I think the big problem with stuff like JIRA, Monday.com etc. is that the boss knows about it. Pretty much by definition, a tool that the boss controls will not

I think the big problem with stuff like JIRA, Monday.com etc. is that the boss knows about it. Pretty much by definition, a tool that the boss controls will not be one that you have a free hand to optimize your work with. Even if it does help, you're no better off as an employee because that's just the new baseline, and the boss gets all the credit for having forced you to adopt it, rather than you getting the credit for being a diligent employee. Then there are other pieces of software that are really for ICs. I'm in SRE/DevOps type work so for me those are mostly open source things or little tools I've written myself. Chief in my arsenal is Emacs and especially org-mode. It literally does help me do things at work that I couldn't have managed without it: -> remembering to "circle back" on conversations where that was the agreed-upon resolution weeks ago (middle managers and VPs love to "circle back" on the same topic for years with no real decisions being made -- makes no sense but you usually get brownie points for "remembering"). -> keeping executable (via org-babel) notes of finicky operations tasks that haven't been automated yet -- and these notes are also gold if and when the time comes to actually do that automation, since they mostly consist of already-debugged code and notes about corner cases. -> keeping track of deadlines other people (including my boss) forget about. -> organizing my notes about what I worked on in a day so that I can easily fill out my JIRA-based TPS reports before our twice-weekly "standup" with the "project manager" who also covers 10 other teams and has no clue what any of them really do. -> planning around upcoming PTO/holidays/company events/product launches. If all of this stuff were seamlessly tracked by JIRA directly, I would get essentially no personal benefit from it. As it is, and because nobody has any clue about my org-mode system, I look like a hyper-focused and organized employee with a mind like a steel trap. Thinking about this often leads me to wonder if there isn't a market for "secret" productivity software for individual contributors: imagine a slickly-produced analogue of org-mode with built-in JIRA/email/Slack clients. Use your own personal productivity system locally and sync it to shared systems in exactly the way you want, when you want. The main obstacles I see to selling software like this are: -> Closed platforms like Slack don't want interoperability (though JIRA offers "personal access tokens" and you can probably get IMAP access for your corporate email if you push with the IT department) because their business model is about lock-in. -> People are generally not enthusiastic to shell out of their own pocket for work tools, and telling the boss about it to get reimbursed is sort of definitionally out of the question here. -> Corporate InfoSec folks aren't going to like any of this, probably even if it is a client-only executable and the data never leaves company hardware. -> Individual employees generally don't want to buy "erector set" software that requires tons of config, which this problem space kind of inherently requires. Maybe there are solutions to these problems. I dunno. I hope someone works it out, if only so I can be a happy customer.