A look at the awork CEO’s smartphone

In the series “Homescreen!” we present the home screens of people from the social media, marketing, media and tech industries – including app recommendations. Today: Tobias Hagenau, co-founder and CEO of the work management tool awork.

Tobias Hagenau: Only apps that I use often and quickly appear on my home screen. I very rarely switch to a new favorite app – otherwise the layout has been the same for years, there are actually three categories.

Apps for Life-Orga

Things that I need to get through my day and get moving. I like to drive around in car-sharing cars and mostly use Miles (for Android) for this – at least in Hamburg and Berlin it's so convenient and available everywhere. Closely followed by the hvv switch app (for Android) for public transport in Hamburg – which I also think is the best app experience of all public transport in Germany.

I travel a lot, so the train app (for Android) and the wallet for all my tickets are my main priority. And without the calendar I wouldn't know what to do when I get up. Then of course there's the Home app – how else would I turn the light on at home?

As far as messages go, I'd rather not use WhatsApp (for Android) as I don't think it's a great app, but it's only useful because of the number of users. For a long time, I was one of those nuisances who refused to reply with anything other than iMessages. But hey, I've accepted it and surrendered.

Apps for Work

I preach to all teams that you need three types of tools for perfect teamwork: One for organization: of course, we run everything with awork (for Android), without awork everything would be a mess!

Then one for communication: Slack (for Android), still the best communication tool for teams, pun intended. And finally one for documentation: In our case actually Notion (for Android), but I don't like the UX on the phone at all, so I write down my thoughts on the go in good old Apple Notes.

Apps for health and entertainment

I run a lot and decided to use Runtastic (for Android) years ago. Unfortunately it's one of the messiest app takeovers of all time (Adidas), but hey, now all my runs are in the Adidas Running app, so I'll stick with it and also like to look at my progress in the Apple Health app.

Everything runs together there, from my smart scales to my Apple Watch, which I also use to track my sleep. Yes, I know, damn self-measurement. But I'm far too curious not to do it. On the info page, I get my news from the good old Tagesschau (for Android), I like to play on Instagram (for Android) and I spend a lot of time on LinkedIn (for Android) (love/hate relationship).

Tobias Hagenau: Special Mention

I was just on holiday in the Alps (if you have never been to Schynigen Platte, I can only recommend it) and I wanted to get to know the mountains around me.

I came across PeakFinder (for Android). Firstly, the app does what it's supposed to (reliably tells me which peak I'm looking at) and secondly, it's so beautiful, clean, practical, minimalist, fast, and built without any frills – I'm really impressed.

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