Why mobile isn't a preference — it's the only option
Paul is an electrical engineer, and for him, mobile-first is not a workflow style he chose for convenience. His employer does not allow him to install personal applications on his work computer, full stop. Whatever system he uses to organize his thinking has to work entirely from his phone, or it does not work at all.
That constraint compounds a second one: Paul was diagnosed with inattentive ADHD a few months before this conversation, which he says explains a pattern he had noticed for years — information does not stay in his head reliably, so he needs somewhere external to put it. "I cannot install certain applications on my work computer... I've got to have a system in place where I can access it via my mobile — quickly."
A workplace device restriction and an attention profile that does not retain information well point to the same conclusion: capture has to happen the instant a thought occurs, from whatever device is actually in hand.
For Paul, that device is almost always his phone — on a break at his desk, on the couch in the evening, wherever the thought shows up.
Coming from Evernote and OneNote — and falling off both
Before xTiles, Paul used Evernote fairly heavily for the last year or two, alongside Microsoft OneNote, mainly as a place to park notes for work — what he describes as "a second brain" for a mind that does not naturally hold onto things.
But the ADHD pattern showed up there too: periods of actively trying to make good use of an app, followed by weeks or months of simply forgetting it existed — not from lack of interest, but because the habit never fully stuck. He picked up xTiles specifically because it advertises itself as ADHD-friendly, which was, in his words, "the reason, really, and the only reason."
He was upfront that he was still early in the process — "I hadn't done a great deal, I'm still trying to get to grips with the software" — a month and a half in at the time of this conversation. That honesty is worth including here: if you are a few weeks into a new ADHD tool and still feel like you are circling it rather than using it fluently, that is a normal part of the process, not a sign the tool is wrong for you.
The actual workflow: quick capture, wherever he is
In practice, Paul's xTiles usage centers on a daily journal and gratitude-journaling setup — built as a table with dropdown properties for things like mood, weather, and a daily score. He fills it in during small pockets of time: on the couch in the evening while half-watching TV, or in a quick moment at work when he cannot open anything else.
The point is not that this is an especially sophisticated setup. It is that it is entirely mobile, by necessity, and it works in short bursts rather than requiring a dedicated sit-down session — which matches both his device restrictions and how his attention actually operates day to day.
Making tiles work on a small screen: the Feed View trick
When your entire workflow lives on a phone, small layout details matter more than they would on desktop. One feature that came up in this conversation and is easy to miss: Feed View, which shrinks an entire project's tiles into view at once instead of requiring you to scroll left and right to see everything laid out on the canvas.
Open a project on mobile
Go into any project or page in the xTiles mobile app.
Tap the three dots
In the top corner of the screen, tap the three-dot menu.
Toggle Feed View
Switch on Feed View from the menu that appears.
See everything at once
All tiles on the page shrink to fit the screen, so you can scan the whole layout without side-scrolling.
It is not turned on by default, so it is easy to go weeks without knowing it exists — worth checking if you find yourself scrolling around a lot to find things on a phone screen.
Keeping key projects one tap away
By default, opening the xTiles app surfaces your Recent workspaces rather than your Favorites — so the one project you actually check every day, like a daily journal, can end up buried under whatever you happened to touch last. Favorites exist specifically to solve this, but they have to be opened as a separate tab rather than appearing automatically.
For a mobile-only, ADHD-driven workflow, the practical fix is simple: mark the handful of projects you rely on daily as Favorites, and build the habit of checking that tab first. It removes one extra decision — hunting through a Recent list — from a process that is supposed to take seconds, not minutes.
What's next: My Planner and a mobile redesign in progress
Paul had not yet explored My Planner, xTiles' built-in planning hub, and said as much directly — a fair admission a month and a half in. It is a reminder that most people are not using every feature of a new tool immediately, and that is fine; picking up one or two habits that stick is a better outcome than trying to adopt everything on day one.
On the product side, the mobile app is under active redesign, with more of the flexible, drag-and-drop layout from the web version making its way to phones over time. For someone whose entire system depends on the mobile experience, that direction matters more than almost any other roadmap item.