Hello! Welcome to a series in which I review various productivity apps. In this part, I’ll be talking about one of my favorite productivity apps, and the one I use personally: Amazing Marvin.
Amazing Marvin is a highly customizable productivity app. I spent a lot of time bouncing back and forth between different apps -- I tried Todoist, Things 3, Wunderlist, Habitica, and so much more, and although each app had perks that I liked about them, none of them really fit exactly what I was looking for.
Amazing Marvin solved that problem, however. Marvin has “strategies” that you can toggle on and off, to essentially build your ideal productivity app from the ground up in things called “workflows”. These strategies include things like subtasks, labels, built-in timers for things like Pomodoro, calendar syncs, and so much more.
Some of my personal favorites include time tracking -- you press Play once you begin a task, and the app keeps track of how long you spend working on it. This allows me to see how much I work for the day in a concrete number. No more thinking I accomplished a lot when all I did was take a walk and think about writing an essay or something.
I also really like Marvin’s “Procrastination Wizard”, something they recently installed in an update. You click on an “!” button when you’re really dreading starting a task, and it’ll walk you through a series of questions designed to help reduce resistance to getting started.
Marvin’s essential structure is composed of a list of personalizable categories that each task belongs to. For example, some of mine are College, School, and Stem4Free. Each task you schedule belongs to one of these categories, and from there you can add stuff like time estimates, due dates, and scheduled dates for when you want to do a certain task.
Marvin has so many features that I’d never be able to fit into this blog, but it’s a very powerful app and I recommend you check it out.
Unfortunately, it is paywalled, with subscription plans of $12/month or $8/month for a yearly subscription, and a one-time payment of $300. Marvin does offer a student discount of 50% for its monthly and yearly subscription plans, though, along with a 30 day free trial!
Check it out at amazingmarvin.com.
