7 ms·

Inbox, diary, to-do list: now choose just two

52 points by leonry 4y ago

redwood 4y ago
Heads up that "diary" isn't used in the US ("calendar" is). In the US diary is something someone writes like "Dear Diary" or the "Diary of Anne Frank"
- basisword 4y ago
  A diary and a calendar are different things. In a diary you typically have a good bit of space to note down things that are happening/happened that day (at least this is the typical meaning in the UK). This is less true of calendars (particularly digital ones).
  - yodon 4y ago
    In the US we commonly call both of these "calendars". If we need to distinguish between the two, we'll generally use "day planner" to refer to the book you're calling a diary.
    - chrisweekly 4y ago
      Huh? It's a "journal".
      - medstrom 4y ago
        To me "journal" is something 15-year olds will say in order to sound adult, and adults just call it a "diary". I guess I need to update this view.
      - yodon 4y ago
        I suspect we're encountering a planning vs logging fork here. If you primarily use a daily page to log or track what you did, then terms like journal or diary seem most natural to you. If you primarily use it to plan or list what you need to do in the future, then you're more likely to call it a day planner. HN seems more highly populated with loggers and trackers compared to the general public. A quick search on Amazon US for "day planner", "journal", and "diary" suggests most people associate journal and diary with free-form pages and day planner with date-based pages (implying most people who use date-based pages are more planners than loggers)
inferense 4y ago
having 1 go-to tool / system never worked for me.. My favourite setup for years used to be plain text files which I'd use for brain dump, tasks etc. as it was flexible, simple and I owned my data. Though it had its own shortcomings and I still ended up using some other tools on top of it, not to mention the tools your team requires you to use.. Your whole information / time management setup becomes a mess very quickly. Why not integrate these systems into 1 lightweight interface and make it collaborative and integrated? I'm trying to scratch my own itch with building https://acreom.com https://acreom.com.
- reidjs 4y ago
  Same. My process is raw text files -> organized/revised text files -> trello (if active project tracking required) or Google docs (if shared with other people)
- AlanYx 4y ago
  Is Acreom inspired by Thymer or vice-versa? They seem quite similar in spirit and interface.
jdvh 4y ago
I think the core issue is that: - Calendars are good at appointments but bad at everything else. - Day planners are good for jotting down what you're working on and for revisiting what you did last week/month, but if you put anything with a deadline in your day planner you're bound to forget it. And if you have a ton of notes that relate to a single project, where do you put them? - To-do lists tend to accumulate tasks and then you declare TODO bankruptcy, delete everything, and start over. I'm convinced it's possible to merge these concepts intelligently, in a way that hasn't been done before. An app that has a free-form day planner, but you can still tag items with a due date, tags, etc so you can still see which deadlines are approaching. You want to be able to zoom-in and zoom-out in your "tree" so you can do high level planning but you also want to be able to indent and add as many notes/ideas as you want without losing track of the bigger picture. With real-time multiuser editing and end-to-end encryption. That's what we're building with https://www.thymer.com https://www.thymer.com
- Otek 4y ago
  Looks promising. What about mobile access?
- apricot13 4y ago
  the one thing that solves all these problems is a daily weekly monthly review - what hasn't been solved yet is what happens when you miss a review!
- evandale 4y ago
  I think a bullet journal fills all these needs. I've tried it a few times but it doesn't work for me because of your third point. I can't maintain a TODO list and I've always had mine grow too big. I end up having to drag 5-10 things to the next day every day after a month or so. I know it's because I'm horrible at prioritization and I do best when given a list of crap to do and can pick and choose what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it. I use a big whiteboard calendar for my most important deadlines, bills, and appointments. I use a calendar app for recurring events. Then I use Obsidian to dump thoughts, lists, any random crap I think of that I can search through.
SamBam 4y ago
I do like that page that's shown in the article. It looks like it has a nice flexibility between putting meetings/events at specific times on days, blocking out periods, to-do lists that can be sketched out for the week, and a catch-all space for things without times. Does anyone know what planners have a layout like that?
- UncleSam 4y ago
  Many of the paper planners you can buy have layouts like this. Are you asking about a digital planner?
  - SamBam 4y ago
    I've seen a number of day planners fairly similar, but I haven't seen any quite like that. The grids instead of lines, the combined empty space and to-dos, and the additional spaces outside the days.
- jaden 4y ago
  I liked that too and was hoping to find a link to a PDF. The URLs on the page are colored so similarly to the text I could barely tell when there were links. Does anyone happen to know if that sheet is available anywhere?
- jabroni_salad 4y ago
  I have been using this for years and I think it meets your needs. Only problem is that it is paper. I am also a fan of the compact calendar for high level events / sprints / vacation tracking. https://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/ https://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/ https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/ https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/
ubermonkey 4y ago
That's not a great approach. I'm in a client facing role, so my calendar ("diary") is busy. I couldn't give that up. Obviously my inbox exists, and some things get handled straight out of there without ever hitting my inbox or my notes/todos. Planning and executing specific tasks/deliverables is all handled in OrgMode, which is God's own to-do list.
rnmp 4y ago
I’ve ditched traditional productivity tools in favor of visual tools like Bleep (https://bleep.is https://bleep.is) or Kinopio (https://kinopio.club https://kinopio.club). Haven’t looked since. It’s so liberating not to have a mountain of tasks that I’ll never get to and instead enjoy time creating a visual space for things I care about.
- eterps 4y ago
  Can you give an idea on how it positively impacts productivity? It hardly seems reminiscent of something that tracks work/tasks.
  - rnmp 4y ago
    Sorry it took me a while to respond. I will try not to get too philosophical by first getting “work productivity” out of the equation. You must have tools for work productivity and maybe that’s the focus of OP. There is the concept of “life productivity” which involves your personal projects, hobbies, your life plans, family, etc. These are goals and aspirations which are deeply connected to your fulfillment. You can’t really put these in buckets of tasks. In fact, the mere notion of doing so sets you up for failure in many cases. Imagine getting out of work where you look at a wall of todos to complete just to look at another. It’s exhausting and uninspiring. By rejecting that concept and instead focusing on inspiration, curation with some level of organization and mapping you are building something something that more closely resembles your priorities and that continues to make you feel proud and happy about your past, present, and future accomplishments. Happy to chat more about this if you’d like.

52 points by leonry 4y ago

Heads up that "diary" isn't used in the US ("calendar" is). In the US diary is something someone writes like "Dear Diary" or the "Diary of Anne Frank"

basisword 4y ago
A diary and a calendar are different things. In a diary you typically have a good bit of space to note down things that are happening/happened that day (at least this is the typical meaning in the UK). This is less true of calendars (particularly digital ones).
- yodon 4y ago
  In the US we commonly call both of these "calendars". If we need to distinguish between the two, we'll generally use "day planner" to refer to the book you're calling a diary.
  - chrisweekly 4y ago
    Huh? It's a "journal".
    - medstrom 4y ago
      To me "journal" is something 15-year olds will say in order to sound adult, and adults just call it a "diary". I guess I need to update this view.
    - yodon 4y ago
      I suspect we're encountering a planning vs logging fork here. If you primarily use a daily page to log or track what you did, then terms like journal or diary seem most natural to you. If you primarily use it to plan or list what you need to do in the future, then you're more likely to call it a day planner. HN seems more highly populated with loggers and trackers compared to the general public. A quick search on Amazon US for "day planner", "journal", and "diary" suggests most people associate journal and diary with free-form pages and day planner with date-based pages (implying most people who use date-based pages are more planners than loggers)

inferense 4y ago

having 1 go-to tool / system never worked for me.. My favourite setup for years used to be plain text files which I'd use for brain dump, tasks etc. as it was flexible, simple and I owned my data. Though it had its own shortcomings and I still ended up using some other tools on top of it, not to mention the tools your team requires you to use.. Your whole information / time management setup becomes a mess very quickly. Why not integrate these systems into 1 lightweight interface and make it collaborative and integrated? I'm trying to scratch my own itch with building https://acreom.com https://acreom.com.

reidjs 4y ago
Same. My process is raw text files -> organized/revised text files -> trello (if active project tracking required) or Google docs (if shared with other people)
AlanYx 4y ago
Is Acreom inspired by Thymer or vice-versa? They seem quite similar in spirit and interface.

jdvh 4y ago

I think the core issue is that: - Calendars are good at appointments but bad at everything else. - Day planners are good for jotting down what you're working on and for revisiting what you did last week/month, but if you put anything with a deadline in your day planner you're bound to forget it. And if you have a ton of notes that relate to a single project, where do you put them? - To-do lists tend to accumulate tasks and then you declare TODO bankruptcy, delete everything, and start over. I'm convinced it's possible to merge these concepts intelligently, in a way that hasn't been done before. An app that has a free-form day planner, but you can still tag items with a due date, tags, etc so you can still see which deadlines are approaching. You want to be able to zoom-in and zoom-out in your "tree" so you can do high level planning but you also want to be able to indent and add as many notes/ideas as you want without losing track of the bigger picture. With real-time multiuser editing and end-to-end encryption. That's what we're building with https://www.thymer.com https://www.thymer.com

Otek 4y ago
Looks promising. What about mobile access?
apricot13 4y ago
the one thing that solves all these problems is a daily weekly monthly review - what hasn't been solved yet is what happens when you miss a review!
evandale 4y ago
I think a bullet journal fills all these needs. I've tried it a few times but it doesn't work for me because of your third point. I can't maintain a TODO list and I've always had mine grow too big. I end up having to drag 5-10 things to the next day every day after a month or so. I know it's because I'm horrible at prioritization and I do best when given a list of crap to do and can pick and choose what I feel like doing when I feel like doing it. I use a big whiteboard calendar for my most important deadlines, bills, and appointments. I use a calendar app for recurring events. Then I use Obsidian to dump thoughts, lists, any random crap I think of that I can search through.

SamBam 4y ago

I do like that page that's shown in the article. It looks like it has a nice flexibility between putting meetings/events at specific times on days, blocking out periods, to-do lists that can be sketched out for the week, and a catch-all space for things without times. Does anyone know what planners have a layout like that?

UncleSam 4y ago
Many of the paper planners you can buy have layouts like this. Are you asking about a digital planner?
- SamBam 4y ago
  I've seen a number of day planners fairly similar, but I haven't seen any quite like that. The grids instead of lines, the combined empty space and to-dos, and the additional spaces outside the days.
jaden 4y ago
I liked that too and was hoping to find a link to a PDF. The URLs on the page are colored so similarly to the text I could barely tell when there were links. Does anyone happen to know if that sheet is available anywhere?
jabroni_salad 4y ago
I have been using this for years and I think it meets your needs. Only problem is that it is paper. I am also a fan of the compact calendar for high level events / sprints / vacation tracking. https://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/ https://davidseah.com/node/the-emergent-task-planner/ https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/ https://davidseah.com/node/compact-calendar/

ubermonkey 4y ago

That's not a great approach. I'm in a client facing role, so my calendar ("diary") is busy. I couldn't give that up. Obviously my inbox exists, and some things get handled straight out of there without ever hitting my inbox or my notes/todos. Planning and executing specific tasks/deliverables is all handled in OrgMode, which is God's own to-do list.

rnmp 4y ago

I’ve ditched traditional productivity tools in favor of visual tools like Bleep (https://bleep.is https://bleep.is) or Kinopio (https://kinopio.club https://kinopio.club). Haven’t looked since. It’s so liberating not to have a mountain of tasks that I’ll never get to and instead enjoy time creating a visual space for things I care about.

eterps 4y ago
Can you give an idea on how it positively impacts productivity? It hardly seems reminiscent of something that tracks work/tasks.
- rnmp 4y ago
  Sorry it took me a while to respond. I will try not to get too philosophical by first getting “work productivity” out of the equation. You must have tools for work productivity and maybe that’s the focus of OP. There is the concept of “life productivity” which involves your personal projects, hobbies, your life plans, family, etc. These are goals and aspirations which are deeply connected to your fulfillment. You can’t really put these in buckets of tasks. In fact, the mere notion of doing so sets you up for failure in many cases. Imagine getting out of work where you look at a wall of todos to complete just to look at another. It’s exhausting and uninspiring. By rejecting that concept and instead focusing on inspiration, curation with some level of organization and mapping you are building something something that more closely resembles your priorities and that continues to make you feel proud and happy about your past, present, and future accomplishments. Happy to chat more about this if you’d like.