What's your minimum viable app stack?

An exploration into the essentials.

I’ve been toying around with the idea of minimum viable systems in my notes for a few months now.

I think it’s obvious that I’m no minimalist when it comes to my digital ecosystem. While I veer towards minimalism in my physical existence, the digital landscape is my playground — I want to explore without restrictions. While I find joy in an assorted toolkit, I can’t help but wonder what I’d choose if limitations were imposed upon me and I had to keep only the essentials.

A question like this can be particularly useful if we find ourselves feeling burdened with too many options, if we’re tool jumping from one system to the next or if we realise that the tool is using us, instead of the other way around.

In a 1:1 call with a client today, she recounted getting so frustrated with the tools in her note-taking stack not fulfilling their function that she momentarily left them all behind and opened up TextEdit for writing. TextEdit! Can you believe it? We laughed together as she described this experience to me, but it came from a genuine place of needing a simple tool to fulfil a single purpose — no bells, no whistles, no AI — just writing.

The exercise

My approach to this exercise is simple and involves answering the following questions:

• What apps are essential for my day to day activities?

• Is this app aligned with my personal philosophy/inner wisdom?

• Is utilizing this tool contributing to the very most important thing I should be doing with my time and resources right now?¹

It goes without saying that this is a highly personal exercise. The apps that you choose will depend on who you are and what you do in your ecosystem.

It may also be easier to start with the activities that you do instead of with the apps themselves. I found it eye-opening how many features are “nice to have” and that I don’t actually need them to fulfil an essential function.

My minimum viable toolkit

Activity - Tool

• I write - Notion²

• I share my writing online - Substack, Twitter³

• I have 1:1 client calls - Google Meet

• I create and sell digital products - Notion, Tana, CleanShot X⁴

• I receive payments for client calls and digital products - LemonSqueezy

• I explore online rabbit holes as a hobby - Arc Browser

• I share insights and speak with friends - WhatsApp

Not included:

• Reading and the Kindle app - I don’t really need the kindle app as I do most of my reading using the physical Kindle device.

Takeaways

I honestly thought that this exercise would be significantly easier than it turned out to be! I have a feeling that as the days of this week go on and I continue to ponder this, I’ll uncover more activities and tools, but that begs the question, are they essential?

It’s also possible that I’ll realise I don’t actually need some of the apps on this list. All in all, this was intriguing and reminds me of The 100 Thing Challenge.

Let’s continue the conversation

What tools make up your own minimum viable toolkit? If you do the exercise - were you surprised by what you uncovered or was it expected?

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1. Adaptation of an excerpt from Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg Mckeown.

2. This was a tough one but I have to remember that this is a minimum viable toolkit. Even though I prefer Capacities or Tana for my notes, I could make Notion work as it is a reliable blank canvas and it’s already in the stack. Notion also has a mobile app which I already know is essential for my needs.

3. I wondered if I should include Twitter here. While it is my favourite social media platform, with Substack’s addition of notes and a discovery feed, in theory, I could use Substack for both an email list and for finding like-minded individuals.

4. I initially had Canva here as well but realised I could use CleanShot X to add text to photos in the same way that I use Canva. I would be limited with font choice and elements but it would fulfil my main reason for using it — showing the product visually. Also not included here are my screen recorders of choice (Screen Studio and Tella) because CleanShot also supports screen recording.