Things 3 Is Beautiful. But Beauty Does Not Ship Your Work.
The most gorgeous task manager in the world cannot plan your project, time your focus, track your habits, or tell you when you are burning out.
I have a confession. I love Things 3. I love the way it feels in my hands. I love the smooth animations, the thoughtful typography, the way every pixel seems to have been placed with intention. There is a reason designers and developers have been raving about it for years. Cultured Code, the small team in Stuttgart that builds it, clearly cares about craft in a way that most software companies do not.
And I stopped using it. Not because I fell out of love with how it looks. I stopped because I needed more than beauty. I needed a tool that could actually help me get my work done.
The Beautiful Stagnation
Things 3 was released in 2017. Since then, the app has received incremental updates. Small improvements. Bug fixes. General refinements. But the core product has not meaningfully changed in nearly a decade. No AI features. No built in timer. No habit tracking. No focus mode. No energy awareness. No collaboration. No web app. No Android. No Windows.
Meanwhile, the world of work has transformed. AI went from a buzzword to a daily tool. Remote work became the default for millions. Slack replaced hallway conversations. Email volume doubled. The demands on knowledge workers exploded. And Things 3 remained exactly the same. A beautiful, polished task list that does exactly what it did in 2017.
It is like owning a vintage typewriter. You appreciate the craftsmanship every time you look at it. But when you need to write a novel, you reach for something else.
The Apple Prison
Things 3 only exists on Apple platforms. iPhone, iPad, Mac. That is it. No web version. No Android. No Windows. If you use an iPhone and a MacBook, this feels fine. Until it does not.
I realized the depth of this problem when I was at a coworking space and needed to check my tasks from a borrowed laptop. I could not. My entire task system was locked inside an ecosystem. When I traveled and brought only my phone and a Chromebook, my tasks were inaccessible on the Chromebook. When a friend asked me to share a project task list, I could not because Things 3 has no collaboration features at all.
Things 3 has zero presence outside the Apple ecosystem. No web app, no Android, no Windows, no Linux. Your productivity is locked to one company's hardware.
This is not just a convenience issue. It is a dependency issue. You are trusting your entire productivity system to a tool that only works on one company's devices. If Apple changes something, if your MacBook breaks, if you need to work from a different computer, your tasks are gone. That kind of fragility should worry anyone who depends on their task manager to function.
What Is Missing Is What Matters Most
Beautiful design matters. I will never argue otherwise. Opening an app that feels good creates a positive association that keeps you coming back. Things 3 nails this. But design is the invitation. What happens after you walk through the door is what determines whether you stay.
And after you walk through the door of Things 3, you find a task list. A very nice task list. But just a task list.
No AI planning
When you face a new project and do not know where to start, Things 3 offers a blank task. Mursa offers an AI planner that turns one sentence into a structured breakdown with micro tasks and time estimates.
No focus timer
Things 3 has no Pomodoro timer, no focus mode, no session tracking. You need a separate app. Mursa has a Pomodoro timer linked directly to your tasks with session history, quality scoring, and analytics.
No habit tracking
Things 3 does not track habits. If you want to build daily habits alongside your tasks, you need a second app. Mursa has frequency aware habit tracking with smart streaks and grace days built in.
No emotional awareness
Things 3 does not track energy, detect burnout, or offer encouragement. Mursa has morning rituals, energy mapping, momentum scoring, burnout detection, and a companion that evolves with you.
No Slack integration
Things 3 has no way to capture tasks from Slack or email. If your work involves Slack, every action item requires manual entry. Mursa captures tasks from Slack with one click and extracts tasks from email automatically.
Beauty and Substance Are Not Mutually Exclusive
The false choice the industry presents is: you can have a beautiful app OR a powerful app. Things 3 chose beauty. Asana chose power. TickTick chose features. And users are left bouncing between them, never finding one that offers both.
It does not have to be this way. You can have a calm, beautiful interface AND a focus timer linked to your tasks. You can have thoughtful design AND AI that plans your projects. You can have a tool that feels good to open AND actually helps you do the hard work of showing up every day.
Things 3 will always have a special place in the productivity world. It proved that software can be art. That task management does not have to be ugly or stressful. That design matters deeply. But design without depth is decoration. And when the work piles up and the deadlines loom and you need more than a pretty list, you need a tool that matches its beauty with substance. You deserve both. And you should not have to choose.