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.
Latest comments (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.
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
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! :)
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..
Evernote = 💰💸💰
Microsoft OneNote = 🆓👍🆓