"How do you get so much done?" This is a question I receive several times a week. And up until today my answer was always the same: "I'm struggling to keep my head above water."
I have an absurd amount of commitments. Here are just a few of the things I'm actively engaged in:
- Work a 9–5 full time job
- Manage my open source project, Coding Coach
- Co-host the Ladybug Podcast
- JS Party Podcast panelist
- Blog (for myself and for Ultimate Courses)
- Egghead.io instructor
- Speak at 10 conferences in 2019
- Attend and help organize a local JavaScript meetup
- Troll the Internet on Twitter
And between all of this, I tried to find time to travel, spend time with family and friends, learn German, and relax.
Needless to say, I was a bit scatterbrained. Thus, I decided to get my sh*t together and get organized.
Here are my top three tools which helped me get my life together and get more done.
Note: I use a Mac book, so the apps I'm recommending may work differently (or not be available) across other operating systems.
Notion
Notion has always been a tool I admired, but was frankly terrified of using. While the interface seems minimalist and user-friendly, the app is extremely robust.
Thus, I finally watched a YouTube tutorial to develop an effective workflow.
Create A Workspace Architecture
The first step was to take a piece of paper and sketch out my ideal workspace. I broke it down into eight categories:
- Long-term goals
- Short-term goals
- Upcoming week
- Vacation plans
- Logistics & information
- Conferences
- Notes
- Blogs
Within each of these sections, I have a multitude of pages. For example, underneath my Conference section, I have a page which contains an overarching list of all conferences I'll speak at, and their logistics. I also have subsequent pages for each of the three conference talks I have to develop. This helps me chunk relevant information together.
To-Do Lists
I decided to use Notion for my to-do lists as well. At the top of my workspace, I created a color-coded legend for different side projects. This allows me to quickly search for specific tasks.
Week-At-A-Glance
Although Notion isn't my main calendar app, it's nice to include a calendar view alongside my other tasks, just to remind me of any important commitments I have coming up.
Notion also has a mobile app, so I can keep track of my to-dos and documents across all of my devices.
Pricing
You can use the free version of Notion, but I pay for the Personal Account. For $4 per month, I get a few more features to help me stay organized.
Spark
I have an absurd amount of email addresses. Between getting married and starting several side projects, I actively use six email addresses (yes, I'm insane, I know.)
So it was important for me to find an email application which can combine all of my addresses, while filtering out all the crap I don't care about.
Enter Spark.
Spark is an amazing email application, and I won't be switching back to anything else.
I love how Spark groups my Personal emails from my Notifications, Newsletters, and Pins (although they do have the catch-all classic inbox style if you're into that kind of torture.)
There's also a mobile app, which you can download for free.
Features
- Smart inbox, which chunks emails by topic
- Smart search (which works incredibly)
- Email snoozing
- Email scheduling
- Email signatures
- Reminder follow-up
Pricing
I use the free edition of Spark,which gets me:
- 5GB of storage
- 2 active collaborators
- 5 email templates
- Standard link sharing
You can also upgrade to Premium for $6.39 per active user (billed annually) or $7.99 billed monthly.
Fantastical 2
I've tried many calendar apps, and for some reason I always have trouble syncing my multitude of calendars across them.
Due to the fact that I have six email addresses (and associated calendar meeting invites with all of them), I needed an app which could gracefully combine them all.
My co-worker, Kahlil Lechelt, was using Fantastical, and I was immediately drawn to the UI. It's a gorgeous and easy-to-use application that looks quite similar to Apple calendar.
They also include a light and dark theme.
Fantastical makes it really easy to add new calendar events and meetings. You simply start typing, select the date and time, and you're good to go. You can even select which email address you want to associate this event with.
Pricing
Admittedly, Fantastical is a bit pricey, but I've found it to be worth the money. It's €54.99 for a one-time purchase, and that allows you to download across multiple Mac books. You also have to pay $4.99 for the mobile app, which is a bit of a bummer if you've already paid for the desktop application.
Other Notable Productivity Tools
Grammarly
Grammarly is a great tool that helps you with your English grammar and spelling.
There is a free browser extension as well as a desktop application.
Grammarly's free version allows you to catch grammar, spelling, and punctuation errors, but if you're looking for more robust features, the premium account offers many more including:
- Inconsistent writing style
- Unclear sentence structure
- Overused words
- Ineffective vocabulary
- Hedging language
- Impoliteness
- Insensitive or non-inclusive language
- Inappropriate tone or formality level
- Plagiarism
You can choose to pay monthly at €26.87 or annually which totals €10.46 per month.
Lightshot Screenshot
I use Lightshot Screenshot for all of my screenshot needs. It allows me to take quick screenshots and annotate them in-context.
It works on Mac and Windows, and it's free!
Spectacle
Spectacle is great for moving and resizing windows on your computer. Not much else to say, except it's free!
TweetDeck
I recently discovered TweetDeck for scheduling tweets and siphoning out the noise of Twitter. It saves me a ton of time!
What are your favorite productivity applications? Leave them down below!
Oldest comments (103)
It is this an ad?
No..?
Why would I post an ad... I'm writing about the tools that work for me?
I've been wanting to get up and running with Notion as I've heard great things about it! Like you, I've found actually getting started a daunting task because there's so much you can do with it. So thank you for the tutorial and showing me your setup! Definitely maybe going to set it up now or later today (see, I really need it).
Do you use some sort of time tracking? Or is time boxing your calendar enough?
I actually don't use any time tracking mechanism! I probably should... haha
I'd love to hear suggestions for one because I definitely should be using one 😂
Hey Mike,
I made an app specifically for timeboxing tasks/plans (especially if they repeat multiple times through a week). I’m not sure if that’s what you’re after, but I thought I’d mention it. Check it out at potentapps.com :)
I’m working on tonnes of new flexibility within the app (and some redesign work) so if it’s close to what you’re after, let me know what does/doesn’t work for you!
Jason
I'll check it out! Let you know what I think of it :). Thanks
I've used toggl for quite some time. Dead simple time tracking. And free plan available.
toggl.com/
I use TopTracker to do all my time tracking. It's designed for freelancers but I mainly use it for tracking my studying hours.
Also WakaTime has a nifty VSCode extension for tracking time spent on different projects, or languages. Now I know I spend most of my time on markdown files in my note-taking Gatsby repo instead of real programming. 🤣
I really like Timing for time tracking on Mac. It tracks what apps you use and you can assign apps to certain activities.
As such you can then pretty much automatically track on what you spend time during the day. It's nice because it simply does it's thing in the background. Ofc only for digital activities.
They have a trial, so check it out! timingapp.com/
Brilliant blog, I'm always intrigued by what tools developer use. I specifically like the idea of TweetDeck; my twitter game is weak.
Notion is a great tool, but I was spending more time organizing my workspace rather than getting things done. It's a challenging tool for perfectionists 😅. I find Trello, TickTick (todo app) and Standard Notes enough for my workflow.
I wish they would make it open-source, I feel like it would unlock so much potential. They have been talking about releasing a public API for many months and have it near the top of their roadmap, but won't say anything about it. It was fun for a minute, but I kept hitting walls and it is another Electron app eating my memory.
I agree. For me managing notion is a job in itself. When I bought a year subscription I was very excited but I couldn't maintain it.
For now I use TickTick and still looking for a note app. I'll give Standard Notes a try.
I use Toggle to track my time.
Bookmarking is done by Pinboard, I've just started using this so don't have any tips.
Standard Notes is good, but not the best note taking app. The reason I use it because notes are encrypted. I don't have any sensitive information, but I believe in online privacy and try to support people/companies/etc. who fight for it.
Love your suggestions. My list is:
For checking my writing, I also use grammerly, hemingwayappa.com and grammarlookup.com combined.
I use LanguageTool since it was recommended to me here. It also offers extension for Firefox, Chrome, Google Docs, MS Word, ... but is a bit cheaper compared to Grammarly.
It also has some easter eggs 😉:
Oh, I didn't know about this one. I was using Grammarly and Hemmingway. I'll check this one out!
Loved the easter eggs :)
hahah, lol xdd
i wonder if the guys from grammarly have seen these xdd
I know this comment is old now but if you haven't tried QuillBot for Chrome \ Windows, etc. then you should give it a try. I use the free version and it corrects all errors in a single click.
No tools there, just authenticity!
I have now abandoned spark (and Airmail before), because of some missing mails and Spark's force to use mail threads (which I haaate)
But as I still do inbox zero I rely on fut.io for snoozing mail and landed in the arms of Mac Mail (and iOS mail respectively).
Never heard of notion, I may give it a try. Thanks, Emma.
fut.io seems super interesting. I should try it out. Thanks for the recommendation!
The good thing is, that it's completely client-agnostic.
Right. When I saw it, I’m 😲.
”reply all” at the starting step(to get the options) was quite neat as well.
Nice list of recommendations Emma, tnx for sharing. My personal problem is trying to getting focused and stay focus. For tools i use kanbanflow.com (which has a implemented promodoro timer) Its is totally free.
Thanks for this, Emma. Have you ever used Bear and Airtable? And if so, how do they compare to the tools you use?
I've used both Bear and Notion, and Notion is definitely the more powerful of the two in terms of what you can do with it (all the additional features like calendars, layouts, etc). Bear is more a simple note-taking app.
I probably should have added this to the first question - don't want to create an unnecessarily long thread. But, does Notion take/accept code?
Yes! You can use the markdown shortcuts (
inlineandblock)
Hi Emma
Did you ever tried Atlassian JIRA??
It will give a lot of features to help your day-to-day works and long term plans.
I use JIRA day to day and honestly don't love it...hah
As an Admin I have to love it ;)
Have you tried Todoist, Emma?
I have been using it for a long time and it's hands down the best to-do list app that I have ever used.
I have been meaning to try it :)
You should give it a try. Let me know if you need my help with tips and tricks. 😁
I guess if you like Todoist, you might also like Workflowy or Quire.
I can't go back to life without Notion & Grammarly & Spectacle.
I only have 4 active e-mail accounts and It's manageable with default mail & calendar app so far.
Even though I love Notion, I'm still daily using some extra apps as well.
Todoist for to-dos. I just have used for a too long time (maybe +5y?), and love the keyboard shortcut. So really didn't want to stop using it.
Clockify for time tracking. I don't like micro scheduling, so just wanted to check spent time with an actual result. Since Pomodoro technic didn't work for me, I also use it to bind myself ensuring minimum time spent.
I heard TweetDeck but haven't tried. I should check it out.
Basically, I prefer default apps/functions. But should come back to this post again when I feel needed.
Thanks for the recommendations!
Thanks for Freedcamp!
I'm using Basecamp for a job and wanted something like that for my own team, but it seems a bit overkill.
Nice share! Notion looks pretty nice but too bad they don't have a Linux client. :(
Right now I take notes/make todos with MDX in VSCode, then push everything to a private/local Gatsby site :P
On arch based distros you can get it over AUR and if you use smth else you could take a look at the pkgbuild to see how it works. That's how I'm using it on my Manjaro install and it works flawlessly.
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