My name is Philipp and you are reading Creativerly, the weekly digest about creativity and productivity-boosting tools and resources, combined with useful insights, articles, and findings from the fields of design and tech. The newsletter built for the creative community.

Hey and welcome to Creativerly 221 👋

I just came back from Stockholm since I was staying there for one week, meeting up with the Scrintal team and working together from their office. Although I love working remotely, it was a great feeling Meeting the rest of the team in person and working together from one office. It was my first time in Stockholm and I immediately fell in love with the city.

Leaving my hometown always means leaving my comfort zone. Every now and then I need to do precisely that, stepping out of my comfort zone and exploring a new country or a new city. Leaving your comfort zone can be a powerful tool for personal growth and development, helping you to become a more well-rounded, confident, and adaptable person. In the past, I would say that I missed quite a lot of opportunities because I did not leave my comfort zone. I do know that leaving your comfort zone can be quite challenging, but the many benefits it can bring should be reasons enough to take a step outside of it. No matter, if you want to develop new skills, increase your creativity, expand your horizons, overcome fears, increase your adaptability, or become better at decision-making, stepping out of your comfort zone, can help you with every single one of those.

As leaving your comfort zone might be one of the hardest challenges for loads of people, there are some practices that everyone can adopt to make the process a bit easier. First, make sure to start small, you do not have to make huge changes all at once, start with small ones first and push yourself forward gradually. Secondly, when you are setting yourself goals, make them achievable but still challenging, so you will feel a sense of accomplishment when you reach them. Third, embrace failure, it will surely happen that you set out to leave your comfort zone by achieving something and you only managed to achieve a portion of it, but still you actually committed to it. In addition to that, do not beat yourself up if things do not go as planned, treat yourself with the same kindness and understanding that you would offer a friend. Fourth, when you achieve something outside your comfort zone, take your time to celebrate your success, take it in, feel the positives, and motivate yourself to take on your next challenges.

Leaving your comfort zone can be scary, and it still is for me, which is natural, but once you do it and take the first step, you will quickly realise how many benefits are waiting for you.

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Apps, Software, Tools

Dokably →

Dokably is a new tool I recently discovered that claims to be one workspace for all team's work by blending docs, whiteboards, notes, and tasks together in one place. As of writing this, Dokably is still in beta, and most of the features that are shown on the website and within the demo video (that is linked on the website as well) are not yet available. The version you can test out as of now is an MVP.

There are tools to create docs and manage knowledge, then there are tools to keep track of your tasks, tools to write down notes, and tools to brainstorm with your colleagues on a digital whiteboard and infinite canvas. Dokably combines those things within a single place and a single doc. No matter if you need to create beautiful docs, notes, diagrams, wikis, or anything else, with Dokably's endless styling options you have the tools you need to do right at your fingertips. At any stage of your creative process, Dokably gives you the freedom to design and format the content the way you like. By visualizing your ideas, Dokably gives you the possibility to ideate and brainstorm right within a doc. Additionally, since collaborating with your team and colleagues while brainstorming is always more fun than doing it alone, Dokably offers a multiplayer experience, which means you and your colleagues can easily collaborate and design practically anything, tables, sticky notes, graphs, diagrams, databases, and more.

But that is not where the collaboration within Dokably ends, since it allows you to edit your content in real-time, leave comments, tag people, view edit history, and securely share anything with your team or outside. Besides creating and writing beautiful docs, Dokably can also take care of your tasks, and it helps you build the workflow you want. With diverse data depictions like Kanban, Lists, Tables, and others, you can visualize your work as you need it. Dokably plans to support numerous integrations with the tools you are already using, which means you will be able to sync messaging apps, calendars, and more, so you can make sure to keep everything in one place for easy organization and control.

As mentioned earlier, the current version of Dokably is an MVP. Its roadmap is publicly available. In Q2 the team at Dokably plans to integrate and release task management, so you can create numerous task boards right within your docs and choose between different views to visualize your tasks. In addition to that, you will be able to assign people to tasks and keep all info organised in one place. In Q3 the plan is to introduce online whiteboards to create infinite canvases and ideate right within Dokably, which will give you the possibility to build mind-maps, roadmaps, charts, and much more. You will be able to insert your docs right into a whiteboard and organise your work how you like it. In Q4 the plan is to introduce an AI helper that will give you the power to create better content and time.

It seems like the future of Dokably is bright. I will definitely keep out an eye for it and follow its development closely. If you want to give it a try make sure to head over to their website and sign up.

Daygraph →

Daygraph is a lovely designed app available for iOS and Android, that helps you engineer your everyday life with data.

With Daygraph you can keep track of your daily activities, tasks, and events in one convenient and beautiful place, so you can stay organized and control of your daily life. Daygraph's "Activity" view is your centralized space to keep track of important events, open tasks, and your habits. Colour-coding makes it easy to distinguish the different elements within the calendar view. Developing new habits might be easy, but the hard part is to make them stick and integrate them into your daily life. Visualizing your progress and keeping track of them in a dedicated space is a great way to support your journey while developing new positive habits and breaking bad ones. Daygraph offers a beautiful interface that makes it easy to track your progress and monitor your daily habits. Additionally, it also visualizes your progress over time, which is yet again beautifully implemented.

The feature that got me the most excited is Daygraph's "Insights" tab, which helps you discover trends and patterns in your habits and activities by analyzing your data in easy-to-read graphs and charts. With the provided information you can kickstart positive changes and improve your daily routine.

Besides that, you can use Daygraph to achieve your goals. Set as many personal goals as you want and track your progress toward achieving them. No matter if you want to learn a new skill, save money, finish a certain amount of books, or anything else, Daygraph can help you stay on track and reach your goals. Daygraph's daily reminders that are customizable make sure you stay on top of your daily habits and tasks. To personalize Daygraph it offers a set of customizable themes and you can choose from a range of colours and designs to create a look that is unique to you.

There is only one thing I do not get, at least to some extent. While exploring the app, I immediately saw the love and craft for great design and detail. The whole app is beautifully designed with a mixture of native and custom components (which I personally love). I was excited as I found out that the app has a free version, while I thought the Pro version which is available for either €0.99 per month or €9.99 per year has an incredible value, but then I quickly found out that the free version is packed with ads. It has been some time I since I used an app (especially an iOS one) that used ads in the free version, especially within the productivity app area I haven't seen something similar in years. I became a bit sad since that app literally destroy the experience and disrupt the beautiful design of the app. Now, this could lead to the fact that most free users might convert to the Pro plan, which ultimately is great for the developer since this means the developer gets paid for the awesome work. But still, I believe the craft and design of the app speak for themselves, which leads me to believe that people who appreciate certain aesthetics and craft would convert to the Pro Plan anyways, especially since it is a great value at €9.99 per year (I mean that is three coffees per year).

It is the developer's right to make money with the app, also within the free version. But ads are obtrusive, especially since most of the time they are not tailored to someone's interests. On top of that, they disrupt the interface. If I am checking the progress of my goals and daily habits, I do not want to see any ads, I want to see the progress. Loads of solo developers set up small, medium, and large pre-defined tips of certain amounts, so users can show their one-time (or multiple time) support to the developer, others limit the free version and included the more powerful features within the Pro version, and there are even more possibilities to "monetise" a free version. I am just not a huge fan of ads within apps since it is probably the worst way to offer a free version of an app.

Anyways, give Daygraph a try. It is available for iOS and Android. If you find it valuable and if it helps you to develop new habits and make them stick, keep track of your tasks and your progress, make sure to support the developer and subscribe to the Pro plan which is available for as low as €0.99 per month or €9.99 per year.

Fresh Updates & News

Raycast Pro →

Raycast has been the one app that had the biggest impact on my workflows and productivity. When I started using it, Raycast was mainly an app I used to open apps and quickly switch between them on my Mac. But over time, thanks to a large number of extensions, personalization and customization options, Raycast became a centralized space that supercharges my productivity.

With its newest update, Raycast introduced Raycast Pro, a subscription to harness the power of AI, making Raycast your own with custom themes, keeping your Macs in sync, and a lot more. Starting at $8 per month, Raycast Pro unlocks a new level. Thanks to Raycast AI, you will be able to write smarter, code faster, and answer questions quicker. To make Raycast your own you can select from a variety of pre-made themes, or you can design your very own one. With an unlimited amount of content in your clipboard history you have never ever to worry about losing text, images, colours, or anything else. This is just the starting point of Raycast Pro, and the team has already some awesome additional features in the pipeline.

Config →

Figma's annual conference called "Config" has been known for inviting top-notch creative minds from different fields to share their expertise, knowledge, and insights.

This year, Config will be held on June 21-22 live in San Francisco, but you can also attend the event virtually from around the world. Yet again, Figma gathered a fantastic lineup of speakers. Over 75 creative minds from different companies will share innovations, insights, and best practices. Among them, Diana Mounter (Head of Design at GitHub), Jordan Singer (Founder & CEO at Diagram), Haraldur Thorleifsson (Founder and CEO at Ueno [acquired by Twitter]) Scott Belsky (Chief Strategy Officer and EVP, Design and Emerging Products at Adobe), Kanjun Qiu (CEO and co-founder at Generally Intelligent), Ricky Rajani (Software Engineer at Figma), Maria Hristoforova (Senior Product Designer, Design Systems at Uber), Yuki Yamashita (Chief Product Officer at Figma), and a lot more. If you are in San Francisco make sure to grab a ticket, if you are anywhere else, sign up now for the virtual event.

Re:collect →

Re:collect, the company that set out to build a tool that extends human creativity and decision-making by utilizing the building blocks of artificial intelligence to create tools that augment memory, perception, and synthesis, just announced its $2M pre-seed round.

Betaworks and GMG Ventures led the round with participation from Torch Capital, Graham & Walker, in addition to their notable funds and angels. Re:collect is still in beta, but I assume the pre-seed will get used to double down on the development of the app to get out and released.

Mental Wealth

❯ AI Is Transforming Media Forever, Here’s How – “I run a media company, and I love writing. So it’s bittersweet to write this, but here it is: AI is going to fundamentally change media in all sorts of ways over the next five years. It’ll make running some newsletters like running a buggy whip business, but it will also open up new opportunities for content creation that we can’t imagine today. Given this state of affairs, I’ve been thinking a lot about how AI affects what we do at Every—what are its opportunities, and what are its risks? We want to build for the future, while also respecting the fundamental thing that we created Every to do: create more high-quality business writing in the world.”

❯ The case for keeping all your email forever – “So help me, I never set out to hold onto all my email indefinitely. Actually, for many years, I didn’t keep track of it at all. As I bounced from ISP to ISP, I’d switch email addresses regularly, never bothering to preserve any messages along the way.”

❯ Can Mindfulness Reduce Anxiety as Well as a Drug? – “Anxiety is the most common psychiatric disorder, with over 301 million 
people affected around the world. Whether extreme anxiety arises in social situations, is triggered by a particular phobia, or manifests as a general unease in the world, it can severely affect people’s everyday functioning and lead to high levels of distress.”

❯ Happiness Is a Superpower – “I heard something in a dialogue recently. One character was complaining about being unhappy, and the other character replied, “You have a misguided notion of what makes you happy." The sentence made me stop and think. Most of us, at different times, have a misguided notion of what we think will make us happy. We go around trying out different prescriptions and remedies.”

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Appendix

❯ ICYMI

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❯ Quick Bits

Till next time! 👋‌‌‌‌

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