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Do any of you use productivity software (kanbans, scrum, etc)? How do you stay productive and organized?
I think I want to use some type of productivity software as a bit of a more in-depth to do list. I am thinking of using Trello, which seems to have a ton of features and does mostly what I want. However, I have no need for any of the collaboration aspects as I wouldn't be using this with a team or coworkers, just myself. So I am wondering if there isn't some other software I can use to stay organized that doesn't have a ton of features I won't use. Do any of you all use something similar? Open to all suggestions, both for programs or general practices.
I use TickTick.
Can be as simple as a to do list, or more complex with Kanban lists like Trello and notes.
If you are on iOS/Mac, Things3 is amazing also.
Not OP, but I've been looking for something like TickTick for a long time - thanks for the reccomendation!
TickTick is one of the best and has the most courteous and feature-driven development teams I've had the pleasure of using.
Great features on the free tier, and the yearly price is fantastic for just a few more that most won't need. They continually add features and always focus on QoL
Their habits feature is invaluable, and their natural language input is great. I could not suggest them more.
It's only been a couple years ago now (I'm in my late 30's) that I realized procrastination was a symptom of my anxiety about the task at hand. I'm avoiding the task because it makes me feel bad, because I have bad feelings about what I'm doing.
I've learned to use that as a tool - when I find myself procrastinating then I try to step back, re-evaluate the task and how it fits into the larger picture, then try to break down what the end goal is, whether or not what I'm trying to do is contributing to that goal, and if it is then to outline the major sub-tasks that need to happen. Rinse and repeat.
This usually winds up with me dissecting a large, overwhelming task into a series of manageable sub-tasks, some of which get broken down even further into action items. I do it by hand, with a pen on paper, both as a way to step away from the distractions and to get enough of a change of scenery that I can get away from the mindset I'm in when I'm procrastinating.
I use Notion.so. nevermind productivity, it's more to stay organized and be able to remember things. Notion is the closest it ever got for me to being able to jolt down any note i want and be able to eventually organize it: over time it doesn't become a mess but rather a clean temple of information.
A cool thing to keep an eye out for is Anytype.
Similar to Notion but it is open-source with an option to self-host, end-to-end encrypted, and implemented with the InterPlanetary File System (IPFS) protocol.
Yeah the mobile app is not great. This is a non issue for me because I don't really take notes on my phone; when I do, i just write down whatever and organize it later when I get to my computer.
I use Todoist. It works well enough - for regular todo lists, I like that you can make an infinitely deep subtask tree.
It also has a kanban board view. Of course, with not nearly the same features as Trello, but it works well enough.
Importantly, it satisfies the requirement that it works on all the operating systems I use (Windows, Linux, MacOS, iOS, and Android... yes I regularly use 5 different operating systems).
Yeah I'm 99% sure the desktop apps are electron based. Might not be everyone's cup of tea to run Chrome just for their task manager. I'm not surprised or particularly disappointed, though; I doubt they're a large dev team and supporting that many platforms is extremely difficult if you are native on each platform.
It's nice that I guess the APIs are open enough that 3rd parties can integrate into it. Never knew that.
I use todoist as well. It's pretty simple, but still reasonably feature-rich for the things it can do, and so still quite useful... especially for me, since without constant reminders to do even basic tasks I often totally forget to, or simply procrastinate until I eventually do forget. ;)
I use Trello for anything that requires checklists or that needs to be split into several smaller tasks, although I find the UI to be very crowded. I will probably check some of the alternatives in this thread!
For simple tasks (most of them reoccurring) I use the Calendar on Thunderbird and set reminders. Examples of these are things like paying the rent or other bills, cleaning tasks that are done only once in a blue moon, etc.
I use Tasks for Android. It's free-and-open source, has every feature under the sun, has a great UI/UX and helpful widget options, and offers a bunch of methods for synchronization (which I don't actually use, since I always have my phone on me).
If I'm collaborating with a group, Trello and other kanban boards are the modus operandi. I've tried a couple of different types of organizers and Trello's worked the best so far. It's a bit of a shame Atlassian bought it and have been integrating it into their Microsoft-esque ecosystem. More notes-notes rather than deliverables go into Google Docs (unfortunately /-:), being really the only option for a ubiquitous, usable, and collaborative note-taking platform.
I keep my personal notes just as a collection of organized text files on my computer. Nothing fancy there.