My Main Issue with Clickup

Clickup integrates with everything. It’s simple to use. But there’s one thing that drives me crazy: Their user interface (UI) assumes the conversation we have around to-dos is NOT important.

Clickup‘s UI assume the task writeup stuff (uploaded docs, description, links, etc.) is more important than the conversation about that stuff. In my experience, the conversation is always more important than the actual task write-up – e.g. The write-up is the shorthand for the conversation. Assuming the task writeup is most-important is like assuming your fight with your spouse about the laundry is actually about the laundry (it isn’t). As conversations around tasks develop, I’ll regularly update the task writeup, and, even when I’m deep in executing on a task, I’ll refer back to the conversation for context. So many times over my career, I’ve had to review months-old emails and conversation threads to determine what was actually desired in a feature rather than relying solely on the write-up.

In the most-glaring offense of Clickup’s “the conversation is not important” design philosophy, they literally hide threaded comments underneath the parent comment! I’ve rarely experienced a case where the parent comment is truly descriptive of the conversation taking place beneath (think about an email subject line of “Picnic on Saturday” that devolves into a bunch of rants about how bad the Chicago Bears are this year – the subject line is not very descriptive of the conversation…). So in Clickup, I’m never sure where to find the comment I’m looking for. My solution to this problem is to turn off threaded comments entirely (not ideal, but whatcha gonna do?).

Sadly, I’ve only found a single project management tool that gets this “the conversation is most important” fact right: Basecamp. And, unfortunately, their high price point coupled with their lack of features vs. the competition renders them an afterthought (ugh!).

Of course, you could always develop a custom project management solution that checks all the boxes, as my team did in 2015, but who has the time or energy these days?