Our Linear Wishlist

Linear has developed a singular integration with Slack that no other project manager can match. But it makes some opinionated choices that detract from the overall experience.

Our Linear Wishlist
Image source: linear.app

For the last few weeks, our team has been kicking the tires on Linear. We're currently fully tied into Todoist, but we’re in the market for a new solution to manage our projects.

Todoist is truly phenomenal. It's the app I use throughout my day. Getting tasks into Todoist is simple and fast, and it’s easy to drill down into the tasks I want to accomplish right now.

But it doesn't have a robust Slack integration. And that alone could be what drives us away from Todoist.

Linear’s Strengths

And this is exactly where Linear shines. Linear has developed a singular integration with Slack that no other project manager has come close to yet.

In addition to the Slack integration, Linear offers:

  • A native Command-K command palette for keyboard shortcuts.
  • Ability to customize and save a multitude of views so each team member can see their assignments in ways that works for them.

Linear’s Pain Points

But, surprisingly, Linear has some odd pain points, at least if you're coming from something as slick as Todoist.

Everything in Linear takes just a few more clicks or keyboard strokes than it otherwise would in Todoist. And over the course of an hour, a day, a week, one starts to feel it.

As one example, Todoist has one of the best natural language date parsing engines in the business. Type the name of the day, the date, or even part of the name of the day (eg. “Mon” for Monday), and Todoist understands it right there in the text entry field.

Linear also supports natural language parsing, but you must first hit the escape key and then the shortcut Shift-D before it will parse the text. It’s the difference between pressing no keys, or pressing one key then a shortcut, before Linear will do the parsing.

Or, there's no way to simply to check off a task as done in Linear. One must first open a submenu and then select Done from a menu of various stages of progress. While it’s nice to drill down into this level of detail, it’s a bit too much when a tidy checkbox would do.

The interface is full of examples like this where everything takes a few more clicks or taps than it otherwise would in Todoist.

Another concern of ours is that there's no ideal place in Linear for users to manage their personal tasks. I actually think this is one of the secret ingredients of Todoist. You're just as likely to use Todoist to create a task to take out the recycling as you are to create a task to write a memo to your team.

And having one tool that users want to live in for both personal and work tasks is a huge advantage for creating stickiness and increasing utility.

Finally, Linear has an aggressive attitude towards due dates that may work for them internally, but I suspect is troublesome for many teams.

Date fields are hidden behind submenus, there’s no grouping by date, and no native way for users to see the tasks on their agenda for today. As someone who lives in the Today view in Todoist, this is a frustrating limitation.

To be fair to the Linear developers, the product is written by and for “modern software development.” Our team manages Broadway shows, so we are clearly using Linear off-label, and in a sector Linear was never intended for.

That said, Linear’s hesitation to surface due dates comes from a rather opinionated (paternalistic?) belief that teams should define tasks with priority levels rather than dates.

And I would hazard a guess that it doesn’t matter if you’re developing software or launching Broadway shows, some teams prefer to scope their tasks by bounding them to dates on a calendar.

Our Wishlist

Our team is right on the verge of signing up for Linear, but would love to see the following improvements:

  • Today and Upcoming views and more emphasis on due dates: allow teams to surface the due date field more prominently throughout the interface and upon task creation, allow grouping by date, and date entry in the Slack integration.
    • Make due dates a first priority, rather than buried in a menu or not accessible at all.
  • Personal lists.
  • An overall improvement to keyboard shortcuts and natural language parsing to reduce keystrokes.
  • Ability to check off a task as complete (rather than paging into a submenu).
  • Allow multiple assignees to a task.
  • Improved recurring task behavior: the task shouldn’t duplicate if overdue; add more granular occurrence intervals such as “every weekday."
  • Wrap task titles on iOS so task titles can be fully displayed (again, see Todoist's iOS app as an example).

TLDR

Entering a new task into Todoist is faster than it is in Linear. But Todoist's Slack integration leaves much to be desired. Meanwhile, Linear’s odd stance towards due dates, lack of a (purpose built) space for personal tasks and extra keystrokes, is making it hard for us to jump all in with Linear.

So what do we do? Do we select the app with the best Slack integration but more challenging UX? Or do we select the app that's great with tasks but silos task management almost totally away from Slack?

What would you choose? Let me know in the comments below or on BlueSky.