The tool isn’t the problem. The setup is.
Darragh found xTiles through the How to ADHD channel, a few days before our call. Before that came a brief attempt at Notion. The verdict wasn't that Notion is bad — it's clearly powerful. It's that you have to learn how to use it before it does anything for you, and then keep maintaining the system you built.
That's a common story. The hours go into designing a workspace instead of using one, and by the time it's ready, the motivation is gone. What Darragh wanted instead was a system with as few hurdles as possible: something on the phone, the tablet and the desktop, easy enough to open every day that it could actually become a habit.
What a minimal system actually needs
When Darragh described the ideal setup, it came down to three things:
- Cards for projects — one place per project to keep notes, laid out where you can see them.
- A list for each day — what to do today, with some items pointing back to a project card and others standing on their own.
- Room for big tasks — something you chip away at over several days without it disappearing the first time you tick off today's part.
Notice what's missing: databases, relations, formulas, dashboards. Those can come later, if ever.
The one-sitting setup in xTiles
Use the space you already have
Your account starts with a personal space. Think of it as a folder. You can add more later — work, family, travel — but one is enough to start.
Make a project, and a tile per project card
Create a project and give each thing you are working on its own tile: a heading, some notes, a few links. Tiles sit side by side on the page like cards on a table.
Put tasks inside the cards
Add tasks to a card and give them a date. Any task with a date shows up in your planner automatically, so the card holds the context and the planner holds the day.
Open the planner for the day
In My Planner, today's tasks from every project appear in one list, next to your calendar and any notes. Tasks that don't belong to a project can be written straight into the day.
Tasks without a time sit in the day's list. If you want to block time for one, drag it onto the schedule. Nothing forces you to time-block everything.
Set the layout once and keep it
The maintenance problem is where most systems die. In xTiles, once your daily or weekly page looks the way you like it, save it as a template. New days and weeks start from that layout, so there's nothing to rebuild.
If you're moving over from Notion, the migration guide covers turning pasted lists into tasks in bulk.
Learn it the way you learned Excel
Darragh got quite advanced in Excel without a course — by looking things up the moment a task called for it. That's a good way to approach xTiles too. Start with the four pieces above, and when you hit a need, look up the one feature that meets it in the help center.
If it's something that I like and is useful and I keep using it, then I'll probably start looking and learning extra features. Darragh
A few natural next steps, whenever they're useful:
- The Web Clipper — save an article as a task or a note with a short summary instead of leaving the tab open. Everything you save also collects in your Library.
- An AI layer, if you want one — connect Claude or ChatGPT and it can put a morning brief on your daily page or move overdue tasks to today. It's an add-on, not a requirement; the system above works without it.