Every productivity app promises to help you do more. The pitch is always additive: more integrations, more views, more AI features, more dashboards.
Nobody asks what happens when your work tool becomes another tab to manage.
Kanman takes a different stance. No calendar integration. No video calls. No AI suggestions. No dashboards. These aren’t missing features - they’re deliberate design decisions.
The Feature Tax
Every feature costs attention. Not just the time to learn it, but the cognitive load of knowing it exists.
A calendar integration means you now think about time blocks inside your task manager. An AI assistant means you wonder if you should ask it. A dashboard means you feel obligated to check numbers. Each addition fragments your focus across more surfaces.
Software vendors rarely acknowledge this cost. Features get celebrated as progress. The product grows. The marketing page adds another bullet point. Nobody measures what users lose when the interface gets busier.
The result: tools that do everything, but make everything harder.
Everything You Need, Nothing Else
Kanman shows your projects and tasks. That’s the entire surface area.
You drag projects to reprioritize. You mark tasks complete. You see what you started and what needs finishing. The interface is simple enough to use at 11pm after a long day.
No gamification means no guilt about broken streaks. No AI means no algorithm second-guessing your priorities. No calendar means you stay focused on what to do, not when to schedule it.
This isn’t laziness or a roadmap gap. It’s a bet that less surface area means more finished work.
Why Omissions Matter
Consider what happens when you add a calendar to a task manager.
Suddenly, tasks exist in two dimensions: the list and the schedule. You now maintain both. When reality shifts - and it always does - you update both. The calendar becomes a planning surface, and planning is often procrastination dressed up as productivity.
Kanman skips the calendar because scheduling is a separate problem. You don’t need your task tool to become a scheduling tool. You need your task tool to stay focused on tasks.
The same logic applies to AI suggestions. Predictive features assume the tool knows your work better than you do. Kanman trusts you. You already know what matters - you don’t need an algorithm ranking your priorities.
Feature Bloat Is a Trust Issue
When a tool adds features aggressively, it reveals something about the relationship. The vendor doesn’t trust users to choose their own stack. The tool wants to become the operating system for your work, locking you in with integrations and surface area.
Minimal tools respect your judgment. They stay in their lane. They do one thing well and expect you to compose your workflow from multiple focused tools rather than one bloated platform.
This sounds like more work, but it’s often less. A three-app stack where each app excels beats a single app that does everything poorly. Context-switching between focused tools costs less than navigating a cluttered interface.
How to Evaluate Tools
Before adopting any tool, ask what it doesn’t do.
If the answer is “nothing - it does everything,” that’s a red flag. No tool can excel at everything. A feature list without clear omissions usually means every feature gets mediocre attention.
Look for tools that explain their constraints. Why doesn’t it integrate with calendars? Why doesn’t it have AI? A principled reason for absence suggests thoughtful design. No explanation suggests the feature just hasn’t shipped yet.
Kanman is explicit about what it omits: no calendars because scheduling is a different problem, no AI because you’re the expert on your work, no dashboards because outcomes matter more than metrics.
These constraints aren’t limitations. They’re the reason the tool stays fast, quiet, and useful.
Less Is Finished
Shipping beats features. A tool that helps you complete work matters more than a tool that helps you organize, visualize, gamify, schedule, and analyze work.
The productivity industry sells complexity. More systems, more frameworks, more surfaces to maintain. Minimalism cuts through this by asking one question: does this help me finish?
Kanman answers yes by keeping the focus on started projects and letting everything else go. No streaks. No points. No dashboards. Just the work you’re doing and the work that’s done.
Minimalism isn’t a missing feature. It’s the whole feature.
Ready for a tool that trusts you? Handles projects and tasks with no gamification, no AI, and no surveillance. Kanman - annual workspace subscriptions. €4 / month for individuals, €10 per seat / month.
Marco Kerwitz
Founder of kanman.de