[HN Gopher] My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
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My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)
Author : simonebrunozzi
Score : 113 points
Date : 2025-12-11 19:30 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jeffhuang.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jeffhuang.com)
| mt_ wrote:
| I envy people that stick for a system like this for so long.
| Because when you master it, it is when you can build a system
| around it. For this piece, i suggest the author to build his own
| frontend app, that mimics this system but with a better, clean UI
| interface. Hell, he can just vibe code it in under a hour these
| days and at the end leverage the ergonomics of a clean interface,
| and of course implement integrations that the app will enables,
| to build systems around it, to become even more productive.
| samdoesnothing wrote:
| Satire?
| copperx wrote:
| I wish I could tell honest comments from satire apart. It's
| especially hard after reading the future HN created by Gemini
| that was posted yesterday.
| jaffa2 wrote:
| Why build an app? It seems the whole benefit here is it doesnt
| need any app. Its completely agnostic and simple. The value is
| in the data and the way he enters it in.
|
| It sounds like a good system but i still believe it takes the
| discipline of a strong willed person to do the system no matter
| what system you use.
|
| If i did this i would give up after 2 days. He says he redoes
| his list every night ready for the next day --- THAT is the
| secret here, not the specific system he uses.
|
| I've tried all sorts over the years different tools, different
| systems , different philosophies, inbox zero, gtd etc They
| don't work for me. I get by with a notepad and pen and i write
| lists as and when. Theres people out there and some even have
| YouTube channeks dedicatd to disseminating their productivity
| hack and workflows for evey tool Imaginable, and they are
| really enthusiastic about it.
|
| It doesn't do it for me im too free spirited.
| jaredsohn wrote:
| I started tracking everything I ate three years ago and even
| posted about it via this comment:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32552288
|
| I updated it substantially via AI this summer (includes micros,
| compounds, and various other stats and a webpage with charts
| now) and then I started making diet changes based on these new
| features. Is really neat to compare data from before and after
| those changes. And like you suggested, I keep making
| improvements to the system and to myself and it becomes really
| satisfying / motivational.
|
| Is still driven by simple text files.
| swatcoder wrote:
| - Essentially zero input or transactional latency
|
| - Proven effective after 14 years of heavy use
|
| - Celebrated by user
|
| - Zero dependencies
|
| - Maximally portable
|
| - Outage-proof
|
| - Compatible with all backup systems and most version control
| systems
|
| Have you considered that stuff like this _is_ already "more
| productive" for fluent users than almost any alternative could
| be?
|
| Somewhere along the line, product people started to mistake
| following design trends and adding complexity for productivity,
| forgetting that delivering the right combination of _fluency_ ,
| _stability_ , _simiplicity_ are often the real road to
| maximizing it.
| rogerrogerr wrote:
| > Celebrated by user
|
| Oh I'm totally putting this in a performance review this
| year.
| egypturnash wrote:
| Why?
|
| Why would he want to waste a single iota of effort trying to
| improve something that was working just fine for _fourteen
| years_ when he wrote this post three years ago? What's gonna be
| easier to use than the text editor he knows how to drive
| without a single thought? What does he gain by taking a simple
| text file he can sync to any device and replacing it with a
| database bound to a custom app that he now has to keep running?
| I mean _besides_ the risk that an OS update will break this app
| and now he can't get anything else done until he fixes it,
| because he's the only person maintaining it? Most of the
| interaction is still going to be typing in free-form text, how
| is taking his hand off the keyboard to poke at a "new task"
| widget going to make it better and cleaner than just typing
| return, dash, space? What GUI kit is not going to fall over and
| whimper when you hand it 51k items to render? What does he gain
| by spending days trying different ways to get around _that_
| interface design problem in hopes of finding one as seamless as
| his simple text editor?
| fastasucan wrote:
| Why would he?
| intrasight wrote:
| Mine is as well. Well actually one TXT file per project. Still,
| they are tens of megabytes in total size at this point.
| sowbug wrote:
| Something like this would be perfect for a local LLM assistant.
| sublinear wrote:
| Not sure why you're getting downvoted, but I agree at least in
| principle. There should be some means to index/search this kind
| of semi-structured text. Summaries are also nice, but not as
| useful to me at least.
|
| Like the author I also do tagging, but in the real world some
| notes will eventually slip through the cracks. Even when it's
| just one, that's probably the one you're looking for. :)
| anthk wrote:
| Either grep or hyperstraier. You don't need an LLM.
| nottorp wrote:
| A LLM may be able to give you all the paragraphs referring
| to frobnicating widget X including misspellings and notes
| not referring to it by name.
|
| It's "AI" right? It could right?
| tbeseda wrote:
| Agreed. I'm working on a small GUI that just appends to a local
| .ndjson file. A user just posts with a text box into a feed.
| Like a one person chat or tweeting into the void. And a local
| LLM picks apart metadata, storing just enough to index where
| answers to future questions will be. Then you can use slash
| commands to get at the analysis like "/tasks last month" or
| "/summarize work today" etc.
| zebomon wrote:
| I've been doing pretty much the same thing since 2019. The only
| big change I made was in early 2023, when I started saving a new
| version of the long txt file each day. It works very well for me
| but I recognize it isn't the right system for everyone!
| Lendal wrote:
| I have a file like this, several years long, but parsed with YAML
| so that each day is clearly separated from the next, and for list
| parsing, and for dictionary parsing so each project I work on is
| associated with a YAML dictionary key. I can go back in time and
| easily find notes related to specific projects or specific dates.
| miladyincontrol wrote:
| Gonna be honest, my productivity app once upon a time was unsaved
| sublime text documents
| winrid wrote:
| Scratch files in jetbrains ides also!
| 65 wrote:
| My productivity app is a sketchbook and a pencil, if anyone
| knows what those are.
| lycos wrote:
| For me it often still is.. at least when I'm working alone on
| something / no collaboration needed. Every time I try something
| else I revert back to this, although sometimes I do save the
| files, eventually.
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| Mine is the same, but unsaved files in Notepad++
| nottorp wrote:
| TextMate here. Unsaved ofc.
| jorl17 wrote:
| You mean it hasn't been that way for the last 14 years and it
| hasn't survived 5 different computer changes and a dozen or so
| OS migrations and you don't still have a tiny document with
| "fun business ideas" to start that company with your fresh out
| of college gang right next to that "how to organize a great 10
| year reunion" sheet from 3 years ago?
|
| Must be a me thing, then.
| DustinBrett wrote:
| Google Keep for me is the way to go. Easy to use on desktop or
| mobile, can "share" anything with it. I like to make notes with
| various titles & colors that I use to organize my life/thoughts.
| nickjj wrote:
| I did something similar since 2001: -rw-r--r--
| 1 nick nick 691 Mar 16 2001 2001-03.txt
|
| I separated mine by YYYY-MM which is long enough to keep related
| things together but short enough where it's easy to find things
| within a single file. It's all super easy to grep things out on
| demand.
|
| There's no procrastination about organizing or perfect tags. Just
| brain dump the thought or notes and move on with life.
|
| https://github.com/nickjj/notes was created so I can type things
| like `notes hello world` and it inserts it for the correct YYYY-
| MM or `notes` to open the current YYYY-MM in your $EDITOR. It
| supports piping into it too (good for pasting from your
| clipboard). It's ~40 lines of shell scripting with comments.
| sublinear wrote:
| > There's no procrastination about organizing or perfect tags.
| Just brain dump the thought or notes and move on with life.
|
| I keep my notes on paper and write them in real time, so I
| agree with this very strongly. I manage to keep up with the
| real world despite this.
|
| My paper indexing system is two simple things.
|
| 1) Write in the next available space. When done writing I draw
| a dividing horizontal line straight across the whole page. Just
| above this line I assign it a serial number in a little box.
|
| 2) Starting from the back of the last page, I keep metadata for
| each entry. Usually topic tags, but sometimes it's more
| involved. I usually do this when I am under less time pressure.
| It doesn't even have to be the same day. I'm not strict about
| completeness because if I don't care... well I don't care.
| bboozzoo wrote:
| I do something similar but with Emacs and org mode. I start a new
| file each time I join a new company and just keep on updating it
| with things as I'm progressing through my day. The one I carry
| right now goes back as far as Dec 2017. It's a super useful
| resource for dailies, or looking back at what you did. Heck I
| even add TODOs and shell snippets that I often find useful. If
| you feed it to some LLM then you can even do nice summaries and
| meaningful searches that aren't necessarily based on single
| keywords.
| reddit_clone wrote:
| Yep. Org-gtd, Org-Roam and Org-journal user here. Haven't
| needed anything else. All local, searchable with deft and old
| fashioned grep.
| gdulli wrote:
| This was my system for a long time and I eventually moved to
| Notesnook with success, but I bounced off so many notes apps
| before it. I don't know why, but the feature set had to be just
| right because one little thing would keep me from sticking with
| anything else. Plain text files are great and served me well but
| don't lose hope that some new option could come along and be an
| improvement.
| Aperocky wrote:
| Sometimes a simple bash script will give it wings:
| https://github.com/Aperocky/diaryman
|
| What this is:
|
| $ diary # opens vim to $DIARYDIR/year/month/day.md
| SkyPuncher wrote:
| I ended up doing a similar thing when I was a contractor. Just a
| really long note file that I'd track everything I was doing.
|
| Relatedly, I find all of the todo/task management apps to be
| utterly overwhelming for my person tasks. I'm so tired of all of
| the task apps adding way too much complexity.
|
| All I want is:
|
| * Something that's available on all of my devices.
|
| * Can be ordered by sections * Triage
| * Now * Today * Tomorrow * Soon
| * Eventually * Whenever (when-never)
|
| * Let's me add a task without thinking (default to triage)
|
| * Lets me drag-and-drop tasks for ordering
| ZachSaucier wrote:
| Actual checkboxes that are reorderable but otherwise a text file
| is the way to go.
|
| Longer explanation: https://zachsaucier.com/blog/notes-the-best-
| todo-app/
| bottlepalm wrote:
| I used to have a zillion todo txt files in the early 2000's,
| migrated to OneNote around 2005 and have been using the same
| OneNote notebook for 20 years now. My life is in there - 20 years
| worth of todos, lists, thoughts, ideas, etc.. always evolving,
| perfectly synchronized across computers and mobile. I'm
| referencing and updating my OneNote all day as I get things done,
| have ideas, and think of new things to do, or things to
| remembers. It's an extension of my brain at this point.
|
| I've tried alternatives, but OneNote has been simple and
| reliable, it just works everywhere. Probably one of the most
| important apps in my life.
| dctoedt wrote:
| Could you please say more about your day-to-day with OneNote?
| How is your notebook organized, how do you add to it, how do
| you review it, etc.?
| roncesvalles wrote:
| Same but with Keep and GDocs. I still use a local neverending
| txt like TFA though, as a short-term todo list + clipboard.
| Short thoughts and little factoids like license plate numbers,
| appointments, and restaurant recommendations go on Keep
| (although some of those "short thoughts" have ended up busting
| the character limit). Refined structured notes end up in a GDoc
| by topic. Some of my GDocs are now the size of small textbooks.
| I also love Google Takeout so that I can backup it all up
| periodically.
|
| I would say, just as you would about OneNote, Keep is one of
| the most important apps in my life.
| runjake wrote:
| Previously, (I ain't complaining, I like fresh conversations on
| this one.)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39432876
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661167
| tomhow wrote:
| Thanks! Macroexpanded:
|
| _My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39432876 - Feb 2024 (264
| comments)
|
| _My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single
| .txt file (2020)_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661167 - Dec 2021 (202
| comments)
|
| _My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single
| .txt file_ - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22276184 -
| Feb 2020 (402 comments)
| arduinomancer wrote:
| I've done the same thing for a long time
|
| The only extra thing is I set up autohotkey macros
|
| For example typing $today or $yesterday will insert the date with
| a dividing line underneath to separate days into clear blocks
|
| I've tried a lot of different note apps and what I eventually
| realized is that when it comes to work, I generally don't
| actually care about old notes 98% of the time.
|
| I only really care about the last week or two and when everything
| is in one file its optimized for viewing that, like a working
| memory.
|
| The text file ends up gigantic but its still small data for a
| computer even after many years of adding to a single file and
| searching is still fast.
| labrador wrote:
| I recently discovered AutoHotKey and their subreddit. Your
| example is a cool feature I didn't know about. I'm looking
| forward to using AHK.
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/AutoHotkey/
| aswegs8 wrote:
| Obsidian + Lights
| (https://ultraworking.gitbooks.io/lights/content/) is my stack
| smm11 wrote:
| I have TXT files by week, and sum up each day to the bottom of
| each day of the week if that makes sense.
|
| Then the next week's new file has the pasted-over to-do items on
| top.
|
| These were OneNote/Sharepoint files forever until earlier this
| year. Now they live on my local network, backed up, glaciered.
| throwaway613745 wrote:
| With notepad.exe:
|
| At the first line of the a .txt file put .LOG This will then put
| a timestamp at the end of the file every time you open it.
|
| Also, if you press the F5 key it inserts a timestamp.
|
| Been using this for years and it's pretty much all I ever needed.
| tobinfekkes wrote:
| These are incredible! Learn something new every day, thank you
| for sharing.
|
| Documented here: https://www.pctips.com/notepad-tips-and-
| tricks/
| jngiam1 wrote:
| Store/ version with git, throw Claude code at it, and it'll be
| amazing
| tunaoftheland wrote:
| One thing I would like about this system is that I wouldn't get
| incessant notifications about things I haven't yet done lol. I do
| think that building a habit to check on a txt file periodically
| (like the author says) to stay on top of things is better for
| emotional health than a wall of notifications on the phone lock
| screen that I've been conditioned to just tap on and select
| "Remind me tomorrow " without even thinking.
|
| Knowing myself, though, I don't think I'd keep up with this since
| it would take mental strength on my part to overthink the data
| structure for the task entry. I've been thinking about how I
| might also track emotional impact of my todo items on me. I
| wonder if the open nature of a txt file would be good for instant
| journaling about things that give me stress?
|
| I really like having some guardrails when it comes to organizing
| thoughts so this system might not be for me. Also building up the
| daily habit to organize the todos at the end of each day is
| something I'd probably struggle with for a while. I do agree that
| is a great habit to have, still.
| rdlw wrote:
| Maybe printing the first (last?) line of a file whenever a
| terminal is opened would work
| coliveira wrote:
| You can use your note files for journaling as well. I always
| add new content on the top with a timestamp, it works just like
| having a physical notebook where you add new pages, only these
| new pages go to the top.
| davidzimmerjr wrote:
| txt file is great. Makes me wonder, does the author always have
| their laptop on them since that's the only place I know of where
| a txt file can live? Do they go to sleep and wake up next to
| their laptop?
|
| I've always been an iPhone user and have never seen a .txt file
| on one and probably you wouldn't be able to edit one on an iPhone
| if you did have it in Files app - I'm not counting Notes app as a
| text file here.
|
| I do quarterly notes inside of Notes app but it mostly non-work
| related stuff and doesn't integrate well with desktop since its
| kind of a pain to login to iCloud from browser. Quarterly notes
| bc once the note gets too long, it gets very laggy on phone and
| is difficult to navigate; i.e. getting to the bottom to write a
| new line can be tough on mobile.
| themadturk wrote:
| There are multiple text editors that work just fine on iPhone,
| certainly on Android as well. Textastic and Runestone are two
| for iOS (there are more). They read and write text files just
| fine. You can even keep them version controlled in Github or
| other Git systems using Working Copy, which allows flexibility
| in modifying the text file in multiple locations.
| arduinomancer wrote:
| You don't have to use the same solution for work and personal
| notes
| snowfield wrote:
| "I use Remote Desktop so everything is accessible from every
| device"
| dbl000 wrote:
| I am incredibly jealous of people for who this works for. Mine
| just become too unwieldy to manage or work with because they grow
| out in a crazy fashion.
|
| My "productivity solution" is currently TriliumNotes with three
| work spaces as 1) Planner with sub notes for year, month, day 2)
| Brain Dump with subnotes for year and month 3) Projects with sub
| notes for each project. I manage tasks with Vikunja and then my
| time with Google Calendar.
|
| It's an absolute mess, but it's the closest I've gotten to a
| solution that works the way my brain does.
| tipsyrobot wrote:
| I've had a similar system for a while, but the primary pain point
| is the lack of access on iPhone / iPad. Giant text files are
| laggy, dropbox integration is poor, etc. A custom app that
| interacts with the text file might be the best bet :D
| arduinomancer wrote:
| What I realized at least for me is that work notes and personal
| notes are two different use cases
|
| The .txt file approach works for work stuff because I never
| need to reference it on mobile, if I'm doing software
| development I need to be on a computer anyway.
|
| Whereas personal stuff I need an actual notetaking app like
| Notion for the mobile usability
| frenzcan wrote:
| Once I realised I rarely read my notes, I now put them in a
| single note and prepend it when I add something new. It's weird
| but I think the value I get from notes is in the writing of them,
| it's a way of thinking rather than for recall.
| coliveira wrote:
| Agreed, I always add to the top of my note files. You can also
| use timestamps so you know when something was created. Nowadays
| I use this just like a notebook, adding new pages to the top.
| You can use it to write not only simple notes, but anything you
| want, like for example the 1st draft of a book or report you're
| creating. Even some coding can be done this way.
| _spduchamp wrote:
| I use a google spreadsheet. Shortcut on my phone home screen so I
| can add items any time easily.
|
| I log all my lab work and how many hours I've worked in a day and
| it calculates my hours in a separate tab automatically. Items I
| need to follow up on are in bold, and get unbolded when I've
| followed up on them. When I have to write a report, everything is
| there in chronological order and it is super easy to take the
| relevant lines and write out the path of my work. When I get into
| the lab, I open my sheet and bam! I'm right where I left off
| before I can have the first sip of coffee.
|
| This has been a complete game changer for me.
|
| I've never been so organized in my life.
| runjake wrote:
| _> I use a google spreadsheet. Shortcut on my phone home screen
| so I can add items any time easily._
|
| And if you aren't already doing this, you can set up a Google
| Form for mobile that asks for input and then puts the data into
| the spreadsheet. I do this for exercise tracking and it works
| great.
| NickNaraghi wrote:
| Have used this approach for 8 years. Only improvement I can
| recommend is creating a new txt every quarter (or so) and
| manually adding everything back to the list to declutter. Works
| better than any todo app I've used (dozens).
| RoddaWallPro wrote:
| I do something similar - I create a "2025December.md" file each
| month (with proper year/month obviously) and have a bullet list
| of everything I'm working on/trying to keep track of. I also use
| it as a scratchpad for whatever, and writing down notes for
| projects. Each day I insert a "#### 11 Dec 2025" heading at the
| bottom of the file, then just copy over everything relevant from
| the previous entry.
|
| It's stored in my Dropbox so it is always backed up, though it is
| not VCS'd. It's worked for me for years, far better than any app.
| Too, I have full control over it, and years of the data, free for
| processing by any tools/LLMs that I might want (I haven't wanted
| such a thing so far, but maybe I will).
| Egor3f wrote:
| I use tasks.org android app (I use my smartphone for everything
| (except programming or server administration) as I love
| cellphones and portability)
|
| Tasks.org has cool filter system, which alongside it's widget
| makes me list of everything that's important to me just on home
| screen of my smartphone. For example, I can make a filter "tasks
| starting today, priority yellow or higher, lists "personal" or
| "projects", sorr by due date). And make corresponding widget.
|
| Samsung OneUI has widget carousel feature, so I make multiple
| widgets with different filters and switch by swiping. Very
| convinent.
|
| Also tasks.org support syncing to nextcloud, but I keep it
| disabled due to tons of bugs in nextcloud itself.
|
| I make separate list for everything not important at current
| period of my life, so I can review it later (usually once a week
| or once a month, my life is very unstable and unpredictable to
| tell more exactly)
|
| I use this for about a year, so it's not so well tested workflow,
| but for now it works better than other variants I tried.
| gazpacho wrote:
| I use sheets of junk paper (e.g. stuff I got in the mail that is
| only printed on one side). I keep an "active" one that I cross
| stuff out from, etc. When I start a new one (about once a week) I
| go through the old one and port over any remaining items; most of
| the time I discard the whole thing since it's no longer relevant.
| If there are important items that are just too big to handle I'll
| transcribe it to my Calendar, Linear, Reminders app, etc.
|
| To me this is a good balance of: - Writing things down is the
| major benefit for me, writing down on physical paper is even more
| helpful. - Forces me to garbage collect irrelevant stuff. - I
| don't need an app or even to buy paper really.
| general1465 wrote:
| Effectively the same, but with Joplin and separated notes for
| separated context.
| sigmonsays wrote:
| big ol git repo of text files here, It's always been this way,
| for over a decade now.
| twapi wrote:
| I use Google Calendar as my todo list. Syncs across devices.
| Notifications. Share with Family & Work. Repeating tasks.
| Supports notes and attachments. Multiple Lists (calendars). Free.
| stefan_ wrote:
| Same. And by default it sends an email reminder, so the stuff I
| didn't do yet stay as unread emails in my inbox.
| sudhirkhanger wrote:
| Earlier, I had a simpler todo system using pen and paper. There
| was a weekly list which exchanged tasks with daily list. The
| daily tasks were prioritized in three categories immediately,
| today, and this week.
|
| Now since I am managing multiple teams, this is not longer
| scalable. Also majority of work revolves around Slack. People
| post stuff that I need to follow up at a later stage. I copy
| these posts and put them into the todo list file.
|
| 1. As text files get longer you lose view of things unlike paper.
| I still feel limited and strong difficulty in fully adopting an
| online todo system.
|
| 2. Many other stuff like Slack threads are difficult to get into
| todo files. They also lose context. This I would say is a modern
| problem.
|
| What do you guys think?
| teecha wrote:
| I've landed in Amplenote and haven't looked back over the last
| couple of years.
|
| Exports to mark down if I ever want to leave, works on
| everything, and sufficiently flexible for note taking and task
| management.
|
| Every now and then I get the productivity bug and look around but
| can't find anything that hits like Amplenote does.
| analogpixel wrote:
| I've been noticing lately, at least for myself, that useful
| technology stopped happening like 10-20 years ago. If all you
| could use was tech from 2000 and before you would have a pretty
| stable stack that just worked (without a monthly subscription.)
|
| There is also this article today:
| https://jon.recoil.org/blog/2025/12/an-svg-is-all-you-need.h...
| about how great good ol' svg is. And then every recurring article
| about using RSS instead of all the other siloed products.
|
| textfiles, makefiles, perl, php, rss, text based email, news
| groups, irc, icq, vim/emacs, sed, awk; all better than the crap
| they have spawned that is supposed to be "better".
|
| Out of curiosity, what technology in the past 5 years do you use
| that you actually find better than something from 20 years ago?
| Mongoose wrote:
| I'd say Obsidian (just over five years old, since its first
| release), which is ironic because it's basically just a UI on
| top of text files.
| analogpixel wrote:
| I'd definitely agree with you on that one. Also notice how
| the company doesn't push monthly subscriptions on people and
| just lets their program exist out there.
| snowfield wrote:
| But it's not, it's a database. That is annoyingoy hard to
| move around and version control
| johnfn wrote:
| Surely there are some!
|
| I think AI is the obvious one. Also, VSCode (or whatever modern
| IDE you use) is definitely better than the IDEs that existed 20
| years ago. LSP is fantastic. Hm... StackOverflow was definitely
| a step change over existing tools. Godot is really good, much
| better than anything that came before, IMO. Modern languages
| are pretty good these days - Rust and TypeScript are better
| than languages in the 2000s, to name two of the top of my head.
| josters wrote:
| I have circled back to using the apps that are already on my
| phone, especially the Apple Reminders app which I am currently
| trying out as my main notes and ideas system.
|
| I have placed it as one of the two bottom widgets on the lock
| screen which gives me immediate access to everything I need to
| capture a thought: a main note, the list where I want to store it
| (e.g., work or personal), the notes field if more context is
| needed, and I can flag it or schedule a reminder. The app then
| also has an optional auto-categorize feature which works quite
| well. Add to that reliable sync across devices and except for a
| good way to bulk export lists, this has everything I want from a
| quick draft and capture system.
| 28304283409234 wrote:
| alias j="vim + ~/.journal.txt"
| l0c0b0x wrote:
| Forever open tabs in Notepad++ (475 and counting for the lost 6
| months at least).
|
| I've used so many 'productivity' apps, it makes me sick to think
| of it. This has been the most consistent tool I've ever used.
|
| https://snipboard.io/9CYXnw.jpg
| mahdiyar wrote:
| I read this a few years ago and start to doing that. And I never
| looked back. I can search what i did on a specific day, search
| for a task and see all the traces, having it accessible over
| dropbox.
|
| No upgrade CTA, no nonsense. now even I can feed it to llm and
| get feedback about my planning, routines and everything
| mrazomor wrote:
| My daily driver! Considering how much time I spend with these
| tools, it's surprising that I had relatively few iterations over
| the years.
|
| I have two major use cases:
|
| 1) a TODO list
|
| 2) longer texts (project plans, travel plans, shopping lists for
| things to buy sometimes in the next 6 months (e.g. books to
| read), etc.).
|
| The TODO list is my daily driver. As the family became larger, it
| became difficult to track what needs to be done the next day
| (including simple things, like "give a daily dose of vitamin",
| "clean & lube the bike chain every 2w"). For a very long time, I
| used pen & paper. It was OK, used it for years, but it didn't
| scale so well with kids. An Android TODO/reminder app with
| notifications and repeats was a life saver. I used BZ Reminder
| (https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.bzzzapp) which
| ticked all the boxes. But the author decided to downgrade the
| lifetime licences to periodic... It's still not expensive but I
| don't approve the behavior. After trying out a dozen of similar
| apps, I ended up with "Reminders: Todo List & Notes" (https://pla
| y.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pocketbril...). I can't
| live without a tool like this anymore. TBH, pen & paper TODO
| lists are still around.
|
| For the longer texts I used an offline wiki (ZIM) for quite some
| time. Then gradually moved to Google Keep (simple, can accept
| text & lists, and can be shared). The Keep collection kept
| growing. With both lists and texts. It's pretty bad input method,
| but its simplicity kept me using it for years. Now I'm happy with
| simple txt files (syced between phone & PCs, and properly backed
| up).
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