Everyone has his or her favorite productivity tool preferences, but I love to read about other people’s experiences, so I thought I’d share my favorite tools as well. It’s been an ongoing process to develop better workflows, though I’ve learned you also have to balance the pros against the costs in the time loss that comes with constantly changing tools. I try to manage that delicate balance, and here’s what I’ve got now.
Todoist
I’m a little obsessed with to-do lists, and I think I’ve had some sort of system in my life since I was a young teenager. I like a ton of control over categories, tags, hierarchies, and due dates (including repeating dates). After trying easily half a dozen different options, I found Todoist about two years ago and have stuck with it since. It fulfills most of need for control, though it doesn’t do a good job of tracking productivity in any meaningful sense. I use only the web version and the app for my Android phone, but I have heard complaints about it working poorly on other devices. It also has a very non-responsive development team. If there is something major that is important to you that the current version doesn’t have, I wouldn’t expect it to be added anytime soon, even if it’s a popular feature request. Simpler apps include Remember the Milk, Google’s own task list, Nozbe, and Wunderlist.
RescueTime
RescueTime tracks what you do on your computer and categorizes it by category and productivity (or non-productivity) level. Again, I am a little obsessive about stuff like this, and I spend some time (less than an hour) a week making sure I agree with RescueTime’s assessment of the categories. I link my Todoist completed tasks to the “highlights” section of RescueTime with Zapier to remind me what I completed that day, and you can also fill in your own summaries of what you did that day. It’s great for tracking productivity over the day and seeing where you are most productive and at which points during the day. It also shows you which websites you’re wasting your time on when you could be completing more important tasks.
Evernote
Evernote essentially manages a lot of documents in your life, and many, many people have written better descriptions and case studies of how to implement it into a task-management-like workflow than I ever could. However, I mostly use it to 1) save important articles and tidbits of wisdom I’ve come across in my life, and 2) save information that is relatively minor but that I need stored and with easy access to (like my license plate number or the dimensions of a new chair I need for the living room). There are some to-do functions on Evernote, as well, but again, they are nowhere near as detailed as what I need, so I don’t use it as “proactively” as many others. It’s an excellent storage device for me, and nothing more. I use the web app when I need to save something quickly, the PC program when I want to edit what I’m saving, and the Android app to have the information handy when I’m away from the computer.
Clearly
Clearly is what I use to get online articles into Evernote, rather than just copying and pasting. It uses an algorithm to determine what the content of the website is, and strips it of sidebars, footers, extraneous formatting, etc., leaving behind a simple-looking document that still preserves basic formatting like images inside the main content, bold and italics, and lists. After rendering its own version of the website you’re on, you can either read it that way and move on, or you can save that simplified version in Evernote.
Feedly
Feedly organizes feeds from blogs you visit and prevents you from having to visit a lot of websites separately. You can divide different websites into your own categories, and remove the feed or change the category whenever you want. It’s amazing how much more quickly I can read and find important posts when all my feeds are in one location. Feedly also uses a simplified formatting system that strips out everything but the post (just as Clearly does). Feedly offers its own internal bookmarking system, but because I am paranoid about articles being deleted one day, I save them to Evernote instead.
FocusWriter
FocusWriter is an extremely simple writing application. It allows you to change the fonts and the background you’re using and pretty much nothing else. I’ve found it works best in full screen mode and forces me to focus on nothing but writing. There are no formatting options in the document and nothing at all, really, except you and the screen. It forces me to do exactly that – focus. It can be extremely helpful for people who have a hard time just sitting down and writing, whether it’s fiction or non-fiction.
Scrivener
Scrivener is a document and research management application. Many people describe it as having a steep learning curve, but the idea behind it is pretty simple. You create a hierarchy of folders, sub-folders, and files, and create any type of information within each. Novelists might divide it into chapters as folders and individual files as scenes, and non-fiction writers might divide it into topics they want to cover and individual sections on each topic. There are also multiple category options for each file and folder – you can label them as first, second, or final draft (or any personalized name), or with different icons. I use it for book writing, but if I wanted to make really organized blog posts, I could definitely use Scrivener to keep track of all my writing on a particular topic in one place. My only major complaint is that I’m on a PC, and the program started as iOS only, and that still seems to be the major priority in terms of feature development. Windows users tend to be far behind what Mac users get.
StayFocusd
StayFocusd is a browser extension that blocks you from visiting certain websites for certain times during the day, after a certain amount of time is up, or at any point if you click the “nuclear” button. For regular use, you can either use a “forbidden” list allowing any sites not on the list, or a “permitted” list allowing only the sites on the list. I tend to use the “forbidden” list because there are so many websites I might need to go to for article, book, or personal research. I typically only use the “permitted” list when I truly need to concentrate on a single task and I know exactly which websites should be allowed for that.
Future Forays
I haven’t looked at project management apps in much detail because that hasn’t been how I’ve traditionally thought of my tasks, nor do I really need the collaboration options, but I’ve read in a few places that they’ve been very useful for “single player” task management as well, so at some point I plan to read up on that (I just put that on my to do list!). I’ve also been interested in trying the Pomodoro technique, which is a time-oriented exercise that has been very helpful for some users who have struggled to complete to-do list items.