Linear

If you're plugged into the Productivity Hacking Tech Lifestyle at all you've probably heard of Linear, an issue tracking app in the spirit of Jira and Asana and so many others. These kinds of apps are a dime a dozen—in fact, I've actually worked on building one myself (sort of)—and most just can't keep up with Jira and Asana for features or adoption across the industry.

Linear feels like it's part of the next generation of productivity tools, like Raycast or Obsidian—applications you can spot from a mile away by their dark-mode-first color scheme and muted gradients. Linear leans into it in their marketing copy as well. Regular tweets appear on my timeline praising the design of the application, or the website, or the intuitiveness of its keyboard shortcuts (a little heavy on the chords if you ask me). I want to use Linear.

But I struggle to find a reason. For notes and curiosities that I've picked up across the web, there's Notion; for small, actionable tasks, there's Things; for changes I need to make to code, I generally just use GitHub issues. I guess there's a loose cluster of side projects that I need to keep track of—work with the MBA, DIY around the house—but nothing so structured that it deserves anything more than a checklist—or in extremis, a database—on Notion.

Like what's the main use case for Linear? Maybe if you're an agency managing multiple facets of a client's brand—web, design, marketing, e.g.—Linear would be a good candidate. Or a high-growth startup founded since the start of the pandemic? I get the sense that most larger orgs have long decided on their issue tracking software, and moving to a new platform'd be a non-starter.

Dang I just want to use Linear though.