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Ask HN: What is your productivity setup?

14 points by mikeknoop ↗ HN
In the past few years, I have been struggling to get a strong productivity setup working. I realize everyone has their own personal choice of tools and services to make their daily life easier, and my hope is that you'll share it. Of course, there are several definitions of what might be considered "productive" so I offer this:

1. Handling email from various sources (personal, work, client emails, etc). Do you use Gmail for archiving? Outlook only? Other?

2. Handling development work between several languages and development suites. EDIT (for clarification): For example, running different development environments inside virtual machines or doing all dev related work in the host OS? (And consequently, having all dev related tools installed on the host OS such as visual studio, debuggers, compilers, multiple browsers, etc.)

3. Handling social websites, services, and IM.

4. Handling media, both local and remote (streaming via web or otherwise). Displaying media to a television.

5. Your backup solution. Offite? Local? To a web service?

6. In general, do you prefer cloud based services or doing everything locally? If local is your thing, how do you reconcile multiple machines (phone, desktop, laptop)?

Feel free to pick any or all of the above to share. I am highly interested in learning what software and services create the best productive experience for you.

Thanks Mike

9 comments

[ 3.0 ms ] story [ 29.9 ms ] thread
th
1. Currently I forward everything to a Gmail account and reply from the proper address using the "send mail as" feature. I use multiple labels and a long list of filters, some with many conditional clauses to sort email into the proper labels.

2. I'm not entirely sure what you are asking.

3. When on my laptop I use Pidgin to sign into all my IM services including Google Talk and Facebook. I use aliases and groups because most of my contacts are on multiple networks.

4. A desktop computer hooked up to a TV and speakers acts as my media and server machine. I use MPD to play music remotely.

5. I use Dropbox for backup of most documents and an external hard drive for everything else.

6. I mostly prefer local services but I do occasionally connect to Dropbox to grab documents when away from one of my machines. I also forward SSH connections to my desktop through my router in case I need to transfer something else.

maigret
6. Same here but I'm rather using SpiderOak because it encrypts your content before sending it over the network.
dennis_groves
org-mode, http://orgmode.org/

Nothing, and I am serious, nothing even touches this either for functionality nor simplicity.

Dennis Groves

mikeknoop
I like the idea of using a text-based editor for tasks and to do lists. I'm a fan of having full control of the organization of my files and documents.
j-g-faustus
This is what I am using for a one-person home office:

1. Gmail for everything, two accounts (private and work). I found Outlook folders more convenient than Gmail tags, but Gmail is great at being accessible from everywhere and works well enough that setting up my own Outlook server seems a waste of time and money. I have no other archive than Gmail, but if something is especially important (like an order or contract) I save it to the hard drive as well.

2. That's a kludge, I haven't really found a good general solution. I have a standard directory structure for projects, and use a central Mercurial versioning system to share code between computers. I use 3-4 editors/IDEs, generally based on which editor has best support for that particular language. At the moment I use NetBeans for JavaScript and Ruby, Xcode for Go and Objective-C, TextWrangler for configuration, scripts etc. and Emacs when on Linux. Builds are generally shell or Ruby scripts.

3. Manually. IM is generally turned off, I enable it only for specific conversations by appointment. Leaving it on constantly gives too many interruptions to get anything done.

4. I have a Mac mini hooked up to the TV and hi-fi to handle all media. A Linux server provides a few TB media storage. (But this is entertainment, I don't use media for anything related to productivity.)

5. All locally. I use a software called CrashPlan which autobackups my two Apple laptops to a central Linux server. On the server rsnapshot runs as a cron job for daily/weekly/monthly backups to an external disk. I would like an offsite or web snapshot as well - I might consider something like Mozy.com for a small subset of the most important data.

6. In general: Whatever is simplest and cheapest. For mail and calendar, that's cloud based (Gmail and Google calendar), which also takes care of reconciling. For code, documents and accounting, it's local. Code is shared through Mercurial, documents through a shared folder on the local network. Backups are local mostly due to cost.

mikeknoop
This is some great information. With regards to number 1, I've often considered setting up my own Exchange server to handle synchronization between desktop/laptop and phone. However while I do prefer Google for email, I've often found their calendar and tasks lacking due to the limited offline support. I find myself in many situations (classrooms, especially) where I am possibly without internet access and therefore cannot enter in appointments or tasks.
proexploit
Backup: Local and manual for important files. I have a paid account to Dropbox that I develop out of so everything else is backed up as I work.
maigret
1. Gmail + Kmail local archiving 2. Still hesitating & jumping between Eclipse & Emacs 3. Netvibes mainly 4. PS3, though sync between gadgets still an issue (iPod, PS3, computers...), PC when PS3 not capable. Searching for better solutions. 5. A full backup locally, else SpiderOak 6. A mix of both ;)

I could also mail you more info on some points if you want to.

lleger
In terms of keeping track of my events, I use twoschedule (http://twoschedule.com). It's sort of shameless plug because yes, I created, but I created it because it's how I wanted to organize because it works. I'm way too busy to use any sort of traditional calendaring application—I need to focus on what's important now and what will be important next. Twoschedule does this perfectly and it's done wonders for my organizational sanity.