Staying organized is hard. As a software engineer, writing code is probably 1/4th of the battle. You have to stay on top of your knowledge for long-term storage. You need to keep a Dev journal to record your insights. You need an interstitial journal to reflect and switch contexts mindfully. You need a way to securely and privately track your time spent on projects and to track future-events and meetings.
This is why I delegate my second brain (long-term) into different apps that handle one and only thing.
These are the tools I use to manage my projects and my life. They are mostly found in the Apple ecosystem, but alternatives are listed below.
Bear: for knowledge-base
- Private Markdown Notes for iPhone, iPad and Mac | Bear App
- For permanent notes (zetels) and trees (mind garden)
- For literature notes and reference notes as well
- For long-term knowledge
- Good for code-snippets, syntax highlighting is available
- Premium is required for Mac OS and iOS sync
- Alternative: Joplin - an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation capabilities
Agenda: date-focused working notes with a project context
- Agenda - Date-focused Note Taking.
- For notes that do have a project context
- some notes you took on a project or meeting
- Assign notes that are “On The Agenda” for focus
- This is great if you keep a dev journal or an interstitial journal
- Alternative: Joplin - an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation capabilities
Trello: project and life management
- Trello
- A kanban (signboard, in Japanese)
- Visualize work
- Limiting work in progress
- Follow Personal Kanban for how to manage life
- Follow Agile methodology to manage projects
Standard Notes: secure raw notes
- Standard Notes | A Simple And Private Notes App
- For secure cross-platform (iOS, Android, Web) notes
- These are good for ephemeral, raw notes without a project context
- Also works as a small password manager
- Alternative: Joplin - an open source note taking and to-do application with synchronisation capabilities
Note: Yes Joplin can replace Standard Notes, Agenda, and Bear.
Apple Calendar: appointments and time-blocked events
- Speaks for itself.
- Alternative: Google Calendar
Apple Reminders: one-time and recurring reminders
- For recurring reminders (“Take Out Recycling for collection”, “Wash bedsheets”)
- Also good for one-off reminders
- Integrates with Agenda
- Alternative: Google Tasks
Timewarrior: time-tracking
- Timewarrior - Done yet?
- To keep track of the time spent on a project or activity
- Cons: command-line only
- Still looking for a simple, cross platform solution (Web, Desktop, Mobile)
- Alternative for Mobile: GitHub - hamaluik/timecop: A time tracking app that respects your privacy and the gets the job done without being fancy.
Discussion (10)
Amazing! Interested in trying Timewarrior soon. For project management software, I used to be a Trello user, but it wasn't right for me. Now, I switched to Quire. If you've never heard of Quire, you can try to see if you like it! I really like their nested task list and Peekaboo feature to hide the tasks.
I think you can add dbdesigner.id for your productivity tool.
This is database designer. This app is web base.
This is interesting, I will check it out if I have any database work
I hope you are helped with this..
My recommendation for task management and time tracking if needed:
github.com/johannesjo/super-produc...
Nice app! I'm gonna have to test this out see if it fits my use-case. Thanks!
Please let me know what you think! :)
Great article! I haven't heard of Interstitial Journaling before. For my personal notes, I started using notion.so
Notion is great! I've been playing with it recently and It's nice that you can share pages very easily
Evernote = 💰💸💰
Microsoft OneNote = 🆓👍🆓