The Temptation of Other Tools

The Temptation of Other Tools

I am easily distracted by shiny new things. This is dangerous for productivity because it causes me to burn down my system and start over on a regular basis. As fun as that is, it’s not what I should be doing. For example, last night after reading a random blog post I impulsively started moving all of my tasks and projects back into that other todo app that I love. Doing that led me to changing how capture works with email, which makes me want to look up some helper scripts and then it was 2:00AM and I realized how much I’d miss Org Mode and oh yeah Mu4e is awesome and now what?

Not healthy.

As a reminder to myself, I am posting the list of tools and processes I’ve been using and should continue to use because they work. I can only hope that the potential embarrassment of changing my mind later adds enough friction that I actually stick with these things for longer than usual. Here goes.

Digital at my desk(s)

• Emacs and Org Mode for tasks, project management, and creating documents
• Mu4e for email, supplemented by Mailmate when the mood strikes. via IMAP.
• Deft for random notes, supplemented by nvAlt when the mood strikes. Same files.
• Remind / Wyrd and Google Calendar for events. I have them synced.
• DEVONthink Pro for digital storage and recall of files and documents
• Dropbox for sync

Mobile (iPad Pro and Pencil)

• DEVONthink To Go 2. Now in beta, sync works great.
• GoodNotes for handwriting notes, meeting notes, drawings, etc.
• Editorial for editing random notes (synced with Deft/nvAlt on Mac)

Analog

• Field Notes notebook always in my pocket
• A modified “Bullet Journal” for personal tasks, projects, and planning. I use a Leuchtterm1917.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.