Readers Share Their Abandoned Workflows and Budget-Friendly Finds

When Workflows Collect Dust

Every few months, someone on our community asks the same question: "What's a workflow you built that ended up gathering dust?" The latest thread pulled 359 replies, and the answers were honest, funny, and a little painful.

Take Lee62, who admitted to rebuilding his personal blog three times. Or Zonefat, who tried Notion, found it too heavy, and settled on flomo. There's a pattern here: the tools we think we need often turn out to be more than we actually use.

The Allure of the Simple Setup

Cyanrel's approach is refreshingly minimal: VSC plus Markdown files. "Open VSC and it's a notebook," he says. He starts a new .md file and writes. No folders, no tags, no plugins. The structure emerges on its own, and he can move it to Obsidian later if he wants. But he admits VSC still feels faster.

Then there's the dad who turned his iPhone into a multitool. Jensding uses an iPhone 14 Pro Max with a Bangcase: single tap for the flashlight (perfect for middle-of-the-night diaper duty), double tap for music and a timer, and a long press for a voice assistant to answer his kid's endless questions. It's not a complex workflow, but it's one that actually gets used.

The Obsidian Odyssey

One commenter, 画舫烟中浅, told a saga that many will recognize. He started with OneNote in college, moved to a handwriting tablet for work, then discovered Obsidian. The sync setup alone was a nightmare: OneDrive choked on plugin files, TeraCloud was too slow, and he finally landed on Alibaba Cloud OSS for about five bucks a year. He learned Dataview, felt like a pro, and then hit a wall: Markdown doesn't play well with office documents. Word and Excel files had to be converted, and anything with complex layouts fell apart. Eventually, Obsidian became just a searchable archive, and he now uses a plugin called Thino as a flomo replacement.

His story is a reminder that the best tool is the one you'll actually use, not the one with the most features.

Tracking Time, Losing Focus

TaoSway shared a cautionary tale about time tracking. He got obsessed with logging every activity, only to realize he was optimizing for time spent, not output. Now he sets a minimum daily target and uses Toggl to track just that. When he hits it, he stops. An n8n automation updates his Obsidian journal, so weekly and monthly reviews show whether he met his goals. It's a smarter, less obsessive system.

Another user, 喵君, built an elaborate Shortcuts workflow that logged focus sessions in 20-minute blocks, filled his calendar with cumulative hours, and even tied his spending to the total. It worked for six months, but then he realized he'd built the habit and didn't need the nudge anymore. Sometimes the best workflow is the one you can outgrow.

What Actually Works

Not everyone is drowning in abandoned setups. Several people swore by Apple Notes, including Zane_Ng, who says it's his final destination after trying Notion, Obsidian, and others. "GoodNotes is the only one I've stuck with," he adds.

One user, 不隔山, figured out that editing notes on his phone was a "fake need," and now he's happy with plain Markdown and GitHub. The lesson? Know what you actually need before you build a system around it.

Lighting That Sets the Mood

In the new-stuff corner, @Cleo阿直 found a floor lamp that turned his living room from a medical bay into a cozy den. The lamp, which he bought for about 160 yuan on a Chinese e-commerce site, has a Space Age look with a walnut wood grain and an acrylic shade that glows like a sunset when switched on. It has three ways to turn on: a foot switch, a pull chain, and a remote. The pull chain, he says, is the soul of the lamp—there's something satisfying about that mechanical click.

He discovered it after spotting one in a magazine photo shoot and reverse-image searching it. The lamp borrows from Italian designer Giancarlo Mattioli's mushroom lamp and Mandalaki's sunset lamp, blending retro-futurism with a warm, amber light. At night, it's like having half a sunset indoors.

A Wallet That Handles Coins

@Tp shared his hunt for a wallet that could handle coins without turning into a mess. His old card holder, bought at a Pokémon Center in Osaka, was fine for cards but terrible for cash and coins. During a trip to Japan, he kept fumbling for 100-yen coins at gacha machines. So he asked an AI for recommendations and landed on the Herschel Roy Wallet Coin.

He found it on Amazon US for $32, down from $40, and even with shipping it was a deal. The wallet has a roomy coin pouch, six card slots, and a paper bill compartment. The coin pouch holds nearly 2,000 yen in coins, though it bulges a bit and needs the included rubber band to keep it shut. It also has RFID blocking. For travel, it's been a game-changer—even a quick trip to Hong Kong feels smoother when you're not digging through your bag for change.

The Takeaway

Whether it's a lamp that changes your room's vibe or a wallet that finally holds coins, the best purchases and workflows are the ones that solve a real problem. The community's collective wisdom? Start simple, know your actual needs, and don't be afraid to abandon what isn't working.