5 ms·
Ask HN: What tools do you use for good habits/performance?
Mine include a combination of calendars, email, to do lists, and OneNote. But I hate the fragmentation personally.
Any pain points?
I also believe that our brains should primarily be used for thinking, and not storage.
What would an ideal productivity or personal management app look like?
Esp features that promote task completion and continuous improvement.
- enz 7y agoMostly Trello, with a kanban-style To-do list. I feel good when I slide a card from "Doing" to the "Done" column.
- devchris10 7y agoI have used Trello for a brief amount of time for a team project. Any pain point with task organization around time or calendar integration?
- enz 7y agoSorry, but I can't really tell. I work alone most of the time, so I never used Trello in a team context.
- tjr 7y agoI like using Things on iOS / MacOS. I wish it had a web interface also.
- albumdropped 7y ago+1 Things
- muzani 7y agoSublime + PlainTasks for to do. Sublime for quick notes and drafts. Workflowy for nested notes. Not as a todo list. It's a good way to nest notes in notes. For example, I made a list of tropes, categorized them by heroic vs villainous, male or female, personality, description, and so on. And added lots of notes and tags for each. This is a mess if you try to do it in Evernote, but perfect for Workflowy. Google Assistant is awesome for a variety of tasks, mainly related to reminders and timers. Have to leave the house fourty minutes? "Okay Google, set a timer for forty minutes" No calculations needed. I would like to see a complex note taking tool that just works. Evernote is a bloated mess. Notion is sluggish. One Note seems to require too much thought. I've been making do with small note takers but I still need something heavy duty.
- devchris10 7y agoWhat are some "heavy duty" things that are missing in today's tools?
- mephos 7y agoAt least for me, something important that could be considered "heavy duty" is the ability to read and write notes from both my phone and computer.
- muzani 7y agoImage, maybe some tables. I've plopped a spreadsheet into Evernote once but a mini calculator will do. I do use Evernote's business card scanner a lot but I'd rather just pay for a specialized business card scanner app. Evernote does all this but it lags too much when trying to read from my phone.
- devchris10 7y agoHave you ever needed image support? That was my main pain point against text editors and Git.
- muzani 7y agoOnly about 3% of the time. Rarely enough that for the most part I'd rather use a tool optimized for typing.
- norrisiv 7y agoLove this. I always find myself falling into Sublime Text to take notes. I'd add that I also use the default Reminders app in iOS 13, before that I used OmniFocus but they seem to have copied the relevant features I use.
- softwareboyi 7y agoCan you give exampleS?
- 7y ago
- sachdevap 7y agoAny org-mode fans out there? I would like to hear how to make habits around org-mode and capturing the information necessary. I want to treat my notes as a brain assistant to free my mind of having to think of future events and tasks. Particularly, the habits of capturing tasks when off desktop.
- stakent 7y ago> ...the habits of capturing tasks when off desktop. * email to myself from my phone * pen and small paper notebook I put captured info in appropriate org files when I'm at the desktop.
- sachdevap 7y agoHmm. I should do the pen and small paper notebook thing. I had tried to make it a habit once, but maybe I just need to try with a few sheets of paper in my wallet. Notes on the phone - maybe I need to reduce the number of clicks to be able to capture them faster (Google Keep widget maybe?)
- devchris10 7y agoWhat do you think of supporting email/sms to enter items into a master queue?
- jpl56 7y agoI add a entry in my Google calendar from either my phone or my home PC. Next day at work, I will see it on my phone.
- nniroclax 7y agoI've been wanting to journal more consistently, so I set up an automator task to open up my journal app at the same time everyday (typically sometime during my daily, so I come back to my computer and it's there just waiting for me).
- billconan 7y agoI use gitlab's project management tool
- kingkongjaffa 7y agohttps://bulletjournal.com/ https://bulletjournal.com/ having a monthly, weekly, and daily spread really calms the chaos.
- dlahoda 7y agoi use git. i do write down what i want to achieve in terms of program specification. and it kinda works https://gitlab.com/dzmitry-lahoda-ideas/additive-addictive https://gitlab.com/dzmitry-lahoda-ideas/additive-addictive
- SN76477 7y agoSloppily I leave it all in trello mon,tues,etc... Each day had a check list for production. Each Monday I reset it all. I don’t love it but it works.
- bakuninsbart 7y agoCurrently doing exactly that, too, but not very happy with it. - As I'm currently trying to get more into web development and looking for a sideproject I thought doing a "Trello clone" focused on this particular approach could be fun. Any non-obvious, specific features you would like to have?
- SN76477 7y agoI would like to see a calendar organized as cards. I don’t know what that means exactly.
- aguzzi94 7y agoI think about the terrible and miserable future awaiting for me if I don't do what I know I have to be doing.
- eb0la 7y agoPen (fountain pen) and paper. I schedule 30 minutes at the end of the week to write down what has happeded, what went well or better than expected, what to improve, and what to do next. These are the most productive 30 minutes of the week, btw.
- SchabrechtsK 7y agoI use Spark to have all my mails in 1 place. I could do it with Apple Mail as well but for some reason I like Spark more. It also contains a build in calendar. And thanks to it's syncing feature whenever I'm on a new device I just need to log in with 1 email and everything is synced. As for my todo's I use Things. I tried to make as much use of Area's and Projects as I can to split up my todo list in a logical sense. For notes I use the Bear Notes app. Thanks to it's # tag style structure I can easily flesh out my own dir structure on it. Last but not least: paper + pen. Nothing beats that when I'm working on a feature and I need to keep track of todo's that still need done. All of these todo's are done by the end of the feature off course. Nothing long term on paper.
- daffjeri 7y agoExtra income for all https://www.ysense.com/?rb=59429643 https://www.ysense.com/?rb=59429643
- md8 7y agoVisual Code & Tasks+ plugin for the same.
- TheSmoke 7y agoi use workflowy. [0] it is an incredible tool that lets you build a tree of things to do or note. it's been helping me keep my mind clear as to what to do next. i have my phone and mac calendars synced so i don't have any schedule conflicts and keep track of events easily. [0] https://workflowy.com https://workflowy.com