Motion App Review: I Use It, My Unfiltered Opinion

You’re here because you want to know if Motion AI is the answer to all your project management and productivity problems.

The answer? No. But it’s the app I personally use, so hear me out.

I’ve been down the “productivity tool” black hole for a few months now, and the truth of the matter is they can help, but they won’t solve all your problems. In fact, no calendar or task management tool will.

BUT, there are tons of them on the market that help keep you a bit more organized and help you dump the mental load and “put it to paper,” so to speak.

Let’s jump into this Motion app review so you can decide if it’s a good fit for you.

Let’s Get Into My Honest Motion App Review

First, Why Listen To Me?

I started reviewing AI/digital tools before ChatGPT and long before it became a “trend.” As a former Realtor and pharmacist, now an online entrepreneur and parent of three toddlers, I have a diverse understanding of what many people may need in a project management system.

I’m also one of the few who tried Motion over a year ago (YES, that long ago) when they were just getting started. To be honest, it had no project management or meeting scheduling system at the time, so I bounced off of it.

Then I went through the usual suspects (ClickUp, Trello, Sunsama, the list goes on and on), you can see my breakdown of the digital planners.

That’s when I found out that the Motion app had received quite a few updates since I last tried it. So I decided to test it again.

What Do You Need From A Project Management Tool?

Before I get into my take on Motion, it’s important to understand what my needs are for the app and then differentiate what you may need from it. Here are the things I really want out of a calendar or planning software:

My needs are ultimately to juggle a few businesses and calendars at once while also keeping track of my content calendar, but not super complex.

Okay, So What is Motion AI?

If you are a content marketer or solopreneur, you may be looking for a way to organize your professional projects or to-do lists. Maybe you manage a small team or an agency, but it’s easy to get overwhelmed quickly.

If you’ve decided to finally organize your systems and processes, you’ll quickly realize there are tons of different “types” of apps out there. Typically, it breaks down into one of these categories.

So many of these apps will try to accommodate one feature super well, with integrating other parts as well. Some people will use two or three of these apps and look for a way to integrate all three of them. It’s really up to you.

At the end of the day, most of these are really great apps, but they deliver different purposes that may fit one person’s needs but not another’s.

So let’s see if Motion AI is the better fit for you or your business.

Motion AI For A Test Spin

Let’s kick off this motion review with a quick overview of their program. You basically have three dashboards, the Calendar, Project, and Booking.

Dashboard 1: The AI Calendar

When you log into your dashboard, it will often be in calendar mode. Essentially, you link up your work and personal calendars so that you have them all in one place. At the time of this writing, it links with Google Calendar, iOS Calendar, and Outlook.

The greatest thing about the calendar is that it creates your days, weeks, and months FOR you via auto-scheduling.

Events like meetings, lunches, or any other activity will be placed on your calendar first. Then, after importing all your tasks or projects, Motion AI will do the heavy lifting and create your schedule FOR you as a personal secretary would.

How Does the AI Build Your Schedule For You?

So you may be asking, how does it determine what tasks need to be done and on what day?

When you sign up for Motion AI, you need to first customize your settings. This includes syncing all your calendars, creating a default schedule for when you want your tasks to be booked (work hours), and then inputting all your projects and to-do items.

Once you’re done setting up your account settings and tasks, it will generate a daily plan based on:

• Priority (high-priority tasks will be assigned to be done earlier in the day).
• Deadline (when the project is due, if its a hard or soft deadline).
• Duration (you can ask Motion to set aside full hours for a project, or work on it in chunks).
• Availability (it will schedule tasks only during your working hours around meetings unless you tell it to do otherwise).

As you might already guess, it’s important that when you input your tasks, to give it the proper priority to get the most use out of this platform.

What I love most about the calendar, is it takes into account what tasks HAVE to be done and if you have allotted enough hours to complete it. For instance, one week my family was annihilated by a nasty cold. Needless to say, we got nothing done. So this is what my alert panel looked like.

From here, I was able to choose what task HAD to be done that week to meet deadlines, but other tasks I “wanted” to get done, I was able to just extend the deadline. By doing this, it reorganized my ENTIRE schedule by pushing items to the following week.

This feature is honestly what has sold me on Motion’s platform because I’m a solopreneur with kids who requires a lot of flexibility. I loved other platforms (check out my Sunsama review), but when this happened, I would have to replan everything which took up too much time for me.

Dashboard 2: Motion’s Project Management System

In order to get the most use out of Motion’s platform, you really want to be using them as your primary project management system.

Unfortunately, if you use another platform for this (i.e. Asana, ClickUp), they don’t have native integrations. You can link up your tasks via Zapier, but I’m not sure of the functionality of this. If you complete a project in Motion, I doubt that it would complete the task in that system as well (but you would have to double check this for me!).

That’s why it’s my personal recommendation to use Motion if you’re planning on making it your go-to project and task manager.

How the Project Management System Works

As you can see below, you can organize your work into workspaces. Think of this like individual departments of your business (you can have a workspace for product development, sales, customer service, marketing, etc).

Within each workspace, you can add different projects.

If you’re running a digital marketing agency, you can create a workspace for each client. Then, you can break down the work you do into different projects within each client.

If you’re in the content marketing business like I am, I create a workspace for each sector of my business. If you look above, I have a workspace for YouTube, this website, social media channels, etc.

Tasks Vs. Events

Within Motion, you either have tasks or events.

Creating Tasks

Whenever you create a task, here’s what it looks like:

As you can see, you can enter basic things like descriptions and create a checklist of things that need to be done.

But the right hand panel is where the real magic happens. You need to assign the status, assign it to a team member, set a priority, deadline, and how long it will take you to complete it. What you choose here will determine how Motion schedules it within your day.

Tasks with higher priorities or closer deadlines will tell you to complete them first.

Team Functions

Within each task, you can actually assign it to a team member. This makes them effective for managing across teams.

You can also see a record of changes and edits within each task if you want to see how a project is evolving.

Okay, let’s check out the scheduling tool.

Dashboard 3: Booking or Scheduling Tool

If you have Motion connected to your personal calendar and your work calendar (which I personally love and recommend), then their scheduling tool is really awesome. Since I take mostly virtual meetings, I can send an email out or link so that someone can choose between the time slots that I’m available for a meeting.

You can create lots of different preferences for this, here’s what the booking link will look like:

Although I didn’t look to Motion for this feature, it’s been an unexpected benefit that Motion offers.

Review Time: Let’s Look At What I Think Motion Does Right

I’ve now been using this scheduling tool for the last five months, and here’s where I think it hits the nail on the head.

#Pro: AI Autoscheduling

Ultimately, this is why I have stayed on this platform instead of switching to other apps that also offer similar features. My schedule is CONSTANTLY changing. I have three kids. Important tasks will suddenly show up unexpectedly. You know, LIFE HAPPENS. WHen it comes to booking, it also protects your deep work time.

When I used other tools like Sunsama (which I still loved by the way), I realized that I spent more time crafting my day, and less time “doing.” And when sh** came up (like a sick kid at school), all that time I spent crafting the perfect day went right out the window.

Motion works great for me, because when this happens, no big deal. It will just rearrange my schedule and push things to the following day. Or basically alert me that there’s no way in hell that I’m getting all these tasks done in the time I allotted for it to, making me have to re-prioritize what has to get done now. It just makes life easier for me.

#Pro: Project Management

Like I mentioned before, I tested this out a few years ago more as a “productivity app” but found it just was expensive for what it was. Now that it can act as a project management and booking system all in one monthly plan, it’s definitely worth the cost for me now.

While I would say it’s not the most beautiful UI/UX design I’ve ever seen (especially if you’re used to Trello or other systems), you get used to it pretty quickly. Here’s an idea on how my Kanban view looks to help myself stay organized:

They offer different views like Tasks, Lists, Kanban, and then you can actually save your preferred view.

#Pro: It’s a Great Task Manager

I love all the ways you can create a task. Not only can you enter it manually within the desktop, you can:

#Pro: You Can Create Recurrent Tasks

They offer recurring tasks features which is very helpful for me. I block out time at the end of the day for emails, set weekly meetings for financials, reflections, and weekly recaps.

This allows me to set aside time to regroup and stay on track.

Okay, But What Do I Not Love About Motion?

Alright, the real unfiltered truths. What’s gonna annoy you if you start Motion?

#Con: Learning Curve, Not As “Intuitive”

I’m an Apple user, which means I just expect a UI/UX to be so intuitive that my five-year-old can work it out. Their education on their program is just lacking, and although they have some education on their website, the production quality is quite lackluster.

However, I did make an under 30-minute tutorial that I highly recommend watching (obviously, I want views, but I think it will REALLY help out, and I wish I had it). I highly recommend watching any YouTube tutorial to get the most out of the system and save yourself a ton of frustration.

#Con: No SubTasks… Checklist is Mehhh Vibes.

Okay, let’s say you have a large task (creating a YouTube video for instance). Often, these tasks have lots of little tasks that need to be done. Unfortunately, Motion doesn’t let you create subtasks that can be broken down into smaller pieces.

They do have a checklist you can mark off, here’s what it looks like.

However, this checklist isn’t a task within itself. I wish I could create a task for each individual item so that I could batch perform.

For example, I shoot about 2 to 3 YouTube videos a week. I have a task for each video. However, on Mondays, I like to write all three scripts in a sitting. Then I like to film all three videos on one day as I arrange for daycare for my baby to get it done. But the calendar doesn’t allow for this.

#Con: Auto-Scheduled Tasks Not Always In The Order I Want Them.

Now, Motion calendar works by planning your day for you. But that doesn’t mean it always plans your day the way you want it to.

Now some of this may be on me, because I don’t prioritize my tasks the best by choosing the right priorities and deadlines for all my tasks. But, I easily get around this by just choosing the task I want to work on right now and say “Start Task Now” and then it will rearrange everything for me.

#Con: No Good Weekly Reflection

If you’re looking to Motion for more o a productivity management system, then it may fall flat a little bit for you because it doesn’t do weekly assessments. For instance, Sunsama (its major competitor) could recap how much time I spent working on tasks like meetings, writing articles, filming, anything else I tagged.

I wish that Motion did that for me so I could better plan out my life and have a more realistic idea in how long things took me to complete.

#Con: No Native Integrations

You can import tasks through Zapier, but you’re not going to find native integrations. You need to be using Motion as your primary task manager, not the best the other way around.

Motion AI For Students?

I actually wish I had this as a student. Now I know Notion (yes Notion with an N, not an M) is all the rage right now for students, but as someone who went to school ALL the way (Bachelors in Biochem, Minor in Business, Doctor of Pharmacy, then a year of residency), this would have helped me assign tasks daily and stay focused.

Notion for students is a bit too time consuming to build in my opinion, this would be much quicker.

Motion Pricing

Motion doesn’t come cheap. YOu can be billed monthly or get set up on an annual plan for a discount, but there’s the pricing as I write this article.

I would definitely take advantage of a 7-day free trial here.

We’re having coffee, would I recommend Motion to you?

Okay, so at the end of the day, me and you are best friends and you’re asking me if I recommend Motion.

I would recommend Motion if you are a solopreneur, content creator, agency, or have a small team (maybe like up to ten members). If you have a super complex company with 500+ employees and lots of moving parts, I’m not yet convinced that their project management system would pass the requirements as it’s pretty new compared to the larger vets of the PM world like Asana, Monday, or ClickUp.

But you tell me, have you tried it? What were your thoughts and experiences with it? Drop it in the comments!

If you want to try Motion, please use this link as it will allow me to keep making these in-depth reviews for a small commission at absolutely no cost to you. I deeply appreciate it!