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Jethro Lorenzo Garcia Lising
Jethro Lorenzo Garcia Lising

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My Productivity Tools as a Software Engineer

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

Agenda: date-focused working notes with a project context

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

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

Top comments (10)

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didin1453fatih profile image
Didin 👨‍💻

I think you can add dbdesigner.id for your productivity tool.
This is database designer. This app is web base.

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jethrolising profile image
Jethro Lorenzo Garcia Lising

This is interesting, I will check it out if I have any database work

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didin1453fatih profile image
Didin 👨‍💻

I hope you are helped with this..

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zoebourque profile image
zoebourque

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.

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johannesjo profile image
Johannes Millan

My recommendation for task management and time tracking if needed:
github.com/johannesjo/super-produc...

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jethrolising profile image
Jethro Lorenzo Garcia Lising

Nice app! I'm gonna have to test this out see if it fits my use-case. Thanks!

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johannesjo profile image
Johannes Millan

Please let me know what you think! :)

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spez profile image
Abhigyan

Evernote = 💰💸💰
Microsoft OneNote = 🆓👍🆓

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farhanaxmustafa profile image
Farhana

Great article! I haven't heard of Interstitial Journaling before. For my personal notes, I started using notion.so

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jethrolising profile image
Jethro Lorenzo Garcia Lising

Notion is great! I've been playing with it recently and It's nice that you can share pages very easily