- Native notes tasks and calendar for iOS/OSX, I can sync it with work's exchange / iCloud / gmail and it works with "Siri - remind my to do x on y time" tried other dedicated apps, but this just makes everything simpler.
- Pomodoro app on my phone, this is simply amazing, best way to get work done
Some things I've used at various points in the past for specific goals:
-My fitness pal for tracking food
-Spreadsheets for tracking workouts. I found it worked easier if I just listed everything I was going to do weeks in advance and just cross it off as I did it, vs writing it down as I did it
-Tiny but gmail keyboard shortcuts - makes sorting and going through email a breeze.
-Back again chrome extension. When you land on a page it tells you how many times you've been on it that day. Useful for curbing the HN and reddit habit.
My main issue with apps and even paper notebooks is every time you go to the gym you have to take an action.
If I lay out a schedule for 6 weeks with exactly what I'm going to do with dates, all I have to do is cross it off. And if I don't remember to cross it off, it's fine because I can just go by the day.
I found I was much more likely to stick to a long program when I did that vs logging it the old fashioned way.
Yeah. So with Strong I have all my workouts dialed in with set plans, weights, etc... I like the analytics. I also have some alternate workouts, for instance if I am hurting from Jiu Jitsu I do just a mobility workout. But hey, if you like paper don't let me talk you out of it.
Bash scripts, curl, a daemon, and a Slack bot! Just whipped out an interactive todo list demo. Won't be sticking with Bash, but it was fun to start with.
For grocery shopping, I use Google Keep and constantly update the list of groceries the next time I go grocery shopping, which is usually 1-2 times a week.
I usually add items on the desktop version and then remove them on the mobile version when I'm at the store.
- Todoist for all work & personal tasks I want to complete, scheduled by target completion date. Native OSX global keyboard shortcuts plus Android task addition "OK Google, note to self- mail out quarterly taxes on Tuesday", it's far and away the best todo tracker I've ever found to date.
- Workflowy for structured idea-generation and brainmapping
- Gmail for all inbound tasks, that other people want me to complete. Chained with followupthen.io (which lets you bounce/snooze emails for specific time intervals)
- Gcal for fixed-date events (meetings, birthdays, vacations)
- Dashlane for password mgmt. Used to be unstable but great now!
Do you have Android 7? I'd love to have a power/volume activated voice recorder but the power 3x tap to start recording conflicts with the awesome power 2x tap shortcut to open the camera in Android 7+. Any other methods/apps you know of to customize the shortcut to use volume buttons?
How do you manage to have a consistent logging with atimelogger, without having spurious information? I mean, I can say I'm working, but I can be distracted for a few minutes and come back, or something else. Do you stop/start the timer each time you switch? I find that really annoying about using these kind of trackers, which of course is a problem with me, not with the tracker itself. But nevertheless, I'd like to know what your approach is..
If it's only about a few minutes of distraction every time, and that's the way you get your work done, just integrate it into your working time. Getting something to drink or having a roundtrip to the toilet is simply necessary to support your work.
I also don't really track time for projects specifically, but rather say that my time spent was 'focused' on a work task or 'not focused'. Focused just means that I planned ahead and committed to do a task, as opposed to just picking up thing as I go along (which sometime works pretty well, and can be more creative).
As for larger distractions, or forgetting to switch the task in the time logger, I'm using an app that beeps me every 20 minutes so I notice the passing time better. I'm using BlipBlip for Android.
It can also help you get started with lucid dreaming, which is awesome.
- bitlbee + weechat for managing social messaging. Slack for work.
- A custom deployment of https://github.com/gollum/gollum for managing all notes, personal and work related. Can easily share Markdown files with teammates / friends. https://github.com/zachlatta/mullog is code for custom deployment. I usually edit locally using vim and have tons of shell scripts specific to note management to automate file creation, renaming, and git usage. This is my most used life system and I'm almost constantly using it.
- Arch Linux with i3 and tons of custom scripts for managing how I use my computer. Have heavily customized my machine in https://github.com/zachlatta/dotfiles.
It's difficult to predict the future and unlikely that someone else will build a tool that will always meet my personal needs, especially as they change over time. Better to use systems that lend themselves to customization so I can always build systems that work for me – hence heavy reliance on scriptable programs.
I have a notebook called "Captain's Log" that I constantly post things into. I have my Evernote app set to default to that notebook. Everytime I hear something on the radio I want to look up, I type a few of the lyrics into a note and save it and it goes into the Captain's Log for perusal later. Everytime I have something I need to remember to do I post a note into the Captain's log and add a "todo" tag to it so I can sort those out when needed. All meeting notes go in there too. When I start coding something I take notes on what I'm working on in a note so that I can go back and remember what I did when I was working on that thing I can't quite remember.
I can sort that notebook by "date created" and see a log of my life going back in time and I've found it very useful.
I dont leave todo lists, cleandar events and life handling tools in general to take over my brain. He is the best tool because it pop ups the mos important thing to the present and if something has been forgotten, well, that's because there was a more important thing in the stack : )
but in practice I have less stress, more self stem and a feel of autonomy without external and unpredictable events that switch my mind artificially. The effect is I am more productive since I refused to use outlooks mindmappings todos and the likes. :)
I suppose you mean software, and by manage you mean maintenance tools, tools that you use all the time as opposed to one-off cases where you might use a specific tool once to solve a specific problem that won't likely appear again.
If that is the case I don't use any tool. I don't use notes, neither software notes nor paper notes, and I don't use calendars. I try to keep my life free enough of stress so that I don't need calendars to remember what I have to do. If I can't remember what I need to buy, it probably means I don't need that item anyway.
I don't use spreadsheets or anything like that for tracking expenses either.
Of course I use stuff like e-mail, although I would not put that into life-management category.
I'm a big fan of Gtd since 6 years. I used to use CulturedCode Things, Evernote, Dropbox, Minco(time tracking) and Mail.app.
After some years of use and multiple spikes into other setups, I migrated to using Emacs org-mode with git and mu4e for everything. It's cross platform, text only, does have a stable UX and API and the licenses don't expire all the time. Couldn't be happier!
I learned that my mobile is (to me) mostly a distraction and sometimes good to look up things. Actually moving the tooling to the desktop was therefore a good thing.
But: I definively can look things up from org through an app called MobileOrg. Also I can put things into my inbox. Mail still works the same with the built in mail app.
2. Remembering stuff (books, shopping, project ideas) - list limited to just 100 items (so it can't get too long)
3. Tracking habits - daily, weekly, and monthly trackers that only track current period and previous one. (So I can make sure not to skip two periods in a row)
4. Planning - an hourly schedule and a weekly worksheet to track most important tasks, fun, etc.
5. Capturing new ideas - queue that deletes items older than a two days (so it forces me to review things, or just let them go)
I use Trello for all kinds of stuff. For example we have a grocery board, so if I'm at the grocery store I can pull it up and make my trip more effective. Every Saturday morning I bang out my weekend todo list in Trello. Whenever my wife and I are going to do just about anything: go on a vacation, buy something, whatever, we make a trello board for it.
Also Google Inbox's reminders were an honest to god game changer for me. I pretty much don't forget anything anymore. I even have a recurring "take out the trash" reminder pop every Sunday for example.
It's probably not that different. But inbox's reminders are lightweight and easy to setup, and since I'm constantly in Inbox anyway, I always see them. Inbox reminders also show up on Google Calendar.
There's more to Inbox, like snoozing reminders (and emails). It just all comes together as just the right reminder package for my needs.
I started doing GTD. I use Calendar for my "hard schedule"—things that I have to do on a specific day and/or time. I use Inbox reminders for my "hey do this if you get the chance." And then I keep my big todo & projects list in Docs. I find they all occupy a slightly different and nice niche—todos & projects in permanent stuff, inbox for "soft time", calendar for "hard time." I find there's a lot of mental benefit to separating these things out. When something is on my calendar, I know that means do it. When something is in Inbox, I know I should just get to it as soon as I have the time and energy. (This works better with inbox zero though; if you have a bunch of other emails etc lying around it dilutes the reminders.)
Basically it's a todo list based around habit formation. It also has journal functionality. I set it to open when I open my browser; the idea is that keeping track of these things should be as low friction as possible.
As an aside, journaling (which requires minimal fancy software, or none if you use a paper journal) has been critical in accounting for where my time goes and what I spend my time thinking about.
I use ledger to track my finances. Also low friction, high return; my frivolous expenditures have gone down remarkably since I started doing this last year.
My digital life is undergoing some great transformation. I moved over pretty much all of my stuff to Cloudron and it's been working out very well so far.
The apps I use are
- I use Cloudron's built-in email with bluemail android app
- nextcloud for photos, files, contacts. on Android, davdroid works great. For passwords, I use Keepassx with sync to nextcloud. on android, there is keepass2android.
- meemo for my notes and bookmarking
- gogs for my git hosting.
- tinytinyrss for my rss feed. i really wish someone makes that ui a little more pretty but the android app works quiet well
- I have our family's baby blog, personal blog/website and my niece's blog on wordpress. There's a piwik setup for analytics as well (via wp piwik plugin).
What I do not self-host: Wire messenger (maybe Riot/Matrix app will become good enough some day but I need video calls). I used to use Skype but it has become very unreliable off late.
The iOS Reminders app easily sees the most day-to-day use for me in the daily management/productivity realm. Many times a week I'll just say "Hey Siri, set a reminder for 7pm tomorrow to do X" and then I can just forget about it. My memory's not the greatest, so I find that offloading even the smallest tasks to the Reminders app has helped me immensely. :)
For longer-term events, I used to be a heavy Google Calendar user while in college, but now I typically just throw events onto the Reminders app as well! I like to set them for a certain amount of time before the event in case I need to remind myself to accomplish a few sub-tasks in the days/hours beforehand. For example, if I'm flying out to a different city a month from now, I'd schedule a reminder about that flight for a few days before the day of the flight, and when it goes off I know to create some reminders like "do laundry" for the next day and "check in for flight" for the night before.
Of course, sticking with a calendar is probably the better approach for this entire thing. :P I still pop things on my calendar, but I just like the sense of checking items off once they're done.
So I've tried probably every note taking and todo list tracking application out there. They all suck. This is what I do which is _okay_. I'm tempting to write a custom solution, however...
- Use Evernote with 3 Notebooks (Inbox, Filed and Shared). Anything I think of that I want to remember later, regardless of what it is, I toss into Evernote Inbox. I later add tags to it and move it to Filed. This allows me to do a quick tag search (either by clicking on tags or typing them out) to find stuff very quickly. This works but Evernote is really meh it just is the only thing that fits how I use notes.
- Tasking I use Todoist but, honestly, I rarely end up using it. It's a chore with every Todo app. None of them sync with my calendar and, at the same time, is available to me on all devices while also allowing quick entry and quick re-organizing.
- I use Fitbit to track my movements. Works decently well unless I forget to wear it.
- Dropbox handles anything I want to sync to any computer (usually not very large amounts of data) and I keep common files and documents stored there.
That's it. My biggest problem is I've found that organization later or temporary organization is far better than any organization up front because nothing is perfect the first go around but there is almost NOTHING that lets you do this and, at the same time, offer good things like calendar integration and multiple platform support.
Wow, I didn't realize my post would end up being more of a rant than anything else. Hope it's helpful to someone else though.
Todoist syncs to my GCal quite well? using Settings -> Integration -> "Subscribe with Google Calendar" read-only sync.
I think the Android app is really great and allows me to add entries w/ dates via voice e.g. "OK Google, note to self - go to bank tomorrow". Not sure if iOS integration is as good!
Every day I write 750 words on 750words.com, it keeps my content generation muscles strong and keeps me journaling. I have a script that maintains local copies of what I write.
At home: Paper for grocery lists, conversation and my wife's amazing memory for most other things. Sometimes e-mails have something essential, like flight numbers or registration codes. Oh, and the password manager on my phone. My wife keeps various journals on paper, and those help her track longer-term trends in her life. Sometimes I'll set a calendar notification on my phone, but that's a little rare.
83 comments
[ 1.8 ms ] story [ 158 ms ] thread- Native notes tasks and calendar for iOS/OSX, I can sync it with work's exchange / iCloud / gmail and it works with "Siri - remind my to do x on y time" tried other dedicated apps, but this just makes everything simpler.
- Pomodoro app on my phone, this is simply amazing, best way to get work done
- http://musicforprogramming.net/
- Google sheets and Mint for budgeting etc.
I tried other apps and tools (RescueTime was nice but I can't use it at work or on iOS)
Didn't try IFTTT or similar tools but never found the need.
Some things I've used at various points in the past for specific goals:
-My fitness pal for tracking food
-Spreadsheets for tracking workouts. I found it worked easier if I just listed everything I was going to do weeks in advance and just cross it off as I did it, vs writing it down as I did it
-Tiny but gmail keyboard shortcuts - makes sorting and going through email a breeze.
-Back again chrome extension. When you land on a page it tells you how many times you've been on it that day. Useful for curbing the HN and reddit habit.
That's it!
My main issue with apps and even paper notebooks is every time you go to the gym you have to take an action.
If I lay out a schedule for 6 weeks with exactly what I'm going to do with dates, all I have to do is cross it off. And if I don't remember to cross it off, it's fine because I can just go by the day.
I found I was much more likely to stick to a long program when I did that vs logging it the old fashioned way.
Qbserve for time-tracking.
Just started using Todo, Microsoft's replacement for Wunderlist. Seems pretty decent.
Alexa for Pomodoro-like timer.
Pinboard for bookmarking.
I usually add items on the desktop version and then remove them on the mobile version when I'm at the store.
- Workflowy for structured idea-generation and brainmapping
- Gmail for all inbound tasks, that other people want me to complete. Chained with followupthen.io (which lets you bounce/snooze emails for specific time intervals)
- Gcal for fixed-date events (meetings, birthdays, vacations)
- Dashlane for password mgmt. Used to be unstable but great now!
- Zim for my todo and write down my ideas/projects http://zim-wiki.org/
- Syncthing to synchronize and backup :https://syncthing.net/
- Secret voice recorder to save a quick vocal message without the pain to turn on my phone and write my idea: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.miragestac...
- GPSLogger to save my gps position every 10 minutes and save it as gpx, and synchronizing the files with my server : https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.mendhak.gp...
I also don't really track time for projects specifically, but rather say that my time spent was 'focused' on a work task or 'not focused'. Focused just means that I planned ahead and committed to do a task, as opposed to just picking up thing as I go along (which sometime works pretty well, and can be more creative).
As for larger distractions, or forgetting to switch the task in the time logger, I'm using an app that beeps me every 20 minutes so I notice the passing time better. I'm using BlipBlip for Android.
It can also help you get started with lucid dreaming, which is awesome.
Thanks for the useful response!
I note everyday my hours, and go to my manager's office every time I have extra hours in regard to my contract to get them back.
Boss is happy so am I, since it means we both care about balancing real life and company goals.
* Google Calendar for events and reminders
* Google Docs for finances and checklists
* Plain text editor on smartphone for personal notes (keeping them cloud-free)
* A few social networks for keeping in touch with people in my life
- https://xph.us/2013/01/22/inbox-zero-for-life.html for managing email
- bitlbee + weechat for managing social messaging. Slack for work.
- A custom deployment of https://github.com/gollum/gollum for managing all notes, personal and work related. Can easily share Markdown files with teammates / friends. https://github.com/zachlatta/mullog is code for custom deployment. I usually edit locally using vim and have tons of shell scripts specific to note management to automate file creation, renaming, and git usage. This is my most used life system and I'm almost constantly using it.
- Arch Linux with i3 and tons of custom scripts for managing how I use my computer. Have heavily customized my machine in https://github.com/zachlatta/dotfiles.
It's difficult to predict the future and unlikely that someone else will build a tool that will always meet my personal needs, especially as they change over time. Better to use systems that lend themselves to customization so I can always build systems that work for me – hence heavy reliance on scriptable programs.
I can sort that notebook by "date created" and see a log of my life going back in time and I've found it very useful.
I've always wanted to create an app that optimized for exactly something like this.
Like a Zenefits almost for personal life.
Better to dump it out and just your brain for what you are working on at the moment.
If that is the case I don't use any tool. I don't use notes, neither software notes nor paper notes, and I don't use calendars. I try to keep my life free enough of stress so that I don't need calendars to remember what I have to do. If I can't remember what I need to buy, it probably means I don't need that item anyway.
I don't use spreadsheets or anything like that for tracking expenses either.
Of course I use stuff like e-mail, although I would not put that into life-management category.
After some years of use and multiple spikes into other setups, I migrated to using Emacs org-mode with git and mu4e for everything. It's cross platform, text only, does have a stable UX and API and the licenses don't expire all the time. Couldn't be happier!
Are you always by a keyboard or do you find yourself with just a phone sometimes?
But: I definively can look things up from org through an app called MobileOrg. Also I can put things into my inbox. Mail still works the same with the built in mail app.
1. Brainstorming/thinking - https://thoughtwriter.org (which I just launched)
2. Remembering stuff (books, shopping, project ideas) - list limited to just 100 items (so it can't get too long)
3. Tracking habits - daily, weekly, and monthly trackers that only track current period and previous one. (So I can make sure not to skip two periods in a row)
4. Planning - an hourly schedule and a weekly worksheet to track most important tasks, fun, etc.
5. Capturing new ideas - queue that deletes items older than a two days (so it forces me to review things, or just let them go)
- org-mode for meeting notes, ideas, todo-lists, agenda
- ledger for personal finances
- pass for password management
Mobile:
- Note Crypt Pro for tracking ideas on the run
- OpenScale for weight tracking
- Wunderlist for sharing shopping lists with my wife
edit: formatting
- Outlook for everything email/calendar/notes
- Alarm clock on the phone for stuff I might forget
Also Google Inbox's reminders were an honest to god game changer for me. I pretty much don't forget anything anymore. I even have a recurring "take out the trash" reminder pop every Sunday for example.
I have separate "teams" to sort my many different boards for my work-related notes, my side-business notes, and my family-related notes.
Planning out meals a week at a time also makes grocery shopping simple and painless.
There's more to Inbox, like snoozing reminders (and emails). It just all comes together as just the right reminder package for my needs.
Basically it's a todo list based around habit formation. It also has journal functionality. I set it to open when I open my browser; the idea is that keeping track of these things should be as low friction as possible.
As an aside, journaling (which requires minimal fancy software, or none if you use a paper journal) has been critical in accounting for where my time goes and what I spend my time thinking about.
I use ledger to track my finances. Also low friction, high return; my frivolous expenditures have gone down remarkably since I started doing this last year.
The apps I use are
- I use Cloudron's built-in email with bluemail android app
- nextcloud for photos, files, contacts. on Android, davdroid works great. For passwords, I use Keepassx with sync to nextcloud. on android, there is keepass2android.
- meemo for my notes and bookmarking
- gogs for my git hosting.
- tinytinyrss for my rss feed. i really wish someone makes that ui a little more pretty but the android app works quiet well
- I have our family's baby blog, personal blog/website and my niece's blog on wordpress. There's a piwik setup for analytics as well (via wp piwik plugin).
What I do not self-host: Wire messenger (maybe Riot/Matrix app will become good enough some day but I need video calls). I used to use Skype but it has become very unreliable off late.
For reminders, meetings, events, etc I use Google Calendar.
For longer-term events, I used to be a heavy Google Calendar user while in college, but now I typically just throw events onto the Reminders app as well! I like to set them for a certain amount of time before the event in case I need to remind myself to accomplish a few sub-tasks in the days/hours beforehand. For example, if I'm flying out to a different city a month from now, I'd schedule a reminder about that flight for a few days before the day of the flight, and when it goes off I know to create some reminders like "do laundry" for the next day and "check in for flight" for the night before.
Of course, sticking with a calendar is probably the better approach for this entire thing. :P I still pop things on my calendar, but I just like the sense of checking items off once they're done.
- Use Evernote with 3 Notebooks (Inbox, Filed and Shared). Anything I think of that I want to remember later, regardless of what it is, I toss into Evernote Inbox. I later add tags to it and move it to Filed. This allows me to do a quick tag search (either by clicking on tags or typing them out) to find stuff very quickly. This works but Evernote is really meh it just is the only thing that fits how I use notes.
- Tasking I use Todoist but, honestly, I rarely end up using it. It's a chore with every Todo app. None of them sync with my calendar and, at the same time, is available to me on all devices while also allowing quick entry and quick re-organizing.
- I use Fitbit to track my movements. Works decently well unless I forget to wear it.
- Dropbox handles anything I want to sync to any computer (usually not very large amounts of data) and I keep common files and documents stored there.
That's it. My biggest problem is I've found that organization later or temporary organization is far better than any organization up front because nothing is perfect the first go around but there is almost NOTHING that lets you do this and, at the same time, offer good things like calendar integration and multiple platform support.
Wow, I didn't realize my post would end up being more of a rant than anything else. Hope it's helpful to someone else though.
I think the Android app is really great and allows me to add entries w/ dates via voice e.g. "OK Google, note to self - go to bank tomorrow". Not sure if iOS integration is as good!
At home: Paper for grocery lists, conversation and my wife's amazing memory for most other things. Sometimes e-mails have something essential, like flight numbers or registration codes. Oh, and the password manager on my phone. My wife keeps various journals on paper, and those help her track longer-term trends in her life. Sometimes I'll set a calendar notification on my phone, but that's a little rare.