A room for Teams using many apps

Too Many Tools Clinic

Decide what belongs where so people stop hunting for the latest answer.

Why this might help

Your team uses five apps before lunch, and nobody's sure which one has the real answer. That's the Too Many Tools problem. It's not about using too much software — it's about not agreeing on what each tool is actually for. When everyone picks their own spot to save things, the same question gets answered three different ways. A tool home map helps your team decide, once, where each kind of information lives. Think of it like labeling the shelves in a shared kitchen. Once everyone knows where the mugs go, nobody's digging through every cupboard.

Does this feel familiar?

  • Someone asks a question in chat, and three people link to three different documents.
  • You update a task in one app but forget to tell the person watching a different app.
  • A new teammate spends their first week just figuring out where to look for things.
  • The same file exists in two places, and you're not sure which one is current.

Try this together

  1. List every tool your team uses right now — don't judge yet, just get them all on paper.
  2. For each tool, write one sentence describing what it's actually used for today, not what it was meant for.
  3. Spot the overlaps — if two tools are doing the same job, that's your first problem to solve.
  4. Pick one home for each type of information, like decisions, tasks, files, and conversations, and write it down somewhere everyone can see.
  5. Tell your team the new map exists, walk through it together once, and agree to nudge each other kindly when something lands in the wrong place.

Tool Home Map

  1. Draw a simple two-column table — one column for 'Tool Name' and one for 'This is where we put...'
  2. Fill in every tool your team uses, even the ones that feel unofficial, like a shared notes doc or a group chat.
  3. Write the job each tool does in plain words, for example: 'Slack — quick questions and short updates, not decisions.'
  4. Look for any row where two tools share the same job, then talk as a team about which one wins.
  5. Save the finished map somewhere everyone can find it easily, and set a reminder to review it in about two months.

Questions worth talking about

If someone joined our team tomorrow, where would we tell them to look first when they have a question?

Is there a tool we're all paying for but only one or two people actually use?

When something falls through the cracks, which tool was it supposed to be in?

A few common questions

What if my team can't agree on which tool to cut?

You don't have to cut anything right away. Start by agreeing on what each tool is for, even if you keep them all. Clarity about purpose matters more than the number of tools. Once people stop using a tool for the wrong job, it often fades out on its own.

How do we stop people from going back to old habits?

Make the map easy to find and refer to it out loud when something lands in the wrong place. A gentle 'hey, that probably belongs in X' works better than a rule. Habits shift slowly, so expect a few weeks of gentle reminders before it sticks.

Where does Tindlo fit into a tool home map?

Tindlo is built for scheduling and coordinating work across your team over time. If your map needs a home for tasks, schedules, and shared context about what's happening and when, that's where Tindlo fits. It connects with Google Calendar, so it can sit alongside tools you already use.

Keep the story close to the schedule

A date makes more sense when you can also see the reason, the owner, and the work around it. Tindlo brings those pieces together when a calendar alone isn't enough.

See how Tindlo works →

Where would you like to go next?

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