4 ms·

Ask HN: How do you organize your private work with apps?

26 points by siva7 5y ago

I am using Apple Todo but im not sure how i can use it in a kanban style to organize my private life

patatino 5y ago
I have a shared calendar with my wife and personally use notion for some archive-style notes and kanban for personal projects. I tried many different tools and did not like any of them. For daily notes, I use pen and paper.
- 97-109-107 5y ago
  What does archive-style mean in your case?
  - patatino 5y ago
    Just stuff which I do not need day to day but still wanna keep somehow.
bovermyer 5y ago
I use Kitemaker for planning nebulous projects or things that collect notes, images, and so forth. For example, a vacation. I use Todoist for recurring or important, well-defined tasks. I use Apple Calendar for events I need to remember. That's pretty much it.
- tra3 5y ago
  Kitemaker looks neat. How do you use it?
  - bovermyer 5y ago
    Like any other kanban software, really. I have Backlog, To Do, In Progress, and Done columns on my main board. Cards start in the Backlog, where they may or may not have any detail on them. Once they're fleshed out a bit, I'll move them to To Do. When I start working on them, they go into In Progress, and when they're done, they go to Done. Every Sunday I archive all cards in the Done column.
mschaef 5y ago
I've used a shared family calendar and a custom shared todo list web app for close to ten years. I also keep professional notes in a slightly customized variant of Emacs org-mode. None of it is perfect, but I'm not sure what would be, and it works well.
dirtylowprofile 5y ago
I won't make it without Fantastical and Things. With family, kids and coding hobby projects it is just difficult for everything to be organized without this tools.
JonChesterfield 5y ago
Everything goes in a fossil repo. Some things as tickets, some as text files. I might use the built in wiki at some point.
anon2020dot00 5y ago
MS OneNote as daily notes (separate work and personal accounts). MS OneNote is great since can easily copy-paste text and images to a daily sheet; So it is kind of a running log during the day. Then during the night, index it in a Google Doc; by index I mean the MS OneNote page is described with a few bullet points. An index is very helpful so that at a quick glance one can get an idea what is inside the different MS OneNote pages even without doing a full scan on all of the MS OneNote pages. It is similar to a database where-in the information is stored in the table but an index is necessary to be able to quickly find what one is looking for without having to read too much data. Google Docs as index is really helpful I think and can be used to track easy to forget details such as birthdays, passwords, etc.. as well. If not Google Docs, the closest alternative would be Workflowy probably but same idea of sections, lists and short bullet point style descriptions since the more long-form paragraph content can be kept elsewhere like in a MS OneNote sheet. Also, good I think to have a monthly iteration for the Google Doc index document so that it doesn't become too large and some data can be left behind in the past month document.
DifficultMinute 5y ago
My wife, kids, and I have a shared Google calendar for our schedule. We're all responsible for putting our own stuff in it (for the most part). For a to-do list, I just use a notebook. I've yet to find a digital app that gives me the same flexibility. I'm also far more likely to remember something that I physically wrote down, as opposed to copying it into some app. I've got a lot of medium sized projects this year, and I haven't really found a good way to track all of those at the moment. They're currently in an Excel workbook.
mikebos 5y ago
Shared calendar and contacts with my wife thanks to apple. Shared dropbox drive for alle photo's, receipts and what not. Noteplan for the rest.
jmrm 5y ago
Google Calendar is useful for me to have reminders and also to organize things with family. The functionality of adding people's emails, automatically send them a request of that event, letting them answer if they are gonna go or not, and adding in their personal calendars that event, is just priceless. For to-do list, shopping lists, ideas, and other small things, I always use paper and pen. I don't usually carry any of this around except shopping lists (to cross out articles already bought), but if I had to, I'll bought a Moleskine or similar to carry around. For projects where there are others than me involved, or for projects that have a bigger size, Trello (or any other card-style list manager) is the best to use. It let you order ideas, to-do items, parts, or any other divisible list of things in the way you like. For example: - Ideas, To do, To check, Completed - Alice, Bob, Carol, Dave, DONE - General, Minimal, Failsafe, UX, Maintenance

26 points by siva7 5y ago

I am using Apple Todo but im not sure how i can use it in a kanban style to organize my private life

I have a shared calendar with my wife and personally use notion for some archive-style notes and kanban for personal projects. I tried many different tools and did not like any of them. For daily notes, I use pen and paper.

97-109-107 5y ago
What does archive-style mean in your case?
- patatino 5y ago
  Just stuff which I do not need day to day but still wanna keep somehow.

bovermyer 5y ago

I use Kitemaker for planning nebulous projects or things that collect notes, images, and so forth. For example, a vacation. I use Todoist for recurring or important, well-defined tasks. I use Apple Calendar for events I need to remember. That's pretty much it.

tra3 5y ago
Kitemaker looks neat. How do you use it?
- bovermyer 5y ago
  Like any other kanban software, really. I have Backlog, To Do, In Progress, and Done columns on my main board. Cards start in the Backlog, where they may or may not have any detail on them. Once they're fleshed out a bit, I'll move them to To Do. When I start working on them, they go into In Progress, and when they're done, they go to Done. Every Sunday I archive all cards in the Done column.

mschaef 5y ago

I've used a shared family calendar and a custom shared todo list web app for close to ten years. I also keep professional notes in a slightly customized variant of Emacs org-mode. None of it is perfect, but I'm not sure what would be, and it works well.

dirtylowprofile 5y ago

I won't make it without Fantastical and Things. With family, kids and coding hobby projects it is just difficult for everything to be organized without this tools.

JonChesterfield 5y ago

Everything goes in a fossil repo. Some things as tickets, some as text files. I might use the built in wiki at some point.

anon2020dot00 5y ago

MS OneNote as daily notes (separate work and personal accounts). MS OneNote is great since can easily copy-paste text and images to a daily sheet; So it is kind of a running log during the day. Then during the night, index it in a Google Doc; by index I mean the MS OneNote page is described with a few bullet points. An index is very helpful so that at a quick glance one can get an idea what is inside the different MS OneNote pages even without doing a full scan on all of the MS OneNote pages. It is similar to a database where-in the information is stored in the table but an index is necessary to be able to quickly find what one is looking for without having to read too much data. Google Docs as index is really helpful I think and can be used to track easy to forget details such as birthdays, passwords, etc.. as well. If not Google Docs, the closest alternative would be Workflowy probably but same idea of sections, lists and short bullet point style descriptions since the more long-form paragraph content can be kept elsewhere like in a MS OneNote sheet. Also, good I think to have a monthly iteration for the Google Doc index document so that it doesn't become too large and some data can be left behind in the past month document.

DifficultMinute 5y ago

My wife, kids, and I have a shared Google calendar for our schedule. We're all responsible for putting our own stuff in it (for the most part). For a to-do list, I just use a notebook. I've yet to find a digital app that gives me the same flexibility. I'm also far more likely to remember something that I physically wrote down, as opposed to copying it into some app. I've got a lot of medium sized projects this year, and I haven't really found a good way to track all of those at the moment. They're currently in an Excel workbook.

mikebos 5y ago

Shared calendar and contacts with my wife thanks to apple. Shared dropbox drive for alle photo's, receipts and what not. Noteplan for the rest.

jmrm 5y ago

Google Calendar is useful for me to have reminders and also to organize things with family. The functionality of adding people's emails, automatically send them a request of that event, letting them answer if they are gonna go or not, and adding in their personal calendars that event, is just priceless. For to-do list, shopping lists, ideas, and other small things, I always use paper and pen. I don't usually carry any of this around except shopping lists (to cross out articles already bought), but if I had to, I'll bought a Moleskine or similar to carry around. For projects where there are others than me involved, or for projects that have a bigger size, Trello (or any other card-style list manager) is the best to use. It let you order ideas, to-do items, parts, or any other divisible list of things in the way you like. For example: - Ideas, To do, To check, Completed - Alice, Bob, Carol, Dave, DONE - General, Minimal, Failsafe, UX, Maintenance