[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What's your favorite tool for planning your ...
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Ask HN: What's your favorite tool for planning your day?
My favorite tool is a tool within an app called SuperMemo know as
plan. [1]. It's pretty great but lacks mobile support and syncing
so I'm interested in knowing what other people use. [1]
https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Plan
Author : rajlego
Score : 57 points
Date : 2021-10-24 16:47 UTC (6 hours ago)
| erikerikson wrote:
| My brain.
|
| I consider what I care most about and do that.
|
| Everyone should be able to do what's most effective for them so
| keep using those tools if they are working well sure you.
| Personally, I have been frustrated by a world that forces me to
| accept friction and do the extra work of bookkeeping.
| andrey_utkin wrote:
| My own thing. https://github.com/andrey-utkin/taskdb/wiki/Live-
| demo
|
| I can manage items in calendaring apps and in SQL editor, and
| visualize various diagrams.
| usrme wrote:
| For task management I use Todoist and couldn't be happier!
| Knowing they never allow themselves to be bought brings peace of
| mind that's unrivaled: https://blog.doist.com/no-exit-strategy/
| scythmic_waves wrote:
| +1
|
| - Their free service is fantastic (though I've upgraded)
|
| - My wife and I coordinate tasks easily with it
| darkteflon wrote:
| My brother and I have both been paying Todoist customers for as
| long as I can remember. No idea what we'd do without it. It
| just nails the core elements without being overwhelming.
| stevage wrote:
| Oh man, using Mark Zuckerberg as an example of virtue.
| miguelrochefort wrote:
| Google Calendar
|
| Time blocking is a game changer.
| decodebytes wrote:
| Was going to say this, it works so well as you can plan your
| tasks around meetings. For example, you have a 30 mins spare
| slot between meetings, use it for some minor admin task. The
| big empty slots for some programming task where you want to get
| a good amount of focus on coding.
| ozzythecat wrote:
| I create checklists using omnifocus. Sometimes they're project
| specific. Other times, they're just general todo lists of things
| on my plate.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| I like to hack on my own modular planning system called Task
| BATL. It was specifically started to deal with issues around
| workaholism, burnout, procrastination, and lack of values-
| oriented planning.
|
| It works on paper or in digital format...I generally use markdown
| and a syncing service, along with fsearch and some editor
| tools/snippets. But sometimes it's nice to move to paper
| especially for the Rebasing activity, as well as the Debriefing
| and Anarchy modules.
|
| https://www.friendlyskies.net/intj/the-balance-first-approac...
|
| Good post idea op, and thanks for sharing your favorite.
| prox wrote:
| Interesting idea's on that link. I eventually did away with
| todo lists. I do have points written down, but usually I just
| have one big item I need to tackle for the day but takes 2-4
| hours to do, one small one (1 hour usually) , and the rest is
| optional. This allows for more flexibility depending on my
| energy levels.
| themodelplumber wrote:
| That sounds like a pretty nicely balanced state of
| productivity to me. Congratulations.
| raguilera wrote:
| amplenote - notes, todo, and calendar in one.
| ipnon wrote:
| Org mode has been simple and adaptible for me. I can write
| plaintext if need be, it's easy to organize tasks and hide
| superfluous or outdated information. Org mode isn't the end all
| of personal organization, but its 10x alternative would require a
| sophisticated UI.
| klntsky wrote:
| Organice[0] is also worth a mention as a mobile UI.
|
| [0] https://organice.200ok.ch/
| j7ake wrote:
| Looks really cool. Could be a nice competitor to "beorg".
| hkon wrote:
| My needs.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I'm biased but I'm building my own here: https://getartemis.app
|
| It combines a todo list and calendar. Currently though I'm
| working on a mobile version which you can see on my Twitter:
| https://twitter.com/satvikpendem/status/1446697663479562242?...
| ai_ia wrote:
| This is something I might be looking for. Will check it out
| satvikpendem wrote:
| Awesome, it's still developing right now but I should have
| the initial mobile version out in a few weeks or so. The web
| version doesn't exist yet just FYI, I haven't updated the
| landing page but I'm going mobile first then desktop.
| ai_ia wrote:
| That's okay. Followed you on twitter.
| solarkraft wrote:
| This looks exactly like something I'm looking for (and have
| indeed already starred), but the repo still looks very empty.
| So: How much of it is actually done?
| satvikpendem wrote:
| That's an old repo, I originally started it as open source
| but it's not open source anymore. I'm making it mobile first
| and doing the web version (the mockup video on the landing
| page) after the mobile version. The mobile version is coming
| along well, you can follow my Twitter or sign up your email
| address on the landing page for updates.
| wokaonima wrote:
| I think all planning apps just end up by using the exact same
| format (calendar format, which is quite limited) to store
| information, so in terms of usability they are all kind of the
| same.
|
| I use nextcloud's lists, as it is free, it syncs across all
| devices and it's easy to do modifications if you want
| hackeredje wrote:
| The small vertical " things to do " booklets that you can buy in
| bulk at most shops also work very well for my own task management
| overview. Used these also for the past 20 years.
| slindz wrote:
| I've been building my own thing for a while.
|
| It blends the hierarchical navigation of Workflowy (to figure out
| your priorities) with task management and routine building.
|
| Throughout this process, I discovered a whole lot about ADHD. It
| turns out that's why I've chased this with such reckless abandon.
|
| Between the internal pressure and balancing the side effects of
| medication, I burnt out. I'm _slowly_ climbing my way out of that
| hole.
|
| Three days ago, I found a handful of test users by leaving a
| Reddit comment; I figured I could build on that by trying again
| here.
|
| If you're interested to try/test the software I call 'My Second
| Brain' (the one that works), lemme know.
| satvikpendem wrote:
| I've discovered something similar, I also noticed ADHD type
| behaviors which led me to build my own thing as well:
| https://getartemis.app. I'd love to test out yours as well
| though, maybe we can give mutual feedback?
| slindz wrote:
| Just sent you an email!
| aviditas wrote:
| I have an idea that is very similar to what you have described
| here, but I lack the coding skills to bring it to life. I'd
| like to try yours out!
| moasda wrote:
| I tried several tools and ended up writing my own personal Kanban
| tool: https://gitlab.com/moasda/task-organizer
|
| It has an Outlook integration so I can see my tasks for today in
| the Outlook calendar.
|
| Runs on Windows and Linux.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Outlook (web) now has a built-in "Boards"/Kanban-style thing that
| lets you build custom Trello-like boards and works pretty well
| for me:
|
| https://outlook.live.com/calendar/view/board (for consumers,
| similar link for O365).
| aprdm wrote:
| What are you trying to plan ? I feel a calendar and Apple notes
| is plenty
| spacelamb wrote:
| The Daily Activity Schedule by psychiatrist Dr. David Burns in
| his book Feeling Good is the main technique I use, and the
| current software I use to type it out is OneNote. The main idea
| is to create a three-column table with the time of day in the
| left-most column; an hourly schedule as the middle "Prospective"
| column; and an hourly log of what you actually did in the right-
| hand "Retrospective" column with a score of 1-5 of how you rate
| your feelings of "Mastery" or "Pleasure" with the task.
|
| The main benefits I've found are that I know when my meetings
| are; I can visualize the time requirements of certain activities
| on the rest of the schedule (so it's harder to put a hard task
| vaguely off until the evening, as it requires a fixed number of
| blocks); and I can improve motivation of doing challenging tasks
| (associating the mastery score with enjoyment of completing
| challenging tasks). The original technique is described in
| Burns's book "Feeling Good," and a summary found via Google
| search is here (visualization of the table is at the bottom of
| the article) [0].
|
| I found OneNote better than Excel for implementing this, as the
| application feels easier to use for quick reference and edits
| (the table opens up in large font, without needing to Zoom in for
| Excel as not too many cells are used). I keep copies of past
| schedules in Excel though, in case I want to analyze it in the
| future. For capturing tasks, I use Things 3 for to-dos and Google
| Calendar for events.
|
| I actually did try Plan in SuperMemo software, mentioned by the
| original post. While I liked the concept, I found it unwieldy to
| open and edit (as SuperMemo is primarily a flashcard, or more
| formally spaced repetition, app), and the program is only
| developed for Windows PCs (though it looks like there is some
| support for Linux).
|
| [0] https://sourcesofinsight.com/how-to-use-a-daily-activity-
| sch...
| carnitas wrote:
| Logged in to say this is an excellent mind blowing book if you
| are feeling bad or dealing with depression. The key is to do
| the "stupid exercises". Reprogram your mind.
| zanmat0 wrote:
| A dry-erase wall calendar. Can't recommend enough.
| jointpdf wrote:
| As someone with ADD (+burnout and friends), this is the system I
| came up with for myself. It is moreso aimed at task management
| than day planning, but they are related:
|
| I use colored post-it notes stuck to a whiteboard. One note per
| task, a rough time estimate to complete it, and the color of the
| note denotes the urgency (e.g. red = do today). I mark it with a
| ! if it is overdue/festering, and a * if it is a difficult task
| (intellectually, emotionally, energetically, or otherwise).
|
| The whiteboard has 6 rows: health, work, life/home, finance,
| education, projects. As I finish tasks, I put a big checkmark on
| them and leave them up for a bit (as proof to myself that I did
| something). When enough slain tasks accumulate, I crumple them up
| and Kobe them into the recycling bin.
|
| There is not much of a planning phase--it's just a continuous
| process of whack-a-mole-ing my tasks and generating new ones.
| joeman1000 wrote:
| Org mode. Free in every sense.
| bluewalt wrote:
| https://noteplan.co/ -> Calendar, notes, and todo in the same
| place. Very convenient to me.
| its_hertz wrote:
| TickTick works great for me
| mellosouls wrote:
| I use Trello.
|
| It's simple in essence but expandable as required, and a great UX
| (though perhaps trending a little towards busyness as it grows
| commercially unfortunately).
|
| https://trello.com/
| kushan2020 wrote:
| I read a comment somewhere in hacker news about a guy managing
| their daily planning on a locally saved plain text file. I
| started doing it and _loved_ it. But after a while I was missing
| some of that nice WYSIWYG UI interface. I couldn't find an
| existing tool which allows me to continue to use that local text
| file and also have a nice pretty interface.
|
| One thing led to another and I ended up scratching my own itch by
| creating a web app [1] which lets you edit a locally saved text
| file. It is a simple tool with some niceties of tabbed browsing,
| `#tags` and `[[backlinks]]`.
|
| Before someone in the comment asks if I have tried xyz tool and
| the answer is - yes I have, but I wanted a fast web app that
| allows local file editing and is also fun to build as a side
| project.
|
| [1] https://bangle.io
| pelayjesus wrote:
| You should try Typora, a markdown editor that looks really
| nice.https://typora.io/
| Ecstatify wrote:
| Looks really nice. A+
| flyingchipmann wrote:
| I just write markdown and put it in a private repo. Simplest I
| can do with the most of the functionalities I wanted.
| itake wrote:
| just out of curiosity, why don't you want to also manager
| your todos from your phone? the mobile github markdown editor
| is pretty clunky compared to a native todo app.
| dasil003 wrote:
| I used to have more complex systems for tracking projects and
| tasks, and I would keep this separate from notes. However over
| time I realized that the overhead wasn't worth it--more fine-
| grained planning can give a feeling of progress as you check
| things off, but it pales in comparison to entering a flow state
| on a hard problem. On the other hand notes turn out to be super
| valuable over time, even if they are rough and incomplete. So in
| order to minimize overhead, I flipped the script and optimized
| for note-taking with todos tacked on in the lightest weight
| possible.
|
| Today I use Workflowy for this system, both professional and
| personal. Being able to zoom into an infinitely nested list for
| focus and then search broadly with the hierarchy fully visible in
| the results makes for a very potent combination. Action planning
| then falls out of the system naturally without significant extra
| effort.
|
| At the top level I keep major life category buckets (work,
| family, finances, etc) which never overlap. Within each category
| I make entries in a reverse chronological fashion, with explicit
| dates if they represent a discrete event like a meeting, or
| without dates if it represents ongoing work or brainstorming. At
| the bottom of each category is an "Archive" entry, where I will
| periodically sweep old items from the bottom of each category.
| These swept items are also maintained in reverse chronological
| and bucketed monthly/quarterly so the lists never get too long.
| Within that structure, whenever a concrete action needs to be
| taken I tag it #action and then cross off when it's done. My
| planning is now just to search for #action, and one every week or
| two audit the list for actions I no longer wish to complete.
|
| The beauty of this system is it's super lightweight and flexes
| really well to IC, management or personal task.
| iamstupidsimple wrote:
| Google Calendar lets you create tasks scoped to a specific day.
| In the morning after doing email, I create 3-5 major tasks for
| the day.
|
| The next day, I can easily see which tasks did not get completed
| - an important feedback loop signalling to modify workload or
| better scope individual tasks.
| Loic wrote:
| A simple A4 piece of paper:
| +-------------+-------------+-------------+ |
| Mon.| Thu.| Todo| | |
| | | | | |
| | +-------------+-------------+ | |
| Tue.| Fri.| | | |
| | | | | |
| | +-------------+-------------+ | |
| Wen.| Sat.| | |
| +-------------+ | | |
| Sun.| |
| +-------------+-------------+-------------+
|
| Every week a new piece of paper, the main todo list of the week
| on the right, I push the items on each specific day, I put the
| calls/family stuff I have on each day. I use the paper from the
| previous week to start the week. I have a stupidly simple
| LibreOffice template I print every week.
|
| My "master" Todo list in a simple text file.
| TheFreim wrote:
| I also prefer a paper approach. I use a Hobonichi Techo in a
| leather cover to plan what I need to do, then supplement with
| phone reminders. Works well for where I am at in life.
| zafiro17 wrote:
| I do too. Slightly different template:
|
| Left half of page: "work stuff." Right half of page "personal
| stuff." Bottom two inches of page: "long term goals for the
| week."
|
| I use one sheet per week, adding bullet points to the
| relevant column. I created a template for printing on the
| office printer, then realized it was ecofriendlier to just
| recycle one-sided scrap paper (every office had tons of it),
| and draw my own lines. I use the To-Do app for tracking
| things from week to week, but when I put down my coffee cup
| and set down in front of my computer, thinking about what
| needs to get done, the notebook/pen combo somehow works best
| for me.
|
| Edit: exchanged diagram for text since the diagram got
| mangled.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| Built Homechart for this, mostly on the household/personal side
| of things. Budgets, calendars, meals, to dos, etc all in one app.
| Works on mobile and offline.
|
| https://about.homechart.app
| cygned wrote:
| https://teuxdeux.com/
| bigethan wrote:
| Thanks for reminding me about this! Used to love it but got
| away from it a while back during a job change
| whelton wrote:
| I use Conjure [1] on web and mobile for daily and weekly habits
| (particularly using the day view, set to show only remaining
| habits for the day). Disclaimer: I'm building Conjure.
|
| I have a recurring task to create a weekly plan on a Monday (in
| Notion) and then review my progress on it on Wednesday and
| Friday, course correcting accordingly.
|
| I do a day plan first thing most mornings. I plan my day in
| hourly blocks (9am - 10am: Call X, 10am - 11am: Project A, 11am -
| 12pm: Project A + Laundry, etc). I populate it with items from my
| calendar, task list, habits list and weekly goals (outcome based
| or time based, such as spending 10 hours on Project B).
|
| I create the day plan, either line by line in a notebook (1 line
| per hour), or in the Mac OS Stickies app, or create events in my
| calendar, depending on how the mood takes me, and keep it visible
| all day (either open on a secondary monitor or having the
| notebook open on my desk).
|
| [1] https://conjure.so
| brailsafe wrote:
| I usually just write it in Bear, but it doesn't matter what's on
| my plan, I've never found a way to get something done if I'm
| truely not interested in doing it.
| BiteCode_dev wrote:
| http://dynalist.io
|
| Proprietary freemium, but I love it. It works offline, it works
| on linux and windows, it works on my phone...
|
| It's basically a hierarchical set of todo trees, with a nice IU,
| sync, dates, hilightning, checkboxes, titles and tags. They
| recently added templates.
|
| The search is excellent as it can filter by color, tag, dates...
| And you can favorite anything into the menu, including a search.
|
| The keyboard shortcuts are are lacking, so I complement it with
| autokey.
| solarkraft wrote:
| > They recently added templates
|
| Woah! Maybe I have to have another look. I thought they left it
| for Obsidian and don't like that it's proprietary so I switched
| to Athens (faster but generally fewer features), but this is a
| big deal.
| toinbis wrote:
| Things (https://culturedcode.com/things/). Google spreadsheet.
|
| Swithing between the two periodically every month. I think you
| just get tired of looking in many tasks in the same interface,
| that's when I do the switch :)
| harrisonjackson wrote:
| I have a single large text document (currently in notion so I can
| access it easily across devices and offline) which I named
| "Today"
|
| Each morning I add 5 or so tasks at the top of it with some
| breaklines separating today's from yesterday's.
|
| Most days I don't even reference it, but it is helpful to get
| focused in the AM and make sure I am intentional about my focus
| across the past few days.
| sidcool wrote:
| Trello. Lanes with titles Backlog, Tomorrow, Today, Doing,
| Blocked, Tracking and Done
| sideshowb wrote:
| Mine are today/priorities, waiting for time, waiting for
| events, long term plans, reference. The today/priorities list
| has a sentinel card marking where I want to reach by end of
| day.
| vnglst wrote:
| A Leuchtturm notebook and the Bullet Journal method!
| number6 wrote:
| Can you elaborate on this? I am interested in how this works
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| https://bulletjournal.com/
|
| It's a technique for manual note-keeping that is intended to
| drive awareness and thought about priorities. You don't have
| to buy notebooks set up for the technique, all you really
| need is pen and paper. But stationers are standing buy with
| merch.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| Beat me to it, though for me it's a Black n' Red notebook and
| fountain pens.
| ekovarski wrote:
| The ultimate open standards - pen and paper.
|
| I find writing it down helps me remember the tasks or things
| needed, and a fountain pen is just a joy to use plus you get
| to take mini breaks from the digital world.
| slowmovintarget wrote:
| There are at least two very deep rabbit holes with fountain
| pens: inks, and vintage pens.
|
| Writing with an ink the color of Crimson Glory Vine, for
| example, is a meditation all on its own (Pilot Iroshizuku
| Yama-Budo).
|
| The vintage pens rabbit hole tends to force you toward inks
| that are "safe" for vintage pens (Waterman Serenity Blue,
| for example).
|
| But either way, what you write with them, and what system
| you use is constrained only by imagination.
| spacelamb wrote:
| Another pen and paper method I used for a while was inspired by
| a previous HN submission (Using Paper for Everyday Tasks) [0].
| I used it for a solid couple of months (filling up two
| notebooks with about 30 sheets/60 pages, one per month).
|
| It was the most enjoyable daily to-do method I used, though I
| found it lacking in task capture for long-term tasks and
| scheduling (pocket notebook pages typically weren't big enough
| for every hour in one column, and adding a second column felt
| cramped). I've shifted approaches from a daily to-do list to a
| daily hourly schedule with a table in OneNote, so I no longer
| handwrite a to-do list (as it's included in the schedule).
| However, I still use paper sometimes for breaking big tasks
| into small steps, and large numbers of miscellaneous one-time
| tasks.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27639875
| aamederen wrote:
| Workflowy, alongside a regular email and calendar. Workflowy is
| very simple yet flexible and has the tools that make me operate
| without thinking much.
|
| It allows me to quickly keep a GTD _-ish list of stuff going on
| and action items needs to be taken and I can organize them as
| detailed as needed with labels, colors, etc. I find the
| simplicity /features ratio work well for me.
|
| _ Getting Things Done method by David Allen
| elorant wrote:
| A paper calendar. Specifically a Moleskine weekly calendar.
| a_e_k wrote:
| A (physical) sticky note or two and a gel pen.
|
| I'll mark down meetings with times on one, and a todo list on
| another. Stuff gets crossed off as I go. Anything not done gets
| recopied to a new todo sticky. If I can't fit my todo list onto a
| single normal-sized sticky with smallish handwriting, I'm trying
| to do too much.
|
| (Aside: I find writing these out by hand to be a nice break for
| reflection and crossing them off to be much more satisfying than
| clicking a checkbox or other electronic equivalents.)
| hackeredje wrote:
| During the first part of your life you build yourself tooling
| often pretty complex with full integrations and stuff. During the
| second part of your life you have growing kids and a wife that
| nowadays only want to use their phone and often lack any
| technical skills like how to make a bookmark. So then the
| solution you need differs, which in some cases then also requires
| household organizational change management soft skills.
| LeoPanthera wrote:
| After reading the other comments I feel very low-tech but I'm
| using Apple's Calendar and Reminders apps, synced though iCloud.
|
| I get notifications on my devices including my watch, I can
| manage entries via Siri when I'm driving, and it can detect
| appointments from my text messages and emails. I don't think I'd
| want to give any of that up.
|
| (I also make intensive use of Apple Notes, which I really love.)
| hawaiianbrah wrote:
| Same! I live off my iOS calendar and reminder list (shared
| calendar with my spouse and a couple of either individual or
| shared reminder lists for things like grocery items), although
| reading through this thread I'm intrigued at the variety!
|
| I also use slack reminders a lot for work primarily.
| hummerbliss wrote:
| This is exactly mysetup !
| theonemind wrote:
| OmniFocus on Mac. Works great for GTD, though that wasn't the
| focus of your question. Has mobile support and syncing.
|
| It's a well thought out application, which I really appreciate.
| janci wrote:
| I don't do intraday planning, but for TODOs I settled on a A5
| paper with handwritten task list. It's very satisfying to strike
| out completed tasks. From time to time I rewrite pending tasks to
| new piece of paper. It is a physical reminder of repeatedly
| uncompledted tasks and somtimes I leave out a thing (I it was not
| done until now, I can safely not do it at all). Keeps me focused
| on important things (not to be confused with urgent things).
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