my personal project organization
I'm very interested in Motion. Not for my teams necessarily. I do video games development so we use Jira, which is better suited as we work in sprints, etc. But for personal work and tasks as a manager, I definitely see myself using it. Thanks for the fantastic breakdown!
Love it! Yeah it's tough to get off Jira especially when you have a larger team. I know the team over at Motion actually moved off of Linear and over to Motion for their engineering development team which was a big deal. That said, personal work and tasks as a manager is a great use-case for it. I'm also sure your team will see it and get jealous over time and ultimately join in 😉😁 Glad we could be of help and appreciate the comment! 🙌
Jira, interesting, my job often looks like a developer's sprint -even though it is not development at all- and I have moved more and more into Agile/Scrum methodologies. Maybe I'll take a look. What is it that makes it so tailored to sprints?
So Jira was actually created more for engineering as the parent company is Atlassian which also owns Bitbucket (competitor to GitHub) so they were very much building for that ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), and engineers often do sprint-based work. That said, Jira has since moved to a large team focus (e.g. 500+ people), they are like the Salesforce of the engineer sprint world. New modern competitors have come out and have been eating their lunch though. If you're in any way interested in Jira, Linear is 10x better in every single way: efficient.app/apps/linear In-fact early days at Motion I know they were using Linear to even build their own product funny enough (since they are technically competitors now). They said they absolutely loved it at the time. So yeah, Linear is definitely the tool to check out if you're considering Jira, it's better in every way.
@@efficientapp Pretty cool, I have been toying with Jira today, I can see a lot of uses with my common Use Cases. I manage grants and proposals and Agile is a great way of doing it. I also consult for small businesses and startups that need proposal management options within their existing solutions. Qvidian and Loopio are too expensive for small companies. I'll check Linear too.
Really loved this so far! I’m a new interior designer and I’d love to hear about how Motion could work for client projects and accessible dashboards? I like the all in one idea to be able to manage both internal and external touchpoints but love the AI component too 😊
Have you had a chance to check out our full Motion tutorial? efficient.yt/motion as I think this should answer most of your questions here in a much more visual and helpful way! Maybe check out that video and leave a comment on that video with any specific questions you have (that aren't answered in the video) and we'll be happy to help answer them! Also, totally see the appeal of the all-in-one tools, smart of you to consider Motion though! Looking forward to seeing you in the other video if you'd be up for it? 🙏
Thank you for this review. We started using Notion and this is exactly what I did: build a complete project management solution in it. That worked pretty well until I started making some relations to make project views more accessible. Then it started to consume a huge amount of resources and now it has become almost unusable. In hindsight that is not a surprise, because the relational database-approach is upside down: for each request it pulls in the whole database and then only applies the filter. I almost wrote my own postgresql driven html :-)
Yessss, you covered the issues and how they ultimately arise due to the way that Notion was built so well. See, that's where a tool like Motion is solving the issue in the reverse order (what you're describing), it's a project management tool first and solving for all of those issues, which is the way it should be. Curious what you're using now? Have you tried giving Motion a shot? efficient.link/r/motion
Great video! Very useful. Set up is no joke - FOR REAL. I tried to use Monday but it was a total no go. Felt Asana was so much easier and intuitive. Haven't tried Motion yet, scared to change.
Haha tell me about it! How large of a team are you using Asana with? Is it just you? And hey, if you do end up giving Motion a shot, we actually moved from Asana to it and we find that Motion does a lot of the daily planning/maintenance automatically so we're saving a lot of time. (But as we mentioned, setup was a bit, which is why we're actually recording a course as we speak on how to get the most out of Motion). So with that-if you use the link here to sign up (whenever you do give it a shot-if at all): efficient.link/r/motion then you'll actually lock in the paid course (for free), you can claim it here: efficient.deals/motion Or just enjoy Asana because you have it set up, either way!
@@efficientapp our team is around ~10. We use it with Google Sheets with Apps Scripts for task automation. We are deep in it and I don't think my COO or AdOps team would be too happy if I was like "Hey, let's try Motion." But I'll do some recon on the side just on my own. I'm definitely in squirrel mode when it comes to new tools. Thanks for this course info.
This was super helpful! I am a solopreneur with multiple businesses and a family and, well, a life. I'm looking for something that can help me manage personal and business projects, keep up with appointments and to do lists and scheduling.... and also long and short term goals... can I do all of this in Motion?
What you just described is exactly where Motion currently excels the most 👌 have no doubt you'd be able to accomplish all of that with Motion. You should be able to see this through a free trial, give it a shot: efficient.link/r/motion
Course! Not exactly sure what you mean? We use and love Google Workspace (and tools like Motion require Google Workspace/Google Account or Microsoft 365 at the core), so in general we recommend it especially if you're a business. That said Google Workspace isn't a project management tool, so not exactly sure how that fits here or what exactly you're asking, care to clarify a bit more?
Awesome! Make sure you use this link: efficient.link/r/motion to sign up and then fill out this form: efficient.deals/motion and you'll get our paid Motion course for free! 🙌
We are using ClickUp now, but one thing you say is very correct, it is too complicated for those not familiar even in Excel. How can they manage to use the system like this and usually this kind of people they are managers, and they are too far from the computer task, they are more on planning and monitoring but this project management tool required certain knowledge of roaming at the computers based item
That's a good point! Some of these tools like ClickUp were built for the managers to manage, not for the IC's to get their work done. Motion is the one exception there, built for the individual contributor first and foremost, Managers second.
This was great! Thanks for sharing! My agency is looking to move from Function Point to one of these options, but we can't seem to find a platform that will manage all of our projects while tracking time per project and billing for clients. Do you have a recommendation?
So we actually use Motion + Harvest for exactly that use-case here at Efficient App. Here's more info about Harvest, we've been using it for 7-8 years now and love it: efficient.app/apps/harvest Since Motion integrates so deeply with your calendar, time blocking with your tasks, you can then actually go to Harvest and quickly add these blocks of time from the tasks/events directly into Harvest, tracking them against your client work. We actually have a full write-up on the best time tracking options on the market, and Harvest is one of the only solutions that handles billing well: efficient.tips/vs/harvest At the end of the day, if you're looking for an all-in-one solution that does project management, time tracking, AND billing well-you're going to get a pretty kludgy tool. Believe me, I've tried most of the all-in-one tools over the years, trying to solve the exact same problem you're speaking to. Your best bet here is to go for the specialized/focused tools, and integrate them, now that integration is way easier, and even baked in to some degree.
Completely and totally agree. Because of the foundation of how it's built (database infrastructure), it was built as a knowledge-base tool, storing things in blocks, so moving to project management and other more complex use-cases result in it totally falling apart and slowing down at scale. Wish more people learned this before building everything in their business atop of it.
What would you recommend for 100 employees? Looking for a PM tool that lets you build your own template, have dependencies, and lets your employes complete their own task versus the PM
If building process-focused templates (that you can share with team members or use individually), for both tasks and projects, and you want individual contributors to have control over their own tasks/time management, then we believe that Motion will give you the best experience on that front. Question for you first though, is there any "required" integration you need with the PM tool that you're using that is a non-negotiable? We have a full video on Motion here: efficient.link/yt/motion - though we are recording an update to that video as it's a bit old and Motion has improved a lot. In-fact, we're actually recording a course on Motion right now that shows you exactly how to leverage templates (Flows), and how Motion helps managers and individuals manage their time and projects best. The course is coming out soon and will be free if you actually sign up for Motion through this link: efficient.link/r/motion and then claim the course here: efficient.deals/motion Probably need to have a few more details to be sure of this (so feel free to add any additional context that might be helpful), though I will say, we switched from Asana to Motion and are actually quite baffled that none of the major PM tools (Monday, ClickUp, Asana) have both calendar at the core, and the degree of sophistication around project and task templating (for which Motion calls "Flows"). It's genuinely like a full process mapping tool (managers will like this) and a PM tool and a calendar/daily planner (IC's will like this) had a baby. Anyway, hope this helps!
I tried motion based on this video. I think it's a really cool idea... but it just doesn't work well when you have lots of things to juggle and often multitask. It ended up scheduling my lunch at 11PM..... lol. I don't blame it though. I also don't really like set a time for tasks because that just isn't how my brain works. I look at my to do list, check priority, then see what I can do in the time I have. I like larger calendar blocking and I guess that's what I'll do and keep using Asana even though I have 3 in my time. Plus, the motion interface with the calendar and each task showing is just super, super overwhelming for me. For context, I'm a homeschooling mom who has a part time job, is a content creator, and I have lots of different side projects. I squeeze things in whenever and I don't have a set work schedule. I might not work during the day (like today, we had a trip to the museum) and may get a few hours in at night. Then, the next day, I have to fit my work in while I homeschool my son. I'm back and forth at my computer a lot and having a strict time just doesn't work for my lifestyle. I love the idea though and I may come back to it if/when my son is older. We'll see.
Thanks for the comment and checking it out! Recommend you maybe check out our new Motion Tutorial as it covers some of what you're speaking to, as I am similar (Alex) to how you described: efficient.yt/motion That said, if Motion is overwhelming you with the tasks on your calendar, you can simply disable auto-scheduling for your tasks and use it like Asana. You just have the option to enable a task with a deadline on your calendar if you want if you find it overwhelming, you don't need to auto-schedule and have it show up on your calendar is all.
Curious to hear if the video helps at all! Please feel free to leave any questions you have on that video and would be more than happy to offer some advice/additional recommendations!
This is the most helpful yet concise video I’ve seen on all these different PM apps. Thanks! I have a couple of questions: we are a small team of 3-5. I’m new to PM apps and I’m learning before I roll it out to the team. I’m currently learning Asana & find the templates feature very useful. 1) does Motion have anything similar?, 2) although we’re a small team, we have a lot of projects, at out busiest it can be 100+. I know you recommended Motion for smaller teams, however, do the number of projects affect your recommendation? Thanks again for such a helpful video. Best one I’ve seen so far!
This is such a nice comment, thank you 🥹🙏 so yes, Motion has gone quite deep on the templating tasks feature. I also know they are going more and more down the templating + team handoff of a task/project direction (which should be helpful for the type of work you're describing). Question around the 100+ tasks as part of a project, couldn't some of these simply be sub-tasks? Essentially having a project with larger tasks, and some of those tasks just have sub-tasks? Either way it works, even if you want to have a templates project with 100+ tasks. Since your team is 3-5 people, would genuinely recommend you giving Motion a shot as well since the additional functional that Motion brings with a team that size, that Asana doesn't have, should be quite beneficial (around actually handing off and passing work along to the team and calendar integration to ensure it gets done). All of this to say, Motion is totally reworking their project manager in the coming months to greatly improve the UX especially around larger projects (we'll probably make a video on it), so we recommend having it be in the running, even if you don't sign up for a trial just yet: efficient.link/r/motion
@@efficientappSorry, I see I didn't mention the 100+ is number of projects, not tasks. I would say we have anywhere from 15-50 tasks and subtasks per project and although each project may be slightly different a lot are repetitive which is why I find Asana's templates so useful so it's good know Motion has them too. So, I guess my question still stands...with 100+ projects, but small team do you still recommend Motion? Thanks again!!
Oh yeah, in this case totally! You'd be totally fine having 100+ projects, and they've put a lot into the task/project template functionality. I will say that they are investing even more into projects, templates, and a few other cool features around that. So if you sign up, just know that it'll be getting a makeover soon (in a good way) 🔥 but how it works in the current state will still work perfect for what you're describing. 👌
Curious to hear how it went/how it's going? Did you have a chance to get it set up for you and your team? We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion
Awe, this means a lot 🥲 so glad to hear and thank you for that! Curious if you ended up going with any of the project management software mentioned in the video?
@@efficientapp Actually I did :) I immediatelly installed Asana on my personal laptop because I am working on a personal project as well and would like to test it for personal usage. So far it looks really nice! And btw, I wasn't aware about half the tools you mentioned in the video so big thank you ^_^
Ooh, congrats on taking the leap! Know it's tough to get started with all the options available, and also awesome to hear that you haven't heard of all the tools mentioned in the video! It's really cool to hear that actually because I think we're just so accustomed to thinking most watching have already heard of these tools, so that makes our job more fun actually! Appreciate your comment and wishing you the best with Asana! Hope to catch ya on other videos our new friend!
This is great advice. As a notion user 😅 I think Motion would be a better fit for managing projects as I am a soloprenuer for now. BUT I’ll still use notion as my 2nd brain 🧠 🧠 the customization for me is unmatched when it comes to organization Notes/ideas/content
That's totally fair! We like Notion for knowledge base/notes, just not PM-so you're thinking about it right! Have you given efficient.link/r/motion a shot?
Awe, of course! Jira is very much more built for enterprise teams, unless you're an engineering team of 500+ people, there's just better options available. We actually go more into it in the overview section of the best project management software page on our site: efficient.link/pm#overview It's more that it serves its purpose for some enterprise teams (it's like the Salesforce of the PM world, which isn't a good thing), like Salesforce it has been replaced by more modern players. With Jira, even in the engineering world it has been replaced by tools like Linear and Motion: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-linear
Which tools would you like to know more of? We've written about them in further detail on the site which is also updated more than the video can be. It's tough to balance how deep we should go with each tool. You can see the additional details here in the full reviews: efficient.link/pm
Thanks for this review, so helpful! I’ve had a good experience with Trello as well but mostly for personal life things. Absolutely agree with asana and motion! Could you show us a bit more on how you’re using these platforms? I’m looking for some ideas for adding team members
Thank you Lydia! That's a good request, we can put it on our list of content to create but might be a little while because we have backlog of videos to release atm that are filmed! But make sure to subscribe to keep an eye out for them as we think this would be super useful to record 👀
We just watched your video about what you learned your first year on RUclips-well done 👏 just subscribed! Didn't realize you had a RUclips channel. So funny enough, our video editor signed up for Motion as he was editing this video and he's still using it today and loves it 😁 It's primarily me and Andra using it, sometimes she'll throw tasks on my calendar for customer work that is blocking her, or I'll throw tasks for content ideas on her calendar. Often, I'll do a detailed comparison, and then we'll collaborate on how to turn it into a video, determining who's more passionate about the topic and that'll dictate who will record the video. We're working on getting into a more consistent flow within Motion to be more like a hand-off upon each task being completed: 1. Alex writes rough thoughts 2. Andra refines and turns into a deeper comparison, adding her own thoughts 3. Alex proofreads/reviews 4. Andra/Alex record a video 5. Cory (video editor) edits video 6. Alex/Andra revisions Motion lets us hand off these tasks back-and-forth to entire we don't block each other when it's our turn, or our video editor when it's his turn. Motion is also going to get way more refined in that way in the months to come (allowing for better handing-off and back/forth of work).
@@efficientapp thanks for this detailed outline, that is so helpful. I’ve been playing with motion and love it as well, but haven’t expanded to including my husband or any handoff tasks. I’m definitely going to take inspiration from your workflow and see how we can learn from it. So glad I came across your channel when I was researching this. It’s inspiring to see other people building businesses :-) very excited to follow along!
This is so sweet, thanks for the comment Lydia! We know that Motion is undergoing some changes/improvements, so we're more apt to make a video to help others set it up once these changes are complete and rolled out, just so the video isn't immediately outdated 😀 hope to see you when that video does eventually come out! Appreciate your support, and we're excited to hear how things expand when you eventually rope your husband into Motion 😉
Glad to hear it helps! And the closest app that does this is Motion, in that it will automatically plan and manage your day, you just need to add in the tasks and it does all the work. Is that what you mean or are referring to? It's the most management hands-off tool of all those referenced 👌
Suggestion for start up 200-400 people that may need access. Currently have G-suite and M365, but Gsuite is the main tool and Slack. Really need a Task Manager for managing Proof of Concepts and Demos and the resources (pooled) that are required. Personally, I would have just suggested Move to Teams and Planner, but the Devs don't want to leave Gmail and Slack. Suggestions? Thanks!
Hey Scott! If you're actually tied quite deeply to the Gmail and Slack world and you're looking for a solution that devs will like, I'd almost say Linear for them, but then that would leave the rest of the team in a weird spot. If the goal is to get your dev team and all orgs using the same tool, especially having say product and CS jump between them and dev and back, the only tool we've seen work really well with that use-case is actually Motion. This video is now over a year old and Motion has actually grown in scale to work with this specific use-case. Since it's a large account though, would be happy to intro you to their team if you want and they can demo it (they are using it internally the same way you're describing). If you're interested, just shoot us a message via the chat widget on our site: efficient.app But yeah as a large team like yours, there's many more questions I'd have to make the best recommendation.
@@efficientapp Any thoughts on using Microsoft Planner? Our company has both GSuite and M365. This is for managing tasks across sales engineers and sales people to manage things like proof of concepts and demos to consumption and rollout of the SaaS offering. Planner is a free tier in M365, but readily available vs talking the org to take a bite out of Motion. Another good reason to just move off of Gsuite in my opinion, especially now that things like Excel online are 95% of the fat app...
Good question! We LOVE Airtable, but not for project management. Everything we said about Notion being a project manager is what'd we say about Airtable also. Haha even would say you can just replace the word Notion with Airtable in the video and it'd ring true. We love using Airtable as a database, great for structured data and automation but using it as a project management is messy because of little guard rails so you end up spending more time building out how you want to use it as a project management tool rather than just managing projects!
I love how you packaged the entire video, very detailed and well thought through. By the way what colour are your eyes? captivated! #Will definitely try out motion
So we use Motion for our software dev sprints. We don't have a huge team though, so I think a better example is that Motion's engineering team used Linear for their sprints for years and loved it. They officially switched fully over to Motion for their engineering sprints about a year ago and it has been working well for them. So depends on the genuine size of your engineering team, but if you have less than 50 engineers, you should be able to get away with Motion standalone for it all. They have an update to the project management section coming out soon (we're beta testing it now), that makes managing sprints in their project management side of the tool significantly better, so stay tuned! Otherwise, you can't go wrong with Linear, though Motion and Linear are such different tools in a sense, that it does make sense for using both, but leaning more on Motion: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-linear Though if you wanted it integrated, you'd need to build something custom with their API.
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it interesting as it relates to using it for more structured processes like dev sprints: efficient.yt/motion
many software development teams integrate tools like Jira or Trello for managing sprint tasks. While Motion may not be specifically tailored for software development, it could still be used for high-level project planning and coordination alongside more specialized tools for development tasks. Integration options may vary depending on the specific tools being used.
Super cool video a very good content because it’s pragmatic and not created by productivity addict fans. Thank you. For my team I use asana to do pm in agile it’s great
This means a lot for you to say this, it's exactly what we're going for as we too got a bit frustrated by most of the B2B SaaS content being exactly what you're describing. Super motivating to hear this, encourages us to keep going in this niche 🙏 appreciate your support, glad you've found a home with Asana and it's working for you, and thanks for leaving a comment!
Glad to hear it was helpful! What do you mean about Slack though? It's not a project management software, it's a team communication tool. We use and love it for example, but we'd never use it for project management, if that makes sense? Maybe we're misunderstanding the context of your question if you want to further clarify?
Been messing around with Walling lately. Kinda like it. Seems simple and allows me to keep up with any large undertakings. I may be using it as a lone wolf, but my projects are imprtant to me. Used to use a paper and pencil planner and Kanban board but Walling allows the same without all of the home office clutter.
My brother is similar, he does the walling approach but on a literal whiteboard for personal tasks, although for work he uses a proper project management tool. Trying to get him to try out Motion for personal usage as I think he'd quite like it since he does also rely on his calendar as well as it feels like a good mix of walling and software. Walling seems like a good first app to try in going from actually writing on a whiteboard though, especially if you are image/screenshot heavy in your task management 👌
Simplifying your workflow while still maintaining organization is key, especially for solo endeavors. Embracing digital tools like Walling can help streamline your process and reduce clutter, ultimately enhancing productivity and focus on your important projects.
Ah totally makes sense. Of course, we know ClickUp (as any tool we mentioned) will work for certain people/teams with the right investment in setup. We're just offering people the advice of what we'd do in their shoes/what we've found actually works for us as a team after trying all of these tools. With any project management tool, thinking through your process is the most important yet challenging part. Sounds like you got that down pat with ClickUp! 🙌 Thanks for commenting & visiting our channel!
I really love your honest explanation and have found the same with asana and monday - but I do have a question about Motion. Does it have task boards/views in addition to the timed tasks on a calendar? What is preventing your team from just using Google Calendar for events as well as the Google Task feature to assign "timed tasks" around your events?
Ah yes, Motion is a full team project manager (task board view, etc.) Trying to use Google Tasks with Calendar misses the entire collaborative project management and AI capabilities. Motion also automatically prioritizes all of your tasks based on importance, blockers (from team members), deadlines, and task/project duration. Google Calendar + Google Tasks isn't something meant at all for teams or getting large projects done, if that makes sense? Google Tasks does not replace Asana, but Motion does.
Thank you for responding so quickly! @@efficientapp And I understand, I didn't realize they also had the other views as well. If you don't mind me asking a few more questions - looking into this tool for my team as well. I'm looking at the features for Motion and was wondering if you integrate this tool for communications between your team and clients you work with as well (collaborate on tasks, easy to add people outside of your org to events, etc.)? And would you suggest this for a team 25-30 people? I was going to go for asana but a little hesitant to see what's out there, but knowing asana is known as the pricier option and it looks like Motion seems to be slightly even more expensive? This seems like a great tool especially since it seems it can replace Google Calendar (our team uses that for events mostly which is why i mentioned it).
Huge apologies, we apparently don't get notified for comment replies 😅 hope it's not too late! So they do have a "Guest" invite option, but I think they are working on that feature more early next year. If that's absolutely critical to invite people externally, you'd be best to wait a bit (unless you want to pay full-price for an additional seat for external guest). If you're fine with that pricing-wise, then it's actually possible in the product and you can restrict access of said person by workspace. You could use their comment section for communication, but the truth of the matter is we often use Slack for internal team communication, and Slite - efficient.app/apps/slite for shared client documentation and communication (it's similar to that of Notion). I suppose you could use Motion for that though. For a team with 25-30 people, Motion is definitely still an option. Let me explain the positives/negatives to consider with a team of that size though: POSITIVES - Your team will enjoy using Motion > Asana almost exclusively as it's so deeply tied to their calendar, and is essentially a daily planner in addition to a project manager, right there within their calendar. - If you're truly looking at it from the individual's standpoint, they can simply live in Motion for their calendar + event scheduling, which in turn will help with adoption, versus jumping between multiple tools (Calendar/Calendly/Asana). NEGATIVES - They are nowhere near that of say Asana when you get outside of the "getting work done" and move into "upper-management reporting". So if you're a team that's big into goal setting and milestones, while there's ways to visualize it by filtering down views in Motion and leveraging projects for different chunks of a project, you're not going to get the more traditional reporting functionality that upper-management might want. (I will note that this is nearly irrelevant for the actual teams that are living in the tool on the day-to-day to get work done, so you'd have to ask yourself, is reporting more important for your team than your team actually using a tool and benefiting from it, to help them get work done?) - They still have a bit more to go on some core functionality (e.g. super robust searching functionality), but that's definitely coming in time if the team can be patient. PRICING - Actually, Motion is nearly identical at the seat count you're speaking to as compared to Asana (paid annual), not to mention that if you're using Asana long enough, you're going to be pulled to the business tier, which is far more expensive than Motion. Not to mention the fact that it also includes the calendar and meeting scheduler, it replaces the need for most people using Calendly as well, which should free up some budget. - I think you're possibly comparing the monthly pricing option? If so, I'd recommend you consider that within 2-3 months of implementing the tool (whether Motion OR Asana), you should switch to annual for the discount. It's also a statement you're making to your team that you're committed to making the tool work. We find that larger teams that use a tool month-to-month have a difficult mindset around embracing the tool, as they feel like the company might just switch tools again the following month. Commit to the software and your team will also do the same (plus you get to save nearly 40% on the price by doing so).
Interesting. I'm looking at PM software for my simple one person projects. I probably don't need any PM tools, but it's a way to get practice using one or more, so I won't be a total knuckle-dragging grunting ignoramus in case I'm hired into a team using one of these. I've used Monday for a remote project, but know zilch about the rest. This video was helpful! Normally my "project management" is a TiddlyWiki for lists, links, cheatsheets, some text files in my project's folder, and stuff written on 3x5 cards which I can take with me to the coffee shop.
Sounds like a great plan! What PM tool are looking to give a shot with? Maybe efficient.link/r/motion hint hint, nudge nudge 😁 appreciate you being willing to learn and be open-minded!
First of all, glad to hear that you like a project manager at all, it means that your team must have been able to adopt it well, which is one of the most difficult things about project management software and teams. That said, as also a team of 3 using the project manager, we switched from Asana to Motion after evaluating them side-by-side for 1-2 years, having used Asana as our PM tool for 7 years. So that should be somewhat telling on its own. That said, I'd have to know what it is that your team likes most about Asana, if it's the reporting, Gaant chart functionality, etc then you'd be better off sticking with Asana for now. We personally got sick and tired of manually reorganizing/pushing deadlines of tasks in our My Tasks view in Asana every day, as with Motion it handles that automatically amongst other things. We have an entire page dedicated to Motion vs Asana on our site though that should help you in determining if you're anything like us, or would be better off sticking with what you currently have: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-asana Keep us posted and let us know if you have any other specific questions around this after checking out the page above!
Super curious to hear what your thoughts are on Asana? Always open to hearing them and having our mind changed! Also glad to hear you validate our reasoning for disliking ClickUp, feel pretty strongly on that one 😉 Appreciate your comment and excited to hear your thoughts!
Fill us in! What are your current painpoints and what tools have you tried, and what type of business are you? Go ahead and give Motion a shot with a free trial: efficient.link/r/motion and keep us posted how it goes, though happy to learn a bit more to let you know if it could work based on your needs. Happy to help 🚀
My workflow is somewhat simple. I use samsung notes, set reminders, then add to folders based on organization. Task are weighted weekly, and that's it.. I work off those reminders while adding reminders throughout the week. I found most software I looked at to be cumbersome and not a good fit. So I'm looking at motion and todoist now.
Oh got it, so you're looking for a relatively basic task manager then. Yeah it depends how much you value calendar integration. If you want your tasks to show up on your calendar, ensuring you get them done, that's where Motion excels. If you're looking for something relatively basic and just want a phone reminder when something is due, ToDoist would probably work well enough. Curious to hear your experience after testing out both! Good luck 🙌
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful if you haven't yet decided which tool to move forward with: efficient.yt/motion
Great thing that was mentioned in the video was the statistics of PMT usage by small and large organizations. After thinking much, I came to the conclusion that Google's Ecosystem is probably going to be your go-to for SMALL organizations.
Thank you! I have been playing around with the 3 you don't recommend. I hate them for exactly the reasons you highlighted. I have not heard of Motion until this video. That's where I'm heading right now.
Awesome to hear! Be sure to sign up here to lock in the free course efficient.link/r/motion Might want to actually check out this video before signing up to make sure it'll do what you're looking for it to do? efficient.yt/motion Keep us posted on the outcome!
Thanks so much! And totally, creating the foundation over and over is not a good use of time. Jira is very much more built for enterprise teams, unless you're an engineering team of 500+ people, there's just better options available. We go more into it in the overview section of the best project management software page on our site: efficient.link/pm#overview It's more that it serves its purpose for some enterprise teams, but it has been replaced even in the engineering world by tools like Linear and Motion: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-linear
@@efficientappWow, your website is an absolute treasure of knowledge for any and all software stacks. I'm very grateful for coming across your youtube video. I was beginning to get frustrated from watching too many unexperienced people on YT claiming this or that, many of which are only following trends and not incorporating anything useful. You guys rock!
Oh wow... This is literally the nicest comment to end the day on. Means so much to hear this, and super excited that you've gotten value from the site! Much more to come-we hope to see you around some more 🙌
Enjoyed the video! I just found your channel so you may have dealt with this, but I would love to see the comparisons of free vs. paid versions and why you recommend one over the other. I have no experience with project management software as a new solopreneur but am leaning toward Asana for the free version to get my feet wet as opposed to motion with just a free trial period.
Appreciate the comment, and welcome! Sounds like you may have found our channel, but not our website? efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-asana There is a full Motion vs Asana write-up for you. That said, if you have no experience with project management software, we would normally recommend staying away from one of the more large team and enterprise tools like Asana as they are unopinionated by design. What I mean is, as software grows in size and takes on more use-cases and larger teams, the more broad of a tool it becomes and the more you need to be opinionated to set it up correctly. A tool like Motion just works for you out of the box, add tasks and it'll be useful. Don't get to your tasks for the day? Great, everything is automatically rescheduled and ready for you to do the following day. With tools like Asana, they expect you to have a project manager that helps set things up and help move things forward. The free tier as well is quite restrictive, for getting the automation functionality in Asana, you need to be paying, and without the task automation (helping move things forward without it being as manual daily) you're going to be paying for it. Asana restricts everything on their free tier, it's less about "free for small teams" and more about "go ahead and set some of it up and invite some team for free, and then when you're ready to actually start using it properly, upgrade to the paid tier" to which you'll be in similar to that of Motion and you'll simply be using the wrong tool for your team size. All of that said, we get the appeal, and would genuinely recommend signing up for both and just seeing what your initial experience is like for each if you're unable to make up your mind: eff.li/r/motion (Motion) + eff.li/r/asana (Asana) Might just recommend you check out our Motion tutorial to get a sense of how we use it just to get a sense of what it's like, maybe seeing it will help you make up your mind on whether or not it even works for what you're thinking: efficient.yt/motion Does that help at all?
@efficientapp thanks for the detailed explanation! I'll definitely check your website for the comparison and try both to see how they fit my company. Very helpful.
Thanks for an excellent video. I want to plan some projects for writing and publishing books, probably about 3-4 months duration. I really like Gantt charts for seeing what needs to be done when, to make sure I don’t start a long task like book cover design too late, to know when to arrange time with a proofreader, etc. I see Monday does Gantts, but when I also saw they did CRM it was a huge red flag to me (just like you mentioned!) Plus Monday seems buggy to me. Do you have any recommendations? Thanks.
Of course! Appreciate you taking the time to watch and comment 🙌 So when you're speaking purely about visual tools, like that of Gantt charts, you're going to be into the world of more serious project management software like Asana. That said, since you're referring to more individual and small talk projects like writing and publishing books, we think you'd get more benefit from the auto-scheduling capabilities for that of Motion. Being able to put rough deadlines for tasks (e.g. 1-2 weeks, or a more hard deadline), and having it pop up to remind you on your calendar has been more to ensure we get work done on time and by deadlines, than the visual tools like Gantt charts have ever done, as much as I do love how they look. Charts like that are very active-planning focused, which is also a habit that needs to be built up, but worse, takes up a lot of time to stay ontop of. That's where we'd recommend you try Motion and the way it goes about automatically planning to ensure you get your work done on time. We use it for our content creation process, which is great too because at a point it hands off from Andra to me and then our video editor, and Motion is more focused best on helping you get this type of work done by a set deadline through automatic scheduling. It just has a few less visual options for now though. Maybe just give it a shot and see if it could work for you? efficient.link/r/motion If not, then Asana should deliver on the Gantt chart request and more visual. It's just a tool you need to stay more ontop of regularly to keep it updated with how work is progressing which gets quite tiresome pretty quickly. It's so clearly built for larger teams and having a part-time project manager keeping it up-to-date with any scale: efficient.link/r/asana Hope this helps with a bit more clarity!
For your project planning needs, consider tools like ClickUp or Asana, which offer robust Gantt chart functionality without the added complexity of unnecessary features like CRM. These platforms provide comprehensive project management capabilities to ensure smooth execution of your writing and publishing projects.
Well, Notion is at least great for students. Getting truly free Gantt chart, calendar view, task/list view, and kanban board is nice. 😅 But yeah, for the target audience of project managers and businesses then no.
Yeah, we genuinely categorize Notion more as a note taking/team knowledge base, not a project manager. That's the main qualm with it, it does note taking well, and now is being confused for a tool that does everything for everyone. It's not that 😅
So I just started with a sauna like 24 hours ago and now I just seen your video and I hadn't checked out motion yet. My team would be small consisting of about 4 people maybe five for now, but growing. I was thinking we would use Asana with notion for the documentation in sop library. Could you give me a better suggestion or what would you recommend? I oversee multiple businesses and projects and need to stay organized amongst the different activities
Okay, so we'd still recommend you use the likes of Notion for internal documentation/SOP, etc. but for the size of your team, and the fact that you oversee multiple businesses (and projects within them), we think you'd have a better time with Motion-here's a link for a free trial: efficient.link/r/motion They allow for multiple workspaces in their project area, unlike Asana (which would essentially be entirely different Asana accounts for each company). You can have one workspace for one company, and have sub-projects within them. Mainly recommending this because for actually getting tasks done, and ensuring your team executes on the work that needs to get done (and blocking other team members from getting work done), Motion has that built in at the core. I'd also bet that you've spent quite a bit of time setting up your "My Task" view within Asana, Motion essentially auto-schedules for you every day so you don't need to even worry about that. We officially just switched our team off of Asana and over to Motion and we're so glad to be off Asana being the size team we are. That said, if you had 100 employees... We'd say you're making a good decision with Asana. But if you're 4-5 people, even growing quite quickly, Motion will definitely be the better solution for your team. If you want to read some direct thoughts on Motion vs Asana more directly, take a look at the comparison we did here: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-asana Hope this helps!
So glad to hear! Thanks for your comment 🙏 did you end up deciding on any of our recommendations in the video? 👀 Curious of your use-case/team size and what you ended up going with!
@@efficientapp To be honest, nope. The one that would suit my services the best is Asana, but I am a freelance logo designer, and I don’t think I need that much power yet. So I am sticking to Google Keep (for idea planner) and Microsoft One Note for everything else. 👀
Definitely don't recommend using Notion as a CRM. In fact, we have an entire video about why not + what our CRM recommendations are. Watch here & let us know what you think after watching: efficient.link/yt/crm
So we use Harvest to actually do this, have an entire comparison write-up on time tracking tools here: efficient.tips/vs/harvest That said, Harvest integrates with Google Calendar, and Motion allows tasks to show up on Google Calendar, and thus, your tasks essentially show up to add to Harvest if you'd like. So directionally we use Motion for that, just in addition to Harvest if that makes sense? Here's more info and a write-up on Harvest + a free trial & credit if you want to check it out: efficient.app/apps/harvest
@@efficientapp thanks, I’ll check out your write up. We’ve been using SpringAhead but the reporting and analytics is non-existent so I’m looking for options.
Apologies, YT doesn't do a great job at notifying when we get a comment reply-haven't heard of SpringAhead. At first glance, it definitely seems a bit dated. You'd be better off with any of the apps listed on the link posted above for sure! Did you end up picking a solution? If so, curious with what you went with, and why? 🤔
Appreciate your comment and support, this comment means a lot to us, thank you for leaving it 🙏 And no giving up here! Much more to come! We're just launching our mini-series at the moment: efficient.link/ateam/0 Have more software and comparison videos coming! 👏👏👏
Awe, appreciate you taking the time to watch and comment and stoked to hear we could help make sense of this overwhelming category! Super curious what you ended up going with?
Too many features often means they are building for too many people and use-cases, AKA a jack of all traits and master of none. Sometimes focus and specialty is better in software. It also leads to people using the tool for the wrong things and teams struggling with adoption as there's no clear usage/build-out path.
I'm finding that there are many different interpretations of what is meant by the term project management... What this sounds like is how teams are managing their group objectives. I'm in search of a PM software (for 20-25 ppl) that begins with a framework to evaluate/compare projects to one another, prioritize the projects and put them in categories of approved, pending, declined, etc. and then assign the projects to owners. I'm less concerned about the ability to put tasks on individual's calendars and more concerned about each project owner managing the granular details in their PM meetings. The owner will provide updates via the PM tool to identify the status of the project etc. Any suggestions???
Fair point! How would you expect to be evaluating/comparing projects to one another? For everything else you mentioned, prioritization, categorizing, and assigning projects to owners to lead and give updates within the project and during meetings, Motion should work great for. You also don't need to enable having tasks on your calendar with Auto Scheduling (that can be turned off for any or all tasks). Maybe you could give a bit more info about how you envisioned evaluating/comparing projects and I could help more. But as it sounds, efficient.link/r/motion should handle what you're describing for a team of 20-25 people no problem and be quite focused to that use-case.
@@efficientapp There are a number of qualitative and quantitative prioritization frameworks out there. I like Value vs Effort but there's also the KANO Model, MoSCoW method, Opportunity Scoring, or Cost of Delay. I was expecting to find a PM platform with a prioritization framework built-in or as an add-on. I will check out Motion.
Ah okay, got it! I mean Motion allows you to add custom fields, so what I'd recommend doing is creating a drop-down custom field for different data-points that would allow you to evaluate those things. In terms of effort, projects are tied to time and it will give a summary of how much time went into a project, so you can in theory have an effort indicator via a custom field, then actually see how much time went into it to see if that aligns with the estimated effort if you will. That said, the only way to know if it'll work for you is if you give it a shot with a free trial. Be sure to claim the deal here if you do end up giving Motion a shot: efficient.deals/motion
I'm in love with Motion, but in my company we need to track our time and have some reports about the projects, tasks and members. Is there any way that I can have this using Motion?
Awesome to hear! We'd just say that the listview grouping/filtering can allow for some pretty powerful reporting, have you tried messing around with that and the "completed time" column to get a roll-up of time across the team and projects? It's not foolproof or to the degree that a standalone time tracking tool like Harvest would give you: efficient.link/time-tracking With that, Motion has mentioned to use that they are overhauling time tracking early next year, so hopefully there's more out-of-the-box reporting like you're hoping. That said, have you checked out our Motion course? While we don't go to the depths about time tracking reports, we do show how we're using it, and there's a lot of other tips and tricks in there that I'm sure you and your team will enjoy: efficient.link/courses/motion
These are project managers, wouldn't recommend any as a CRM. Our CRM recommendation depends on your size of team and what core cloud suite you're using for your business (e.g. Google Workspace vs Microsoft). We've done a full writeup and video that should help answer that question for you here: efficient.tips/b/crm We personally use Copper CRM: efficient.link/r/copper though mind you we use Google Workspace and have a smaller team. Definitely check out the blog post and video here though as it'll best answer your question: efficient.tips/b/crm
We're in progress of a write-up for this right-now in-fact. It's about 75% complete if you want to check it out: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-sunsama We still have a few more hours of work to put into the article, although it's our highest priority to complete over the next week.
Ah, that's actually the sweet spot for Motion: efficient.link/r/motion and similar to the team size we're building for. Once you get closer to 50-100 you're probably going to want more deep reporting capabilities for managers, which is probably coming more later this year from what the team has said. We have a full video on it that you can check out to see if it'll work for you, Flows and Gantt is in the product (releasing to everyone in a week or two), we've been using it in beta for 2 months now and it has been great. Here's a free setup course that's coming too if you use this page to sign up for a free trial: efficient.deals/motion Happy to answer any specific questions you might have if you want to describe more your needs, industry, internal or external, and any specific use-cases/processes you'll be using the PM tool for? Here's the video: efficient.yt/motion And here's a deal
@@efficientapp thanks for the quick response. Should I be using these kinds of tools if the other project members don't? (I was just assigned to be leader) Do you have any recommendations for an app that is free? I suspect that there aren't really any good program management tool that is free, as all the ones that have a free version, are extremely limited until you purchase it.
It's totally up to you, you can use a tool like Motion solo just to get your own work done if you'd like, team adoption can come in time as you see a benefit of inviting others in, and they see a benefit of being added in. Regarding a free Project Management tool, especially for that of a team of 20+ people is going to be a bit short-sighted, as the actual cost of a project management tool is the time that goes into setting it up and training the team on it, not the actual cost of the software, so if you can't even justify the cost of the software, the chance at team adoption and the team sticking with it more than even just a few months isn't very likely. We're trying to help teams and companies find and use the best software on the market that will save their team time and help them become more efficient, if your criteria is "free", then you're not really going to find a tool that we would recommend for such a critical role in the business, if that makes sense?
Do let us know what you think, and be sure to sign up with this link so you can tie in the Motion deal: efficient.link/r/motion (you can claim the deal on our site here after signing up: efficient.deals/motion - apologies on the delay here as you probably already signed up). MS Planner is a very simplified task management tool-in general, we work with Google Workspace most often, so we don't get too excited about diving into the built-by Microsoft task solution. Those solutions are never as good as standalone companies building them. In-fact, Microsoft acquired Sunrise Calendar back in the day, rolled it into Outlook (in an awful way), and then shut down Sunrise. So if anything, Microsoft is doing the reverse of things that we like and would recommend when it comes to task and calendar management haha.
refreshing to hear someone say "i like this and I dislike this", rather than trying to not offend anybody and end up not saying anything. Thanks :)
That's the goal! 🙏 We appreciate that you appreciate it. Our goal is to be opinionated, in the same way that a close friend would ask us for software advice-we wouldn't sugar coat it.
That said, we're always open to having our opinion changed, it would just take a lot, or helping us see where a given software fits into the competitive landscape (and us validating that).
We know we could "make more money" partnering up with the behemoths, like Salesforce or Monday, but we love software, we want to enjoy the software that we use, and the behemoths have actually been the reason that we have developed these strong opinions in the first place. There's nothing worse than people just saying "oh you're a business, you need Salesforce", we're like... Does your business have people in it or machines? If it's people, do they actually ENJOY using Salesforce? No they don't, so let's look at something that fits the business and the people working there better.
Let's make software enjoyable again, and that comes from being opinionated, which may offend some companies at times. We're not meaning offense, we're just being candid.
Apologies for the ramble, this comment just struck a chord-appreciate you 🙏
@@efficientapp LOVE this
Awe, means a lot, appreciate you saying that 🥹🥲
agreeeeeeee
This makes us so happy 🙏
You know this is authentic when it’s not a Notion ad 😂
Haha I mean don't get us wrong, we're super impressed by what Notion has managed to build... But we very much think people are trying to use it for everything, when they shouldn't be. It's not the best solution on the market for most things. These "all-in-one" tools are a strange category. It's like, "I can't figure out what we are, so let's be everything to everyone!"-where has that worked in any other industry over the long-run? 🤔
+Big sigh+ Soo... as a 3+ yr notion user (and others like anytype, coda, etc.) this is tough. Even though the PPV system (august bradley's) has been a life changer (literally), I'm now looking at other platforms.
I just started using akiflow. Its speed, shortcuts, quick adds, etc are amazing but now that I'm seeing reviews on reclaim, skedpal and motion - using ai's help looks like a no-brainer.
@@efficientapp
Ah yes, we're fans of Akiflow and Sunsama, although the manual-ness of it all didn't fit for us. Not sure if you saw our Daily Planner video that goes into this: efficient.yt/planner
But yeah, I definitely recommend checking out Motion. If you do, be sure to lock in our course for free (probably going to be selling it for $400 otherwise) if you sign up for motion here:
efficient.link/deal/motion
We'll have some content coming out soon with some best practices for setting it up.
Also happy to make a recommendation on if Motion or something else would be best based on your needs and you sharing your current stack via a Loom video here:
efficient.link/audit
Appreciate your comment and I'm confident you'll figure it what works best for you!
Yup😂
Do you trust a company from Israel with all your data and info?
I love how you actually give an answer! Most people review different softwares and at the end always say... "I cant tell you which ones right for you, thats for you to decide" lol
Haha we made it a point to not have a video like that because we hate when we see it. Have some opinions people, please! 😬 glad you enjoyed it and appreciate your comment! 😁
thank you for giving us an opinion, its actually extremely rare, its crazy how people are so afraid to give an opinion of a software @@efficientapp
This comment definitely encourages us to do more of it! Appreciate your support!
20 years experience speaking here: first question should be, "which platform does your Project Management Organization leadership prefer?" if the answer is "uh, we dont have a PMO leader" then that's your first challenge. the software will not run itself. it is a tool that a good leader can deploy to get max gains out of the rest of your teams
Yes! GREAT point 🙌 That’s why we prefer Motion, because it’s “easier to self-manage” but this will only work with teams up to a certain size. Thank you for watching! 🙏🙏
True true
Your insight highlights the importance of organizational leadership in implementing project management software effectively. Identifying leadership preferences ensures alignment with strategic goals and enhances adoption across teams. A strong leader can leverage the software as a tool to streamline processes and optimize team performance, ultimately driving project success.
I was thinking that when she said that people were lost about when or how to use the tool.
Totally, I mean it's a mixture, right? Having someone internal as a champion to lead product adoption is crucial, but also, the better the tool, the more you should be able to get some small wins when using it solo which brings people onboard to fully adopting it.
The sheer number of companies using Salesforce, but their team HATES using it is incredibly high (the far majority, in our experience at least), so great, upper management loves it, but sales reps don't enjoy using it, so they don't, and the "data" that upper management is reporting on isn't even accurate.
So again, it's a mixture of both. The tool needs to be useful to the individual, making their job easier, as well as for managers to derive insights from and manage the team.
Of the bunch in this video, Motion does seem to do this the best: efficient.link/r/motion
Great opinions on each. But unless money is no object for you and your business, there is a HUGE hole in this. Cost is never mentioned. If you're solo Motion is $39/month. STEEP when some of the others have free versions with every feature you need (IMHO).
Thanks for the comment Brian! So we are, first and foremost, a B2B software review channel, our target audience is businesses and teams. With that, part of running a business means you’ll have software costs and we don’t encourage teams to evaluate tools on price alone (or even a primary driver) - unless a tool literally starts at thousands of dollars per year, we won’t mention it as a part of our reviews.
With that, Motion is actually $19/m on the annual tier and $12 per user for teams. For small teams, Motion and Asana are nearly identical per seat as compared to Asana (paid annual). P.S. it's $34/mo when billed monthly, not $39. Not to mention, if you move to their "Team" plan, you get 2 seats for $20/user/mo, so maybe get a friend to go on a team with you if you don't have a business and save 40%?
While there is a "free" tier in Asana for example, it's incredibly restrictive feature-wise (just about everything you try to do prompts you to upgrade). We used it for 7 years and were paid users on the advanced tier the entire time (it was literally more expensive than Motion).
If the free tools do everything *you* need, then there’d be no reason to consider another option! For us, we’re a small team (2 people) and couldn’t get away from using the free tiers on any of the tools in this video. And for what a tool like Motion does for us in terms of peace of mind and organization, and helping us get work done, it more than pays for itself (like with all the tools we use).
You're 100% right when you talk about apps trying to do too much. It's a modern curse. I don't want every app to let me "message my coworkers", because I don't want to be getting messages and notifications from a thousand apps!
Haha can so relate! Internally we had to come up with some rules to essentially say "when it's this type of message, use this tool", because every tool does the same thing in some way-it's a lot!
For example, a CRM has tasks, but our project management tool has tasks too... So do we create the task in Motion? Or in Copper? The decision we've made internally is, if it's a relationship-focused task (e.g. reach back out to x about y) then it goes into the CRM tied to the person it's related with. Anything else goes in Motion.
So we're finding that even when you thoughtfully pick software that doesn't overlap, there's still some overlap, and that's when internal standard operating procedures need to be made (if you're small, don't need to write them up, just needs to be a general ethos), of which tool should be used when.
Also Slack DM's are good for quick message exchanges without much structure, but if you're actually moving project work forward, maybe a comment inside of the task within the project manager is a better place to post that Loom video you recorded so the entire team can see it and can reference it back when you're in the type of work that the comment relates to, otherwise a Slack DM could just be disruptive.
It's a delicate balance and just getting more difficult with so many tools moving to all-in-one because they all want to own your entire work stack! Haha
Absolutely, the proliferation of features in apps can lead to information overload and decreased productivity. Simplifying app functionalities to focus on their core purposes can enhance user experience and reduce distractions. Prioritizing efficiency over excessive features is key in navigating the modern app landscape.
@AkshayKumar10xTech Why are you leaving a bunch of AI comments on our videos? They aren't adding anything to the conversation.
Our team brought in ClickUp and has had much success with it.
The projects we work on are extremely complex so we do require a tool with a lot of customisation that can be tailored to suit the niches of our project.
I can see how someone would be easily overwhelmed by the functionality of ClickUp.
That makes sense, how large of a team is it that you work with? And did you have a full-time internal and/or external champion helping you set it up in the way that you needed it configured?
Thanks for this overview! Detailed but also no fluff
Our aim with any software reviews we do is to be opinionated and direct to the point! We don’t want to be another channel/website that says “at the end of the day, it’s up to you as there is no bad choice”, we’d rather tell people what is actually working for us and businesses we work with. Appreciate you commenting!! 🙏
I love how you are jumping for joy about Notion. 😂Jk. I feel the same way. Notion is FAR too overwhelming and confusing for me.
I am a solopreneur who uses 3 tools to manage my tasks and projects. Much like the screenshot on Motion's website, I am using Todoist for task management, Google Calendar for calendar appointments, and ClickUp for project management. Ugh, I'm overwhelmed talking about it.
Motion ads have been on my social feeds for a month. After seeing this video, which confirms everything I've thought about these tools, I'm secure in signing up for Motion. Thank you for your thorough overview, Andra. 🧡
Awe! So appreciate your comment and can totally relate with what you're describing, sounds just like what I was doing when I was solo as well 😁
Quick tip, if you sign up here, you might even be able to message their support and ask if they'd be open to extending your trial by an extra week, if they ask why, just say Efficient sent you 😉😁
efficient.link/r/motion
Finding the right tools that align with your needs and preferences is key to staying organized and productive. It sounds like Motion will be a great addition to your toolkit, offering a more streamlined and intuitive experience. Best of luck with your productivity journey!
@AkshayKumar10xTech Why are you leaving a bunch of AI comments on our videos? They aren't adding anything to the conversation.
🙏 for watching! Which tool will you try out? 🤔🚀
↳ Motion: efficient.link/r/motion
↳ Asana: efficient.link/r/asana
↳ ClickUp: efficient.link/r/clickup
↳ Monday: efficient.link/r/monday
↳ Notion: efficient.link/r/notion
I recently hit the wall with the extended stress of juggling the various tiers and projects in my life that I decided it's time to outsource this to a better solution and give my brain a break. I started down the notion rabbit hole even buying a template for it without really knowing how expansive the program was. First impressions were it could be really robust but I wouldn't get full benefit from it without first becoming a notion wizard... Motion then became a leader and your videos have really solidified that for me. Really appreciate the breakdowns and I expect Motion will be a powerful ally as a solo-preneur managing private life, work, youtube content launch and competition prep / training for areas of interest. Thanks so much and keep up the great work.
Love it! So glad we could help! And we use it for RUclips content launch as well, flows work SO good for that.
Definitely be sure to claim the course, hope you made sure to use our link when signing up, here's the deal and how to claim it for free: efficient.deals/motion
Thank you for getting to the point on each of these. This is the video I have been looking for to help me with which move to make in choosing between Asana and Motion. You gave me the exact information that I needed. Thank you!
Very glad to hear that! What did you end up choosing for your team? Super curious! 👀
Curious how things are going for you? We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion
Excellent video! I love the stat about the project management tool usage
Glad you enjoyed it! 🙏
It's true that ClickUp is super overwhelming, I'm using the free trial and I'm only up to naming my tasks and that's it, forgot about it.
Hahaha, we hear you 😅 there's a lot vying for your attention. Use us for tasks! For notes! No projects! No embed everything inside of us! Use us for everything!!!! Curious what you end up settling on?
Hi. Just wanted to ask... You're not looking at the camera. Is that intentional? Useful video. Thanks. Notion and Clickup have been driving me nuts.
Rookie mistake! Was the first time filming with my phone and I realized after filming that I was looking at myself instead of into the camera.
Recorded something last week and tried to look into the camera during that one, we’ll see if it’s any better!
Thanks for being here & the comment! 🙌 Glad the video helped!
You did a great job. I noticed you looking off to the side and wondered if it was intentional. It didn't actually bother me you're beautiful and came across very professional.
Thanks so much for doing this. You’ve really helped me make decisions much more quickly.
Amazing! Thanks for sharing-as that's exactly what we were hoping for 🙌 what'd you end up going with?
Really helpful and concise review. Thank you so much. Ive been using Asana and a paper planner and 3959 sticky notes as a solopreneur, but i keep seeing Motion ads and it looks like it really solves my morning routi-- *ahem* time waster of migrating yesterday's to-dos to today's list
Haha we hear you! We were in the same boat, spending a good 20+ minutes per day (sometimes an hour), manually re-evaluating for the nth time priority and importance to push our tasks back. With Motion, it just recommends a new date/time automatically and takes away so much of that DAILY friction:
efficient.link/r/motion
Transitioning from multiple tools to a more integrated solution like Motion can indeed streamline your workflow and save time on daily tasks. With its features tailored to solopreneurs, Motion could be just what you need to boost productivity and stay organized. Good luck with your transition!
really love your video, such clarity and value. Thank you!
That means so much to hear! Thank you!! 🚀🚀🚀
The point you made about Notion not having any guardrails is a frustration I’ve shared in. It might be great for someone who is willing to learn it and wants to have all of that functionality. But I feel like it should “just work”, and it should know what it needs to do and be intuitive. But then on the other hand you have Monday which is much more structured - and pretty, that was my draw to it - but they as a contrast have a very certain way of how they think it should work, which is different from Notion, but they’re doing it in a non-intuitive way. I need to give Asana another try. I used them AND Monday and found I liked Monday better, but I’ll have to check again.
Appreciate you sharing this, because I feel like not many people are talking about it... It's even one thing to invest the time into learning, it's another thing to train your team on, and have them be successful without the clear guardrails.
Every corner you run into edge-cases when trying to build something like Notion into a project manager. And the tough part is, it doesn't make sense to put guardrails on Notion, because it defeats the entire point of what Notion is trying to be (the all-in-one flexible tool).
And I've heard what you're saying a lot in the past, Monday looks nicer than Asana, I even know a team that uses Asana but created a Chrome extension to make it look more like Monday 😂
But yeah, I'd say give Asana a shot if you have a large team, if not, why not try something new and see if Motion can give you a bit more of something that maybe you weren't even considering before? The AI scheduling component is really something that we can't live without having gotten used to it, and it doesn't seem like Asana or Monday are going that direction for some reason 🤷♂️
also notion is extremely slow and laggy
Totally, that's what happens when you try to become all things to do people 😁
Your frustration with Notion's lack of guardrails and the contrasting structured approach of Monday resonates with many users seeking intuitive productivity tools. Exploring alternatives like Asana could offer a balance between structure and flexibility that aligns better with your preferences. It's always worth revisiting tools to find the best fit for your workflow.
Refreshing take on the suite of project management tools. Why have you opted for Motion as a pose to it's competitor Akiflow?
So I actually used Akiflow for 7 months or so alongside Motion early on. What I liked about it was it integrated with Gmail and Asana, alongside other tools.
So what Akiflow is really trying to be is a task aggregator tool with a calendar at the core. It was quite a manual process though adding all of my various tasks onto the calendar for when I wanted to work on them. Same with stared emails from Gmail, etc.
Ultimately, I ended up just getting too overwhelmed with tasks in using Akiflow, with things getting out-of-date. It just became too manual of a process. I realized that versus trying to use an aggregator tool, I should instead just use a tool that better handles it all in a single platform (Motion), and actually get rid of Asana + not rely on Gmail for turning emails into tasks, and instead just use Superhuman to help me triage through email, etc.
Not super bullish on these calendar task aggregation daily planning tools, it misses the full picture of projects and dependencies and true prioritization of tasks. It's so manual, whereas a tool like Motion has all the context, and auto-plans each day.
We really should add it to the site and do a more proper write-up for it here:
efficient.app/comparisons/project-management
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, that should get across why we need a tool like Motion as opposed to a task aggregation tool like Akiflow: efficient.yt/motion
While both Motion and Akiflow offer compelling features, Motion's focus on simplicity and intuitive design resonated more with my workflow needs. It ultimately comes down to personal preference and which tool aligns best with individual work styles and requirements.
Was just catched by your title - and hooked.
I agree, Notion is one tool for everything - except for something special. I did the mistake and bought a complex project management notion template and tried to figure out how to put my daily project work into it. No chance. I use it now as knowledge base. For that use, I guess it's cool.
I will give Motion a try, your hint that tasks could fit into my schedule automatically is mind blowing - and exact what I was wondering why other tools don't have it (my todo-list was done with ToDo from M$, really a super stupid tool).
Thank you very much for that video!
Amazing the title caught you? Or the thumbnail? 👀
So glad you commented, yeah, that's the exact situation you described is what we see so many people fall into. Totally understand the temptation of complex templates. We call out this a bit in our recent to-do list video actually: efficient.link/yt/todo
Be sure to claim the Motion deal by using our link to sign up if you do give it a shot: efficient.deals/motion
Thanks for your awesome comment and excited to have you here in the community our new friend!
This review convinced me to switch to Motion from Notion. I have a question - Does the Motion iPhone app provide notifications? I’ve missed some important tasks because of this. I LOVE the desktop app but I work remote a lot.
Awesome to hear! How are you liking it so far as compared to Notion? Always curious to hear what people's experience is that have used both. Mobile notifications will come by end of year, they just completely re-built the mobile app from the ground up a couple months ago and are planning for feature parity with the desktop app very soon.
Completely hear you and relate here re: working remote. A couple more months if you're able to stick it out 👌
@@efficientapp Appreciate this - I love the desktop app! Notion has turned to a space where I build out a project but Motion is my new go to that manages the projects. Notion just doesn’t have the management tools that I was needing. I’ll stick it out! Looking forward to seeing you do a Mobile app review soon
Awesome to hear! I will say that we're planning a bit more Motion content based on the reaction to this video, that said, we did just update the written review of Motion on the website here: efficient.app/apps/motion
That said, super exciting things seem to be coming to Motion soon, so we're definitely going to be creating more content around it as they release!
Awesome stuff, going to give Motion a try
Love to hear it! Keen to hear what you think! Be sure to use this link efficient.link/r/motion and let support know that we sent you and they might even extend your free trial if you ask them nicely 😉
Thanks for the no fluff review. My only issue is “I wouldn’t recommend it” should be better qualified. Like, I wouldn’t recommend it for…..(insert your industry and team need that it didn’t meet) I’m with you on Asana and I teach my clients how to use it for Government Contracting but we switched to Monday where we manage several businesses operations. Monday handles Our Coworking Space, Consulting Company, online school, and Venue Rentals. The forms, automations and integrations are INCREDIBLE for us.
Appreciate your comment! Okay, that's fair-so we wouldn't recommend Notion, Monday, or ClickUp as the BEST project management tool for… anybody 😁
Don't get us wrong, we know it can be used and many do use it, the point of this video (and our channel) is to be incredibly opinionated about software for businesses (as there's no shortage of channels that talk about X is great for Y, but not Z). We're generalizing in a sense, but the "generalization" is coming from looking at the tools available in a specific category. So what you're describing (Monday handles your Coworking space, consulting company, online school, venue rentals, etc. etc. etc.) what you just described is potentially 2-3 different business functions/businesses/tools.
So what you'll get from our channel is "you should use this (best) project management software + this (best) CRM to run your business", whereas what you're pointing out is using an all-in-one tool that does many things (not all of them well), but the all-in-one component of it is worthwhile to you in your business, which we completely understand, we just disagree with the premise that Monday is the best project management software on the market, because it isn't. It's more of an all-in-one tool, for which we aren't particularly fans of. That doesn't mean it won't work for people or that you haven't been able to get use out of it, for that we can completely see and understand where that's coming from. Not sure if that makes sense? Not trying to invalidate any of the success you've had with Monday, we totally believe it and are happy it's what is working for you, it's just not what we are going to particularly recommend to businesses for all of the reasons above.
Appreciate you being here, and people don't hate us! 🙏
Thumbed up. But what about Trello? I've seen they have a generous free plan with automation, even email notifications.
Appreciate it! You can read our in-depth write-up about Trello here: efficient.app/apps/trello
Along with the history of Project Management and Trello's role in it here: efficient.link/pm
Just the review I was looking for👌Could I ask whether you've explored Microsoft Project or Zoho Project?
Stoked to hear this! And thanks for your comment 🙏 so we've explored Microsoft Projects, although we're a Google Workspace company (and most of our customers are as well), and once you start messing with the Microsoft solutions, they want you on Teams and all things Microsoft.
What I can say though is my brother works at a larger company 500+ employees, and they evaluated Microsoft Project vs Asana extensively, and even embraced Microsoft Project for a month, before switching back to Asana as it was too limited for what they were looking to use. He now personally uses Motion to get his work done (more as his daily planner), and manually updates Asana, as their team is already too reliant on Asana at this point to switch again.
Regarding Zoho Projects, we're just not a huge fan of the Zoho suite. Explored it deeply (as how could you not consider it?) But once you go Zoho, they are much like Microsoft, in that they want you to use Zoho email, Zoho CRM, Zoho all the things. The Zoho suite does a lot, but it definitely pales in comparison to built-for focused category solutions. Personally, I'd like to use the best tool for the job, not settle for "good enough" for all my tools, while watching startups like Motion/Routine/etc. popping up and innovating into a space, only to where you have to watch from afar because it's not part of the full cohesive "Zoho" or "Microsoft" core stack.
Not sure if that makes sense? But we've done more of a deep dive on the all-in-one tools space here that you might be interested in: efficient.app/comparisons/all-in-one
@@efficientapp wow, thank you for such a comprehensive reply, much appreciated! I know exactly what you mean by Microsoft and Zoho slowly tractor beaming you into their entire ecosystem bit by bit 👍
Of course! Appreciate you writing something meaningful. And 💯 they aren't hiding anything 😁
LOVE the honesty and how straight up you are! Thank you for that!
Ayyyy, thanks friend! 🙏 Curious what you ended up going with, and just for yourself, or your team? (Or just exploring for fun? 😉)
You mention a Setup Integration Video, where is it? This looks like great software. Absolutely great video, very informative.
Appreciate your comment! Are you referring to the Motion + Slack integration video? We have it linked in the description, although it's not a setup guide, it's just showing off what we've built with it (we're an integration company).
Depending on how comfortable you are with integration tools like Zapier though, you could build it.
You can try giving Motion a shot with a free trial here:
efficient.link/r/motion
And experiment with their Zapier integration to connect it with your other tools.
Thanks for your comment!
Cool Video, did you ever consider Reclaim AI?
Also don't you think Motion is very pricy?
Appreciate the kind words! We actually have a video coming out comparing Reclaim with Clockwise-in that video we explain how they are substantially different meant for different use-cases.
You can read the write-up comparing Motion vs Reclaim though:
efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-reclaim
Motion is not pricey when viewing it as a replacement to a paid Asana + Calendly. For personal usage, sure, as you're looking more at TickTick and ToDoist, but those tools are not powerful enough for actual business and team collaborative use-cases.
As business project management software, annual license, Motion is completely reasonable price-wise. So it really depends on what you're specifically looking for. We're a business and write content primarily about business software.
I spend an ungodly amount of time looking at 10 different to do lists for 10 different projects and trying to figure out what should I do next or what order I should do things in to make the absolute most of the limited time that I have and it ends up burning up the few brain cells that I have left.
A software that can answer the question “what do I need to do next?” relatively accurately and can automatically reschedule itself is sounding pretty promising to me!
…. and yes, I am aware that those are run-on sentences… It is a written representation of the entanglement in my brain. If motion can help, sort it out, imma go d/l it right now 😆
Haha yes! It should be able to help with exactly that! Be sure to claim our free course if you use our affiliate link to sign up though! efficient.link/r/motion
Full deal details here: efficient.deals/motion
Wonderful video! One question: Is Trello outdated by now? Or does it fit into some other kind of category for you guys?
Thanks for the kind words and for your comment! Okay, so this comment inspired me to do a write-up of Trello on our website, you can check it out here: efficient.app/apps/trello
But yeah, the main gist is that Trello was an innovator of kanban board view for project managers over a decade ago. They dominated the B2C space, and moved a bit into B2B. With Atlassian acquiring them though, it feels like their UI hasn't evolved in the past 6+ years. They just seem stagnant now and definitely aren't innovating in the space.
You can read more at the link above though, hope it helps!
- Alex
Way to go above and beyond! Subscribed!
Solid write up. I just found this channel but you seem really legit? So Trello could still be a fine choice but they're simply stagnant. Still a great choice if you use all the other Atlassian stuff.
Dare I ask about your thoughts on Miro?
Totally missed this reply until now!
We've used Miro in the past to map processes or when we needed to create visual aids. We found it *pretty* good, buggy at times, but if you need a whiteboard type of software we'd say go for it, it's one of the best out there.
A few years ago, our knowledge base software Slite (efficient.link/r/slite) introduced a sketch feature and we just use that now as we were really only using the barebones of Miro.
what video filter are you using? it looks so good! share please : )
Awe, appreciate that! It was actually custom, our video editor did it-wish we could help more, sorry 😥
I love this authentic review! I need more of these clear, concise and honest reviews in 2024. Also, your eyes are STUNNING 😍
Awe, thanks! We're trying to do more of them, glad it helped! Did you end up moving forward with any of the tools mentioned in the video? Or just checking it out?
Nice video. Does Motion have Budget Management capabilities to manage a project budget automatically?
Thanks, appreciate your comment! 🙌 Motion doesn't tie in budget management (at least yet), but it's very deeply tied to hours around tasks (and thus projects), so you can set budgets in that sense. How much time did you actually take based on the budgeted hours in a sense. It's not a direct reporting type of feature though, just to not set the wrong expectations 👌
Thank you for this video. It was the best one on the subject I could find and it helped me make a decision.
Amazing to hear! What did you end up going with and how big is the team you'd be using it with? Super curious to hear!
@@efficientapp I'm going to proceed with Motion for our 4 person team. Haven't implemented yet.
@JohnnieVibes Awesome! Hope it works for you like it does for us!!
Wanted to check-in on how implementation was going? We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion
We already have a CRM we use for ticketing, creation of projects and we track time, progress, start/end dates, budgets, etc. within the CRM. So I've found it difficult to find a PM tool that is really good at everything else. No sense in creating extra / duplicate work for people.
I want to use templates for simple project task plans based on project type (for consistency), a good visual representation of milestones and progress, a simplified customer/client view of their tasks and minimal view of our internal tasks, while having a very detailed tasklist, checklists for our internal views. Basically, I want to hide all the minutia for the clients and keep it simple for them. Also important is document sharing, notes, and chat.
What tool do you think I should take a hard look at?
Love the way that you're getting the most out of your CRM 🙌 Which CRM are you using btw?
So sharing projects with external members is not something that Motion has (at the moment anyway), so we'd recommend Asana. With Asana you can share entire projects or specific tasks with someone external: blog.asana.com/2012/03/guest-accounts-asana-for-clients-contractors-and-consultants/
All that being said, it sounds like your CRM is doing most of the heavy lifting internally, does your team mainly want a project management tool to share the progress with clients? Or is the CRM busting as the seams in terms of tracking projects internally also?
Asking because setting up a PM tool just to share progress with clients is a pretty big lift. Obviously we have no idea of your industry or business or how critical sharing the process is, but as an overall thought we've seen that most customers won't even log into third party tools to view progress, and they'll just ask you for updates on email anyway. We tried going down this path (sharing larger projects in Asana with our clients and adoption didn't last very long).
Another idea if you wanted to go down this path is that you could integrate your CRM in with Asana so that templated tasks are created upon deal/opportunity stage change for example, and this can be how you share the progress with your customers, but again, a huge lift and I'd be 100000% percent sure they want it/will use it if you go through the trouble of setting this up.
For collaborating on actual work fore example, we typically recommend a shared workspace. For example, we have a shared workspace which each of our customers for collaboration on a software called Slite: efficient.app/apps/slite.
In general, tough to say without speaking further, but from what you shared it seems like you're using your CRM better than most folks so first I'd be wondering where the PM tool will help the most internally, and then thinking about the external collaboration aspect secondly.
Hope this gives some food for thought!
@@efficientapp well, we have been using Microsoft Sharepoint to create sites for project collaboration with documentation. We can freeze changes and not allow customer to make any changes after a certain date, and have notes automatically stored in OneNote. The CRM is Connectwise - commonly used with IT VARs and MSPs like us....but we do sort of use it for a lot, and it seems to restrict how we want to work based on it's constraints and limitations. We use smartsheet for actual project / task plans, but it's kludgy, and I dislike how everything is just a spreadsheet.
The more I look around, I am concerned that a single PM tool won't do everything well. I worry about buy in and duplicating efforts, and working in a platform the rest of the company doesn't have visibility to.
Ahhhh this all makes sense, had me at Connectwise. Yeah we actually used to be an MSP, I was using IT Glue religiously and saw deeply how critical every tool needed to integrate with an IT CRM like Connectwise. They feel like the Salesforce of CRM. Not super intuitive, but integrated with most IT tools.
We were never more than just a couple/few people using it, so I had gotten away with NinjaRMM (I think now goes by NinjaOne now), Copper CRM (not using ConnectWise), and IT Glue.
Now that we're no longer an IT company though, dropped IT Glue because it was insanely expensive, picked up Dashlane in its place which covered most of our use-cases in the new integration business, and kept using Copper as our CRM.
Duplicate work is a huge thing in the IT/MSP/VAR industry, so yeah this is a totally different scenario than I had thought initially. Completely empathize with trying to modernize the IT services stack, it just feels impossible and why I ultimately left MSP, in many parts because of the software stack just feeling old/not modern.
But yeah, using Smartsheets sounds like a bummer, another older software that was built for enterprise companies and just isn't very innovative anymore. Hope you can figure out something that works for you and is also more enjoyable to use!
Great vid. Would be interested to see your thoughts on ClickUp now they’ve launched their 3.0 version. The UI looks 1000x better than before!
Appreciate that! And this is an interesting one... While they are promoting 3.0 like it's a huge release, and we'll admit it does look better, it still suffers from the same point as the video mentioned.
They aren't just focused on project management, but rather they are more of an all-in-one tool, which leaves it feeling overwhelming as everything is vying for your attention.
If there's one area that we wish they improved with v3, it would be their daily planner/calendar functionality. We believe this to be so core to actually improving the end-user experience of task management and getting work done, when managing large projects.
That said, we were just visiting family and friends over the holidays, and one of my closest friends has been using ClickUp at his startup (30 employees or so) for the past 2.5 years. We asked what he genuinely thought about it and we were told he really disliked it as it's just trying to be too much with too many features and not enough focus or TLC in the areas that are important.
We're updating our ClickUp review on the website for 2024: efficient.app/apps/clickup but I will say that it's software that we have higher expectations of because of their size, scale, resources, and time in the market, and it feels like they are lacking focus and true innovation in the space. v3 just feels like a face lift of the main dashboard, without focusing much on the core functionality/stability.
@@efficientapp wow, thank you for the thorough and thoughtful response, really appreciated!
Of course! Appreciate you being here and leaving a comment, it genuinely does mean a lot to us and is what keeps us going 🙏
Such a helpful review. I've been trying to use Notion as a PM tool since starting my business a year ago but find it so difficult to be truly productive and organised with, Motion sounds a much better fit for my business.
That's so great to hear! And you got it, Notion was infrastructurally built to be a knowledge-base and note taking tool, so the foundation doesn't lend itself to project management, AKA why you're probably feeling the way that you are.
Give Motion a shot and see if that works, though make sure to sign up here for a free trial: efficient.link/r/motion and then claim the exclusive deal on our site (given you used that link to sign up you'll be eligible): efficient.deals/motion (just our way of helping the community further!)
Super curious to hear what you end up thinking about it and how it compares to your experience with Notion!
Wondering what you think of Basecamp... but great review on these!
Thanks! Copy/pasting from a different comment that we answered because we haven't added it to our site efficient.app yet:
Basecamp is an odd one. They're probably the most outdated and stagnated of all the ones listed in the video.
They actually totally stopped building the product a few years back, and prevented new customers from even buying it. It wasn't until recently that they realized maybe they should start allowing new customers onboard, but the product hasn't changed much (aside from 3-4xing the price).
Their userbase is primarily legacy customers that used it as an all-in-one project manager and communication tool, but just using it, you quickly see how old and outdated it feels, and the methodology they used to build it.
Not a tool we're excited about because of that, I'd genuinely be wary considering them when the competitors in this video haven't stopped putting their foot on the gas.
Hope this helps!
Great video! What do you think about Reclaim?
We actually have a video on that coming out in the future, (it's already filmed), although it's just lower in the queue due to our mini-series launching soon (trailer dropping tomorrow in-fact!)
That said, we did a pretty extensive write-up on Motion vs Reclaim if you're interested in checking that out?
efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-reclaim
Thank you
Oh wowies! I REALLY appreciate that you discuss the minusses of the softwares, too. This really helps me with my decision on what to use for my personal project organization
Great to hear! Where did you land on after all of that? Be sure to claim the free course if you do go with Motion: efficient.deals/motion
@@efficientapp Will keep that in mind, thank you!
I'm very interested in Motion. Not for my teams necessarily. I do video games development so we use Jira, which is better suited as we work in sprints, etc. But for personal work and tasks as a manager, I definitely see myself using it. Thanks for the fantastic breakdown!
Love it! Yeah it's tough to get off Jira especially when you have a larger team. I know the team over at Motion actually moved off of Linear and over to Motion for their engineering development team which was a big deal.
That said, personal work and tasks as a manager is a great use-case for it. I'm also sure your team will see it and get jealous over time and ultimately join in 😉😁
Glad we could be of help and appreciate the comment! 🙌
thanks Andra for giving us an opinion vs saying it depends like every other channel
Jira, interesting, my job often looks like a developer's sprint -even though it is not development at all- and I have moved more and more into Agile/Scrum methodologies. Maybe I'll take a look. What is it that makes it so tailored to sprints?
So Jira was actually created more for engineering as the parent company is Atlassian which also owns Bitbucket (competitor to GitHub) so they were very much building for that ICP (Ideal Customer Profile), and engineers often do sprint-based work.
That said, Jira has since moved to a large team focus (e.g. 500+ people), they are like the Salesforce of the engineer sprint world.
New modern competitors have come out and have been eating their lunch though. If you're in any way interested in Jira, Linear is 10x better in every single way:
efficient.app/apps/linear
In-fact early days at Motion I know they were using Linear to even build their own product funny enough (since they are technically competitors now). They said they absolutely loved it at the time.
So yeah, Linear is definitely the tool to check out if you're considering Jira, it's better in every way.
@@efficientapp Pretty cool, I have been toying with Jira today, I can see a lot of uses with my common Use Cases. I manage grants and proposals and Agile is a great way of doing it. I also consult for small businesses and startups that need proposal management options within their existing solutions. Qvidian and Loopio are too expensive for small companies.
I'll check Linear too.
Great video! What would you recommend though for a small team of 2-3 people?
Definitely Motion! It’s just two of us on our team and we use Motion (efficient.link/r/motion) 👌👌
Really loved this so far! I’m a new interior designer and I’d love to hear about how Motion could work for client projects and accessible dashboards? I like the all in one idea to be able to manage both internal and external touchpoints but love the AI component too 😊
Have you had a chance to check out our full Motion tutorial? efficient.yt/motion as I think this should answer most of your questions here in a much more visual and helpful way!
Maybe check out that video and leave a comment on that video with any specific questions you have (that aren't answered in the video) and we'll be happy to help answer them!
Also, totally see the appeal of the all-in-one tools, smart of you to consider Motion though! Looking forward to seeing you in the other video if you'd be up for it? 🙏
super helpful! Thank you!
Of course! Appreciate you commenting 🤗
Thank you for this review. We started using Notion and this is exactly what I did: build a complete project management solution in it. That worked pretty well until I started making some relations to make project views more accessible. Then it started to consume a huge amount of resources and now it has become almost unusable. In hindsight that is not a surprise, because the relational database-approach is upside down: for each request it pulls in the whole database and then only applies the filter.
I almost wrote my own postgresql driven html :-)
Yessss, you covered the issues and how they ultimately arise due to the way that Notion was built so well. See, that's where a tool like Motion is solving the issue in the reverse order (what you're describing), it's a project management tool first and solving for all of those issues, which is the way it should be.
Curious what you're using now?
Have you tried giving Motion a shot? efficient.link/r/motion
Well done, thank for going through the +/- of each option...!
Awe, thanks! 🙏 Curious what you ended up going with and what your needs/team size are? 🤔
Great video! Very useful. Set up is no joke - FOR REAL. I tried to use Monday but it was a total no go. Felt Asana was so much easier and intuitive. Haven't tried Motion yet, scared to change.
Haha tell me about it! How large of a team are you using Asana with? Is it just you?
And hey, if you do end up giving Motion a shot, we actually moved from Asana to it and we find that Motion does a lot of the daily planning/maintenance automatically so we're saving a lot of time. (But as we mentioned, setup was a bit, which is why we're actually recording a course as we speak on how to get the most out of Motion).
So with that-if you use the link here to sign up (whenever you do give it a shot-if at all): efficient.link/r/motion then you'll actually lock in the paid course (for free), you can claim it here: efficient.deals/motion
Or just enjoy Asana because you have it set up, either way!
@@efficientapp our team is around ~10. We use it with Google Sheets with Apps Scripts for task automation. We are deep in it and I don't think my COO or AdOps team would be too happy if I was like "Hey, let's try Motion." But I'll do some recon on the side just on my own. I'm definitely in squirrel mode when it comes to new tools. Thanks for this course info.
This was super helpful! I am a solopreneur with multiple businesses and a family and, well, a life. I'm looking for something that can help me manage personal and business projects, keep up with appointments and to do lists and scheduling.... and also long and short term goals... can I do all of this in Motion?
What you just described is exactly where Motion currently excels the most 👌 have no doubt you'd be able to accomplish all of that with Motion. You should be able to see this through a free trial, give it a shot:
efficient.link/r/motion
hey, thanks for the comparison! what about Google Workspace?
Course! Not exactly sure what you mean? We use and love Google Workspace (and tools like Motion require Google Workspace/Google Account or Microsoft 365 at the core), so in general we recommend it especially if you're a business. That said Google Workspace isn't a project management tool, so not exactly sure how that fits here or what exactly you're asking, care to clarify a bit more?
This was great! I'm going to the Motion website right now.
Awesome! Make sure you use this link: efficient.link/r/motion to sign up and then fill out this form: efficient.deals/motion and you'll get our paid Motion course for free! 🙌
We are using ClickUp now, but one thing you say is very correct, it is too complicated for those not familiar even in Excel. How can they manage to use the system like this and usually this kind of people they are managers, and they are too far from the computer task, they are more on planning and monitoring but this project management tool required certain knowledge of roaming at the computers based item
That's a good point! Some of these tools like ClickUp were built for the managers to manage, not for the IC's to get their work done. Motion is the one exception there, built for the individual contributor first and foremost, Managers second.
This was great! Thanks for sharing! My agency is looking to move from Function Point to one of these options, but we can't seem to find a platform that will manage all of our projects while tracking time per project and billing for clients. Do you have a recommendation?
So we actually use Motion + Harvest for exactly that use-case here at Efficient App.
Here's more info about Harvest, we've been using it for 7-8 years now and love it:
efficient.app/apps/harvest
Since Motion integrates so deeply with your calendar, time blocking with your tasks, you can then actually go to Harvest and quickly add these blocks of time from the tasks/events directly into Harvest, tracking them against your client work.
We actually have a full write-up on the best time tracking options on the market, and Harvest is one of the only solutions that handles billing well:
efficient.tips/vs/harvest
At the end of the day, if you're looking for an all-in-one solution that does project management, time tracking, AND billing well-you're going to get a pretty kludgy tool. Believe me, I've tried most of the all-in-one tools over the years, trying to solve the exact same problem you're speaking to.
Your best bet here is to go for the specialized/focused tools, and integrate them, now that integration is way easier, and even baked in to some degree.
Notion is chaotic, and it's everything and nothing at the same time. Takes more time to design your toll than use it.
Completely and totally agree. Because of the foundation of how it's built (database infrastructure), it was built as a knowledge-base tool, storing things in blocks, so moving to project management and other more complex use-cases result in it totally falling apart and slowing down at scale. Wish more people learned this before building everything in their business atop of it.
What would you recommend for 100 employees? Looking for a PM tool that lets you build your own template, have dependencies, and lets your employes complete their own task versus the PM
If building process-focused templates (that you can share with team members or use individually), for both tasks and projects, and you want individual contributors to have control over their own tasks/time management, then we believe that Motion will give you the best experience on that front.
Question for you first though, is there any "required" integration you need with the PM tool that you're using that is a non-negotiable?
We have a full video on Motion here: efficient.link/yt/motion - though we are recording an update to that video as it's a bit old and Motion has improved a lot. In-fact, we're actually recording a course on Motion right now that shows you exactly how to leverage templates (Flows), and how Motion helps managers and individuals manage their time and projects best.
The course is coming out soon and will be free if you actually sign up for Motion through this link: efficient.link/r/motion and then claim the course here: efficient.deals/motion
Probably need to have a few more details to be sure of this (so feel free to add any additional context that might be helpful), though I will say, we switched from Asana to Motion and are actually quite baffled that none of the major PM tools (Monday, ClickUp, Asana) have both calendar at the core, and the degree of sophistication around project and task templating (for which Motion calls "Flows"). It's genuinely like a full process mapping tool (managers will like this) and a PM tool and a calendar/daily planner (IC's will like this) had a baby.
Anyway, hope this helps!
I tried motion based on this video. I think it's a really cool idea... but it just doesn't work well when you have lots of things to juggle and often multitask. It ended up scheduling my lunch at 11PM..... lol. I don't blame it though. I also don't really like set a time for tasks because that just isn't how my brain works. I look at my to do list, check priority, then see what I can do in the time I have. I like larger calendar blocking and I guess that's what I'll do and keep using Asana even though I have 3 in my time. Plus, the motion interface with the calendar and each task showing is just super, super overwhelming for me.
For context, I'm a homeschooling mom who has a part time job, is a content creator, and I have lots of different side projects. I squeeze things in whenever and I don't have a set work schedule. I might not work during the day (like today, we had a trip to the museum) and may get a few hours in at night. Then, the next day, I have to fit my work in while I homeschool my son. I'm back and forth at my computer a lot and having a strict time just doesn't work for my lifestyle.
I love the idea though and I may come back to it if/when my son is older. We'll see.
Thanks for the comment and checking it out! Recommend you maybe check out our new Motion Tutorial as it covers some of what you're speaking to, as I am similar (Alex) to how you described: efficient.yt/motion
That said, if Motion is overwhelming you with the tasks on your calendar, you can simply disable auto-scheduling for your tasks and use it like Asana. You just have the option to enable a task with a deadline on your calendar if you want if you find it overwhelming, you don't need to auto-schedule and have it show up on your calendar is all.
@@efficientappthank you I am in the same boat!
Curious to hear if the video helps at all! Please feel free to leave any questions you have on that video and would be more than happy to offer some advice/additional recommendations!
This is the most helpful yet concise video I’ve seen on all these different PM apps. Thanks!
I have a couple of questions: we are a small team of 3-5. I’m new to PM apps and I’m learning before I roll it out to the team. I’m currently learning Asana & find the templates feature very useful. 1) does Motion have anything similar?, 2) although we’re a small team, we have a lot of projects, at out busiest it can be 100+. I know you recommended Motion for smaller teams, however, do the number of projects affect your recommendation? Thanks again for such a helpful video. Best one I’ve seen so far!
This is such a nice comment, thank you 🥹🙏 so yes, Motion has gone quite deep on the templating tasks feature. I also know they are going more and more down the templating + team handoff of a task/project direction (which should be helpful for the type of work you're describing).
Question around the 100+ tasks as part of a project, couldn't some of these simply be sub-tasks? Essentially having a project with larger tasks, and some of those tasks just have sub-tasks?
Either way it works, even if you want to have a templates project with 100+ tasks.
Since your team is 3-5 people, would genuinely recommend you giving Motion a shot as well since the additional functional that Motion brings with a team that size, that Asana doesn't have, should be quite beneficial (around actually handing off and passing work along to the team and calendar integration to ensure it gets done).
All of this to say, Motion is totally reworking their project manager in the coming months to greatly improve the UX especially around larger projects (we'll probably make a video on it), so we recommend having it be in the running, even if you don't sign up for a trial just yet: efficient.link/r/motion
@@efficientappSorry, I see I didn't mention the 100+ is number of projects, not tasks. I would say we have anywhere from 15-50 tasks and subtasks per project and although each project may be slightly different a lot are repetitive which is why I find Asana's templates so useful so it's good know Motion has them too. So, I guess my question still stands...with 100+ projects, but small team do you still recommend Motion? Thanks again!!
Oh yeah, in this case totally! You'd be totally fine having 100+ projects, and they've put a lot into the task/project template functionality. I will say that they are investing even more into projects, templates, and a few other cool features around that. So if you sign up, just know that it'll be getting a makeover soon (in a good way) 🔥 but how it works in the current state will still work perfect for what you're describing. 👌
@@efficientapp Great, I'll give it a try! Thank you.
Curious to hear how it went/how it's going? Did you have a chance to get it set up for you and your team?
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion
Wow, really insightful video, great work! I am subscribing right away
Awe, this means a lot 🥲 so glad to hear and thank you for that! Curious if you ended up going with any of the project management software mentioned in the video?
@@efficientapp Actually I did :) I immediatelly installed Asana on my personal laptop because I am working on a personal project as well and would like to test it for personal usage. So far it looks really nice! And btw, I wasn't aware about half the tools you mentioned in the video so big thank you ^_^
Ooh, congrats on taking the leap! Know it's tough to get started with all the options available, and also awesome to hear that you haven't heard of all the tools mentioned in the video! It's really cool to hear that actually because I think we're just so accustomed to thinking most watching have already heard of these tools, so that makes our job more fun actually! Appreciate your comment and wishing you the best with Asana! Hope to catch ya on other videos our new friend!
@@efficientapp Appreciate your awesome content and see you soon :)))
This is great advice. As a notion user 😅 I think Motion would be a better fit for managing projects as I am a soloprenuer for now. BUT I’ll still use notion as my 2nd brain 🧠 🧠 the customization for me is unmatched when it comes to organization Notes/ideas/content
That's totally fair! We like Notion for knowledge base/notes, just not PM-so you're thinking about it right!
Have you given efficient.link/r/motion a shot?
Thanks for the video Andra! Have you tried Jira? What do you think about this other tool?
Awe, of course! Jira is very much more built for enterprise teams, unless you're an engineering team of 500+ people, there's just better options available.
We actually go more into it in the overview section of the best project management software page on our site: efficient.link/pm#overview
It's more that it serves its purpose for some enterprise teams (it's like the Salesforce of the PM world, which isn't a good thing), like Salesforce it has been replaced by more modern players. With Jira, even in the engineering world it has been replaced by tools like Linear and Motion: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-linear
Perfect, thanks for your reply!!
Of course! Appreciate you leaving a comment and engaging! Talk to you on other videos! 🙌
I wish you could go into specifics about "how" the tools weren't working to your expectations.
Which tools would you like to know more of? We've written about them in further detail on the site which is also updated more than the video can be. It's tough to balance how deep we should go with each tool. You can see the additional details here in the full reviews: efficient.link/pm
Thanks for this review, so helpful! I’ve had a good experience with Trello as well but mostly for personal life things. Absolutely agree with asana and motion! Could you show us a bit more on how you’re using these platforms? I’m looking for some ideas for adding team members
Thank you Lydia! That's a good request, we can put it on our list of content to create but might be a little while because we have backlog of videos to release atm that are filmed! But make sure to subscribe to keep an eye out for them as we think this would be super useful to record 👀
We just watched your video about what you learned your first year on RUclips-well done 👏 just subscribed!
Didn't realize you had a RUclips channel. So funny enough, our video editor signed up for Motion as he was editing this video and he's still using it today and loves it 😁
It's primarily me and Andra using it, sometimes she'll throw tasks on my calendar for customer work that is blocking her, or I'll throw tasks for content ideas on her calendar.
Often, I'll do a detailed comparison, and then we'll collaborate on how to turn it into a video, determining who's more passionate about the topic and that'll dictate who will record the video.
We're working on getting into a more consistent flow within Motion to be more like a hand-off upon each task being completed:
1. Alex writes rough thoughts
2. Andra refines and turns into a deeper comparison, adding her own thoughts
3. Alex proofreads/reviews
4. Andra/Alex record a video
5. Cory (video editor) edits video
6. Alex/Andra revisions
Motion lets us hand off these tasks back-and-forth to entire we don't block each other when it's our turn, or our video editor when it's his turn.
Motion is also going to get way more refined in that way in the months to come (allowing for better handing-off and back/forth of work).
@@efficientapp thanks for this detailed outline, that is so helpful. I’ve been playing with motion and love it as well, but haven’t expanded to including my husband or any handoff tasks. I’m definitely going to take inspiration from your workflow and see how we can learn from it.
So glad I came across your channel when I was researching this. It’s inspiring to see other people building businesses :-) very excited to follow along!
This is so sweet, thanks for the comment Lydia! We know that Motion is undergoing some changes/improvements, so we're more apt to make a video to help others set it up once these changes are complete and rolled out, just so the video isn't immediately outdated 😀 hope to see you when that video does eventually come out! Appreciate your support, and we're excited to hear how things expand when you eventually rope your husband into Motion 😉
really great information and perspective on these tools! Isn't there a no management management app? :)) thanks!
Glad to hear it helps! And the closest app that does this is Motion, in that it will automatically plan and manage your day, you just need to add in the tasks and it does all the work. Is that what you mean or are referring to? It's the most management hands-off tool of all those referenced 👌
@@efficientapp I will look into it right now. I need the simplest way to manage a small team and a few VAs. Thank you for your answer!
Awesome to hear! Keep us posted on how it goes 🙌🙌
Suggestion for start up 200-400 people that may need access. Currently have G-suite and M365, but Gsuite is the main tool and Slack. Really need a Task Manager for managing Proof of Concepts and Demos and the resources (pooled) that are required. Personally, I would have just suggested Move to Teams and Planner, but the Devs don't want to leave Gmail and Slack. Suggestions? Thanks!
Hey Scott! If you're actually tied quite deeply to the Gmail and Slack world and you're looking for a solution that devs will like, I'd almost say Linear for them, but then that would leave the rest of the team in a weird spot.
If the goal is to get your dev team and all orgs using the same tool, especially having say product and CS jump between them and dev and back, the only tool we've seen work really well with that use-case is actually Motion.
This video is now over a year old and Motion has actually grown in scale to work with this specific use-case. Since it's a large account though, would be happy to intro you to their team if you want and they can demo it (they are using it internally the same way you're describing). If you're interested, just shoot us a message via the chat widget on our site: efficient.app
But yeah as a large team like yours, there's many more questions I'd have to make the best recommendation.
@@efficientapp thanks!!
@@efficientapp Any thoughts on using Microsoft Planner? Our company has both GSuite and M365. This is for managing tasks across sales engineers and sales people to manage things like proof of concepts and demos to consumption and rollout of the SaaS offering. Planner is a free tier in M365, but readily available vs talking the org to take a bite out of Motion. Another good reason to just move off of Gsuite in my opinion, especially now that things like Excel online are 95% of the fat app...
Thanks for the video. How do you think about Airtable as a project management tool?
Good question! We LOVE Airtable, but not for project management. Everything we said about Notion being a project manager is what'd we say about Airtable also. Haha even would say you can just replace the word Notion with Airtable in the video and it'd ring true. We love using Airtable as a database, great for structured data and automation but using it as a project management is messy because of little guard rails so you end up spending more time building out how you want to use it as a project management tool rather than just managing projects!
I love how you packaged the entire video, very detailed and well thought through. By the way what colour are your eyes? captivated! #Will definitely try out motion
Appreciate the kind words! Awesome to hear you'll check out Motion 🔥
efficient.link/r/motion
yes u did a great job @@efficientapp
This means a lot! Thanks so much 🙏
Do you use Motion for software dev sprint tasks or what do you use for that and how does it integrate with Motion?
So we use Motion for our software dev sprints. We don't have a huge team though, so I think a better example is that Motion's engineering team used Linear for their sprints for years and loved it. They officially switched fully over to Motion for their engineering sprints about a year ago and it has been working well for them.
So depends on the genuine size of your engineering team, but if you have less than 50 engineers, you should be able to get away with Motion standalone for it all.
They have an update to the project management section coming out soon (we're beta testing it now), that makes managing sprints in their project management side of the tool significantly better, so stay tuned!
Otherwise, you can't go wrong with Linear, though Motion and Linear are such different tools in a sense, that it does make sense for using both, but leaning more on Motion:
efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-linear
Though if you wanted it integrated, you'd need to build something custom with their API.
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it interesting as it relates to using it for more structured processes like dev sprints: efficient.yt/motion
many software development teams integrate tools like Jira or Trello for managing sprint tasks. While Motion may not be specifically tailored for software development, it could still be used for high-level project planning and coordination alongside more specialized tools for development tasks. Integration options may vary depending on the specific tools being used.
Wonderful analysis. Thank you! 🙂
Awe, of course! Appreciate your comment ☺️ what tool did you end up going with, and for what use-case?
Super cool video a very good content because it’s pragmatic and not created by productivity addict fans. Thank you. For my team I use asana to do pm in agile it’s great
This means a lot for you to say this, it's exactly what we're going for as we too got a bit frustrated by most of the B2B SaaS content being exactly what you're describing. Super motivating to hear this, encourages us to keep going in this niche 🙏 appreciate your support, glad you've found a home with Asana and it's working for you, and thanks for leaving a comment!
Hello! Thank you for the insightful video, I wanted to ask what about slack?
Glad to hear it was helpful! What do you mean about Slack though? It's not a project management software, it's a team communication tool. We use and love it for example, but we'd never use it for project management, if that makes sense? Maybe we're misunderstanding the context of your question if you want to further clarify?
Been messing around with Walling lately. Kinda like it. Seems simple and allows me to keep up with any large undertakings. I may be using it as a lone wolf, but my projects are imprtant to me. Used to use a paper and pencil planner and Kanban board but Walling allows the same without all of the home office clutter.
My brother is similar, he does the walling approach but on a literal whiteboard for personal tasks, although for work he uses a proper project management tool. Trying to get him to try out Motion for personal usage as I think he'd quite like it since he does also rely on his calendar as well as it feels like a good mix of walling and software. Walling seems like a good first app to try in going from actually writing on a whiteboard though, especially if you are image/screenshot heavy in your task management 👌
Simplifying your workflow while still maintaining organization is key, especially for solo endeavors. Embracing digital tools like Walling can help streamline your process and reduce clutter, ultimately enhancing productivity and focus on your important projects.
I disagree with what was said about click up. If you take some time to think about the information you'll need, the set up is actually easy.
Ah totally makes sense. Of course, we know ClickUp (as any tool we mentioned) will work for certain people/teams with the right investment in setup. We're just offering people the advice of what we'd do in their shoes/what we've found actually works for us as a team after trying all of these tools.
With any project management tool, thinking through your process is the most important yet challenging part. Sounds like you got that down pat with ClickUp! 🙌 Thanks for commenting & visiting our channel!
I really love your honest explanation and have found the same with asana and monday - but I do have a question about Motion. Does it have task boards/views in addition to the timed tasks on a calendar? What is preventing your team from just using Google Calendar for events as well as the Google Task feature to assign "timed tasks" around your events?
Ah yes, Motion is a full team project manager (task board view, etc.)
Trying to use Google Tasks with Calendar misses the entire collaborative project management and AI capabilities. Motion also automatically prioritizes all of your tasks based on importance, blockers (from team members), deadlines, and task/project duration. Google Calendar + Google Tasks isn't something meant at all for teams or getting large projects done, if that makes sense? Google Tasks does not replace Asana, but Motion does.
Thank you for responding so quickly! @@efficientapp And I understand, I didn't realize they also had the other views as well. If you don't mind me asking a few more questions - looking into this tool for my team as well.
I'm looking at the features for Motion and was wondering if you integrate this tool for communications between your team and clients you work with as well (collaborate on tasks, easy to add people outside of your org to events, etc.)?
And would you suggest this for a team 25-30 people? I was going to go for asana but a little hesitant to see what's out there, but knowing asana is known as the pricier option and it looks like Motion seems to be slightly even more expensive? This seems like a great tool especially since it seems it can replace Google Calendar (our team uses that for events mostly which is why i mentioned it).
Huge apologies, we apparently don't get notified for comment replies 😅 hope it's not too late!
So they do have a "Guest" invite option, but I think they are working on that feature more early next year. If that's absolutely critical to invite people externally, you'd be best to wait a bit (unless you want to pay full-price for an additional seat for external guest). If you're fine with that pricing-wise, then it's actually possible in the product and you can restrict access of said person by workspace. You could use their comment section for communication, but the truth of the matter is we often use Slack for internal team communication, and Slite - efficient.app/apps/slite for shared client documentation and communication (it's similar to that of Notion). I suppose you could use Motion for that though.
For a team with 25-30 people, Motion is definitely still an option. Let me explain the positives/negatives to consider with a team of that size though:
POSITIVES
- Your team will enjoy using Motion > Asana almost exclusively as it's so deeply tied to their calendar, and is essentially a daily planner in addition to a project manager, right there within their calendar.
- If you're truly looking at it from the individual's standpoint, they can simply live in Motion for their calendar + event scheduling, which in turn will help with adoption, versus jumping between multiple tools (Calendar/Calendly/Asana).
NEGATIVES
- They are nowhere near that of say Asana when you get outside of the "getting work done" and move into "upper-management reporting". So if you're a team that's big into goal setting and milestones, while there's ways to visualize it by filtering down views in Motion and leveraging projects for different chunks of a project, you're not going to get the more traditional reporting functionality that upper-management might want. (I will note that this is nearly irrelevant for the actual teams that are living in the tool on the day-to-day to get work done, so you'd have to ask yourself, is reporting more important for your team than your team actually using a tool and benefiting from it, to help them get work done?)
- They still have a bit more to go on some core functionality (e.g. super robust searching functionality), but that's definitely coming in time if the team can be patient.
PRICING
- Actually, Motion is nearly identical at the seat count you're speaking to as compared to Asana (paid annual), not to mention that if you're using Asana long enough, you're going to be pulled to the business tier, which is far more expensive than Motion. Not to mention the fact that it also includes the calendar and meeting scheduler, it replaces the need for most people using Calendly as well, which should free up some budget.
- I think you're possibly comparing the monthly pricing option? If so, I'd recommend you consider that within 2-3 months of implementing the tool (whether Motion OR Asana), you should switch to annual for the discount. It's also a statement you're making to your team that you're committed to making the tool work. We find that larger teams that use a tool month-to-month have a difficult mindset around embracing the tool, as they feel like the company might just switch tools again the following month. Commit to the software and your team will also do the same (plus you get to save nearly 40% on the price by doing so).
Interesting. I'm looking at PM software for my simple one person projects. I probably don't need any PM tools, but it's a way to get practice using one or more, so I won't be a total knuckle-dragging grunting ignoramus in case I'm hired into a team using one of these. I've used Monday for a remote project, but know zilch about the rest. This video was helpful! Normally my "project management" is a TiddlyWiki for lists, links, cheatsheets, some text files in my project's folder, and stuff written on 3x5 cards which I can take with me to the coffee shop.
Sounds like a great plan! What PM tool are looking to give a shot with? Maybe efficient.link/r/motion hint hint, nudge nudge 😁 appreciate you being willing to learn and be open-minded!
Amazing and useful video!!! Thank you so much!! 🙌🙌
Awe, so glad to hear! What do you think you'll end up going forward with? Would love to hear the use-case you're looking to achieve as well 🙌
Great video! I’ve started using Asana for a team of 3 and we like it, would you say that Asana may be an overkill for such a small team?
First of all, glad to hear that you like a project manager at all, it means that your team must have been able to adopt it well, which is one of the most difficult things about project management software and teams.
That said, as also a team of 3 using the project manager, we switched from Asana to Motion after evaluating them side-by-side for 1-2 years, having used Asana as our PM tool for 7 years. So that should be somewhat telling on its own.
That said, I'd have to know what it is that your team likes most about Asana, if it's the reporting, Gaant chart functionality, etc then you'd be better off sticking with Asana for now. We personally got sick and tired of manually reorganizing/pushing deadlines of tasks in our My Tasks view in Asana every day, as with Motion it handles that automatically amongst other things.
We have an entire page dedicated to Motion vs Asana on our site though that should help you in determining if you're anything like us, or would be better off sticking with what you currently have:
efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-asana
Keep us posted and let us know if you have any other specific questions around this after checking out the page above!
Thanks so much! Really helpful
Awe, glad to here-appreciate your comment, it made our day! 🙌 curious to hear what you end up going with and if for personal or work!
Interesting how you used the review to confirm your own biases: agreed with their sentiment on clickup, but disagreed with their opinion on asana :D
Super curious to hear what your thoughts are on Asana? Always open to hearing them and having our mind changed! Also glad to hear you validate our reasoning for disliking ClickUp, feel pretty strongly on that one 😉
Appreciate your comment and excited to hear your thoughts!
I'm struggling to find the perfect fit. Will check out motion
Fill us in! What are your current painpoints and what tools have you tried, and what type of business are you?
Go ahead and give Motion a shot with a free trial: efficient.link/r/motion and keep us posted how it goes, though happy to learn a bit more to let you know if it could work based on your needs. Happy to help 🚀
My workflow is somewhat simple.
I use samsung notes, set reminders, then add to folders based on organization.
Task are weighted weekly, and that's it..
I work off those reminders while adding reminders throughout the week.
I found most software I looked at to be cumbersome and not a good fit.
So I'm looking at motion and todoist now.
Oh got it, so you're looking for a relatively basic task manager then. Yeah it depends how much you value calendar integration. If you want your tasks to show up on your calendar, ensuring you get them done, that's where Motion excels. If you're looking for something relatively basic and just want a phone reminder when something is due, ToDoist would probably work well enough.
Curious to hear your experience after testing out both! Good luck 🙌
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful if you haven't yet decided which tool to move forward with: efficient.yt/motion
Great thing that was mentioned in the video was the statistics of PMT usage by small and large organizations. After thinking much, I came to the conclusion that Google's Ecosystem is probably going to be your go-to for SMALL organizations.
Curious how you categorize small organizations? We believe the Google ecosystem is even still the go-to at a 500 person org.
@@efficientapp and for larger than 500 person, what then? Microsoft? .. no thanks
Thank you! I have been playing around with the 3 you don't recommend. I hate them for exactly the reasons you highlighted. I have not heard of Motion until this video. That's where I'm heading right now.
Awesome to hear! Be sure to sign up here to lock in the free course efficient.link/r/motion
Might want to actually check out this video before signing up to make sure it'll do what you're looking for it to do? efficient.yt/motion
Keep us posted on the outcome!
Really great video, the last thing I want as a new business owner is to waste time creating and recreating templates. What is your opinion on Jira?
Thanks so much! And totally, creating the foundation over and over is not a good use of time.
Jira is very much more built for enterprise teams, unless you're an engineering team of 500+ people, there's just better options available.
We go more into it in the overview section of the best project management software page on our site: efficient.link/pm#overview
It's more that it serves its purpose for some enterprise teams, but it has been replaced even in the engineering world by tools like Linear and Motion: efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-linear
@@efficientappWow, your website is an absolute treasure of knowledge for any and all software stacks. I'm very grateful for coming across your youtube video. I was beginning to get frustrated from watching too many unexperienced people on YT claiming this or that, many of which are only following trends and not incorporating anything useful. You guys rock!
Oh wow... This is literally the nicest comment to end the day on. Means so much to hear this, and super excited that you've gotten value from the site!
Much more to come-we hope to see you around some more 🙌
Great insight❤
Awesome to hear! Did you end up moving forward with any of the project management tools mentioned? 🤔
Enjoyed the video! I just found your channel so you may have dealt with this, but I would love to see the comparisons of free vs. paid versions and why you recommend one over the other. I have no experience with project management software as a new solopreneur but am leaning toward Asana for the free version to get my feet wet as opposed to motion with just a free trial period.
Appreciate the comment, and welcome! Sounds like you may have found our channel, but not our website? efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-asana
There is a full Motion vs Asana write-up for you. That said, if you have no experience with project management software, we would normally recommend staying away from one of the more large team and enterprise tools like Asana as they are unopinionated by design.
What I mean is, as software grows in size and takes on more use-cases and larger teams, the more broad of a tool it becomes and the more you need to be opinionated to set it up correctly.
A tool like Motion just works for you out of the box, add tasks and it'll be useful. Don't get to your tasks for the day? Great, everything is automatically rescheduled and ready for you to do the following day.
With tools like Asana, they expect you to have a project manager that helps set things up and help move things forward.
The free tier as well is quite restrictive, for getting the automation functionality in Asana, you need to be paying, and without the task automation (helping move things forward without it being as manual daily) you're going to be paying for it.
Asana restricts everything on their free tier, it's less about "free for small teams" and more about "go ahead and set some of it up and invite some team for free, and then when you're ready to actually start using it properly, upgrade to the paid tier" to which you'll be in similar to that of Motion and you'll simply be using the wrong tool for your team size.
All of that said, we get the appeal, and would genuinely recommend signing up for both and just seeing what your initial experience is like for each if you're unable to make up your mind: eff.li/r/motion (Motion) + eff.li/r/asana (Asana)
Might just recommend you check out our Motion tutorial to get a sense of how we use it just to get a sense of what it's like, maybe seeing it will help you make up your mind on whether or not it even works for what you're thinking: efficient.yt/motion
Does that help at all?
@efficientapp very helpful response!
@efficientapp thanks for the detailed explanation! I'll definitely check your website for the comparison and try both to see how they fit my company. Very helpful.
Awesome to hear! Please do keep us posted, super curious as to what you decide on! 🙌
Thanks for an excellent video. I want to plan some projects for writing and publishing books, probably about 3-4 months duration. I really like Gantt charts for seeing what needs to be done when, to make sure I don’t start a long task like book cover design too late, to know when to arrange time with a proofreader, etc. I see Monday does Gantts, but when I also saw they did CRM it was a huge red flag to me (just like you mentioned!) Plus Monday seems buggy to me. Do you have any recommendations? Thanks.
Of course! Appreciate you taking the time to watch and comment 🙌
So when you're speaking purely about visual tools, like that of Gantt charts, you're going to be into the world of more serious project management software like Asana.
That said, since you're referring to more individual and small talk projects like writing and publishing books, we think you'd get more benefit from the auto-scheduling capabilities for that of Motion. Being able to put rough deadlines for tasks (e.g. 1-2 weeks, or a more hard deadline), and having it pop up to remind you on your calendar has been more to ensure we get work done on time and by deadlines, than the visual tools like Gantt charts have ever done, as much as I do love how they look.
Charts like that are very active-planning focused, which is also a habit that needs to be built up, but worse, takes up a lot of time to stay ontop of.
That's where we'd recommend you try Motion and the way it goes about automatically planning to ensure you get your work done on time. We use it for our content creation process, which is great too because at a point it hands off from Andra to me and then our video editor, and Motion is more focused best on helping you get this type of work done by a set deadline through automatic scheduling. It just has a few less visual options for now though.
Maybe just give it a shot and see if it could work for you?
efficient.link/r/motion
If not, then Asana should deliver on the Gantt chart request and more visual. It's just a tool you need to stay more ontop of regularly to keep it updated with how work is progressing which gets quite tiresome pretty quickly. It's so clearly built for larger teams and having a part-time project manager keeping it up-to-date with any scale:
efficient.link/r/asana
Hope this helps with a bit more clarity!
For your project planning needs, consider tools like ClickUp or Asana, which offer robust Gantt chart functionality without the added complexity of unnecessary features like CRM. These platforms provide comprehensive project management capabilities to ensure smooth execution of your writing and publishing projects.
Well, Notion is at least great for students. Getting truly free Gantt chart, calendar view, task/list view, and kanban board is nice. 😅 But yeah, for the target audience of project managers and businesses then no.
Yeah, we genuinely categorize Notion more as a note taking/team knowledge base, not a project manager. That's the main qualm with it, it does note taking well, and now is being confused for a tool that does everything for everyone. It's not that 😅
So I just started with a sauna like 24 hours ago and now I just seen your video and I hadn't checked out motion yet. My team would be small consisting of about 4 people maybe five for now, but growing. I was thinking we would use Asana with notion for the documentation in sop library. Could you give me a better suggestion or what would you recommend? I oversee multiple businesses and projects and need to stay organized amongst the different activities
Okay, so we'd still recommend you use the likes of Notion for internal documentation/SOP, etc. but for the size of your team, and the fact that you oversee multiple businesses (and projects within them), we think you'd have a better time with Motion-here's a link for a free trial: efficient.link/r/motion
They allow for multiple workspaces in their project area, unlike Asana (which would essentially be entirely different Asana accounts for each company). You can have one workspace for one company, and have sub-projects within them.
Mainly recommending this because for actually getting tasks done, and ensuring your team executes on the work that needs to get done (and blocking other team members from getting work done), Motion has that built in at the core.
I'd also bet that you've spent quite a bit of time setting up your "My Task" view within Asana, Motion essentially auto-schedules for you every day so you don't need to even worry about that.
We officially just switched our team off of Asana and over to Motion and we're so glad to be off Asana being the size team we are.
That said, if you had 100 employees... We'd say you're making a good decision with Asana. But if you're 4-5 people, even growing quite quickly, Motion will definitely be the better solution for your team.
If you want to read some direct thoughts on Motion vs Asana more directly, take a look at the comparison we did here:
efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-asana
Hope this helps!
We actually just released a full video tutorial of how we use Motion in our business, think you might find it helpful: efficient.yt/motion
Please talk about Zoho and Dropbox's Reclaim Ai, which claims to be Motion's #1 alternative, cheaper and with more integrations.
Super transparent and helpful information, thank you!
So glad to hear! Thanks for your comment 🙏 did you end up deciding on any of our recommendations in the video? 👀 Curious of your use-case/team size and what you ended up going with!
@@efficientapp To be honest, nope. The one that would suit my services the best is Asana, but I am a freelance logo designer, and I don’t think I need that much power yet. So I am sticking to Google Keep (for idea planner) and Microsoft One Note for everything else. 👀
I'm looking for a CRM. I tested Notion, but when the volume increased it simply couldn't handle it, it freezes too much
Definitely don't recommend using Notion as a CRM. In fact, we have an entire video about why not + what our CRM recommendations are. Watch here & let us know what you think after watching: efficient.link/yt/crm
thank you. Thank you!.
Nono, thank you. Thank you for watching and sharing some love! 🙏
Are you tracking the team’s time and expenses so they’re billable to clients in Motion or a separate tool?
So we use Harvest to actually do this, have an entire comparison write-up on time tracking tools here:
efficient.tips/vs/harvest
That said, Harvest integrates with Google Calendar, and Motion allows tasks to show up on Google Calendar, and thus, your tasks essentially show up to add to Harvest if you'd like. So directionally we use Motion for that, just in addition to Harvest if that makes sense?
Here's more info and a write-up on Harvest + a free trial & credit if you want to check it out:
efficient.app/apps/harvest
@@efficientapp thanks, I’ll check out your write up. We’ve been using SpringAhead but the reporting and analytics is non-existent so I’m looking for options.
Apologies, YT doesn't do a great job at notifying when we get a comment reply-haven't heard of SpringAhead. At first glance, it definitely seems a bit dated. You'd be better off with any of the apps listed on the link posted above for sure!
Did you end up picking a solution? If so, curious with what you went with, and why? 🤔
I like your videos pls carry on. we want more videos. don't give up
Appreciate your comment and support, this comment means a lot to us, thank you for leaving it 🙏
And no giving up here! Much more to come! We're just launching our mini-series at the moment:
efficient.link/ateam/0
Have more software and comparison videos coming! 👏👏👏
This was really interesting to watch. Great review!
Awe, appreciate you taking the time to watch and comment and stoked to hear we could help make sense of this overwhelming category! Super curious what you ended up going with?
People complaining about "too many features" is so crazy to me, I usually complain when there are too few features
Too many features often means they are building for too many people and use-cases, AKA a jack of all traits and master of none. Sometimes focus and specialty is better in software. It also leads to people using the tool for the wrong things and teams struggling with adoption as there's no clear usage/build-out path.
I'm finding that there are many different interpretations of what is meant by the term project management... What this sounds like is how teams are managing their group objectives. I'm in search of a PM software (for 20-25 ppl) that begins with a framework to evaluate/compare projects to one another, prioritize the projects and put them in categories of approved, pending, declined, etc. and then assign the projects to owners. I'm less concerned about the ability to put tasks on individual's calendars and more concerned about each project owner managing the granular details in their PM meetings. The owner will provide updates via the PM tool to identify the status of the project etc. Any suggestions???
Fair point! How would you expect to be evaluating/comparing projects to one another?
For everything else you mentioned, prioritization, categorizing, and assigning projects to owners to lead and give updates within the project and during meetings, Motion should work great for. You also don't need to enable having tasks on your calendar with Auto Scheduling (that can be turned off for any or all tasks).
Maybe you could give a bit more info about how you envisioned evaluating/comparing projects and I could help more. But as it sounds, efficient.link/r/motion should handle what you're describing for a team of 20-25 people no problem and be quite focused to that use-case.
@@efficientapp There are a number of qualitative and quantitative prioritization frameworks out there. I like Value vs Effort but there's also the KANO Model, MoSCoW method, Opportunity Scoring, or Cost of Delay. I was expecting to find a PM platform with a prioritization framework built-in or as an add-on. I will check out Motion.
Ah okay, got it! I mean Motion allows you to add custom fields, so what I'd recommend doing is creating a drop-down custom field for different data-points that would allow you to evaluate those things. In terms of effort, projects are tied to time and it will give a summary of how much time went into a project, so you can in theory have an effort indicator via a custom field, then actually see how much time went into it to see if that aligns with the estimated effort if you will.
That said, the only way to know if it'll work for you is if you give it a shot with a free trial. Be sure to claim the deal here if you do end up giving Motion a shot: efficient.deals/motion
I'm in love with Motion, but in my company we need to track our time and have some reports about the projects, tasks and members. Is there any way that I can have this using Motion?
Awesome to hear! We'd just say that the listview grouping/filtering can allow for some pretty powerful reporting, have you tried messing around with that and the "completed time" column to get a roll-up of time across the team and projects?
It's not foolproof or to the degree that a standalone time tracking tool like Harvest would give you: efficient.link/time-tracking
With that, Motion has mentioned to use that they are overhauling time tracking early next year, so hopefully there's more out-of-the-box reporting like you're hoping.
That said, have you checked out our Motion course? While we don't go to the depths about time tracking reports, we do show how we're using it, and there's a lot of other tips and tricks in there that I'm sure you and your team will enjoy: efficient.link/courses/motion
Is this what you would recommend as a CRM?
These are project managers, wouldn't recommend any as a CRM. Our CRM recommendation depends on your size of team and what core cloud suite you're using for your business (e.g. Google Workspace vs Microsoft). We've done a full writeup and video that should help answer that question for you here: efficient.tips/b/crm
We personally use Copper CRM: efficient.link/r/copper though mind you we use Google Workspace and have a smaller team. Definitely check out the blog post and video here though as it'll best answer your question: efficient.tips/b/crm
How does Motion compare to Sumsana?
We're in progress of a write-up for this right-now in-fact. It's about 75% complete if you want to check it out:
efficient.app/compare/motion-vs-sunsama
We still have a few more hours of work to put into the article, although it's our highest priority to complete over the next week.
what would you recommend for a small project management team, like under 50 people, usually about 20?
Ah, that's actually the sweet spot for Motion: efficient.link/r/motion and similar to the team size we're building for.
Once you get closer to 50-100 you're probably going to want more deep reporting capabilities for managers, which is probably coming more later this year from what the team has said.
We have a full video on it that you can check out to see if it'll work for you, Flows and Gantt is in the product (releasing to everyone in a week or two), we've been using it in beta for 2 months now and it has been great.
Here's a free setup course that's coming too if you use this page to sign up for a free trial: efficient.deals/motion
Happy to answer any specific questions you might have if you want to describe more your needs, industry, internal or external, and any specific use-cases/processes you'll be using the PM tool for?
Here's the video: efficient.yt/motion
And here's a deal
@@efficientapp thanks for the quick response. Should I be using these kinds of tools if the other project members don't? (I was just assigned to be leader) Do you have any recommendations for an app that is free? I suspect that there aren't really any good program management tool that is free, as all the ones that have a free version, are extremely limited until you purchase it.
It's totally up to you, you can use a tool like Motion solo just to get your own work done if you'd like, team adoption can come in time as you see a benefit of inviting others in, and they see a benefit of being added in.
Regarding a free Project Management tool, especially for that of a team of 20+ people is going to be a bit short-sighted, as the actual cost of a project management tool is the time that goes into setting it up and training the team on it, not the actual cost of the software, so if you can't even justify the cost of the software, the chance at team adoption and the team sticking with it more than even just a few months isn't very likely.
We're trying to help teams and companies find and use the best software on the market that will save their team time and help them become more efficient, if your criteria is "free", then you're not really going to find a tool that we would recommend for such a critical role in the business, if that makes sense?
@@efficientapp thanks, ill check out motion solo. btw have you ever tried MS Planner?
Do let us know what you think, and be sure to sign up with this link so you can tie in the Motion deal: efficient.link/r/motion (you can claim the deal on our site here after signing up: efficient.deals/motion - apologies on the delay here as you probably already signed up).
MS Planner is a very simplified task management tool-in general, we work with Google Workspace most often, so we don't get too excited about diving into the built-by Microsoft task solution. Those solutions are never as good as standalone companies building them. In-fact, Microsoft acquired Sunrise Calendar back in the day, rolled it into Outlook (in an awful way), and then shut down Sunrise. So if anything, Microsoft is doing the reverse of things that we like and would recommend when it comes to task and calendar management haha.