
Ask HN: What tools do you use for good habits/performance? - devchris10
Mine include a combination of calendars, email, to do lists, and OneNote. But I hate the fragmentation personally.<p>Any pain points?<p>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?<p>Esp features that promote task completion and continuous improvement.
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sachdevap
Any 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.

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stakent
> ...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.

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sachdevap
Hmm. 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?)

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stakent
I've tried using few pieces of paper tied by strong paperclip.

Doesn't work for me - I've lost some notes that way. For me notebook as
temporary information storage is better.

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sachdevap
Good to know! I'll stick to a tiny diary. Will make a habit out of it. :)

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muzani
Sublime + 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.

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devchris10
What are some "heavy duty" things that are missing in today's tools?

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muzani
Image, 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.

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SchabrechtsK
I 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.

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kingkongjaffa
[https://bulletjournal.com/](https://bulletjournal.com/)

having a monthly, weekly, and daily spread really calms the chaos.

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enz
Mostly Trello, with a kanban-style To-do list. I feel good when I slide a card
from "Doing" to the "Done" column.

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devchris10
I have used Trello for a brief amount of time for a team project. Any pain
point with task organization around time or calendar integration?

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enz
Sorry, but I can't really tell. I work alone most of the time, so I never used
Trello in a team context.

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aguzzi94
I think about the terrible and miserable future awaiting for me if I don't do
what I know I have to be doing.

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nniroclax
I'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).

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eb0la
Pen (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.

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TheSmoke
i 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)

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dlahoda
i 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)

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SN76477
Sloppily 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.

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bakuninsbart
Currently 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?

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SN76477
I would like to see a calendar organized as cards.

I don’t know what that means exactly.

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tjr
I like using Things on iOS / MacOS. I wish it had a web interface also.

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albumdropped
+1 Things

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md8
Visual Code & Tasks+ plugin for the same.

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billconan
I use gitlab's project management tool

