:material-check-circle:{ .anim-flip } Productivity
Summary#
I’ve tried a crapload of tools for tasks, notes, bookmarking, scheduling and what not. I realize I was more interested in trying new things than in really ‘maximizing’ my ‘productivity’.
These days I’m in a high-stress job involving a lot of churn and
unpredictability, and I’ve found that checklists are /very/ useful and
MS ToDo Todoist is a decent enough app to settle down with.
Bookmarks are overrated. I learned that I love to hoard but the number of times I actually went back to a bookmarking tool and actually found what I was looking for was ridiculously low. In many cases I noticed I wanted to retrieve something I had seen ‘somewhere’, ‘a few days back’, but had not bothered enough to bookmark it in the first place.
Note taking is, at least for me, an obsessive habit and immensely useful at work but fairly useless for personal goals.
Tools - Digital#
I am not too sold on the whole ‘zettelkasten’/second-brain concept with obsessive back linking and so on. These tools are fun to play with but the investment in maintaining them is, IMO, far more than the returns.
I like and highly recommend the following tools:
- [2026] Todoist - this is simple, inobtrusive and does enough in a text box that you don’t need to keep clicking around. It has an MCP server that you can connect to an LLM, so gemini/antigravity also uses it to track its own backlog (see AI ). I use some bits from the GTD methodology, and make heavy use of scheduling and reminders to get stuff done at (hopefully) the right team.
MS To Do- this has an indispensable feature called ‘Plan My Day’ which is the first thing I do every morning. Makes it quite easy to surface things that you had scheduled for a particular day. Cross Platform, so it’s really easy to add and review periodically.OneNote- After using text-based editors for years, I’ve taken a liking to tools that support images. OneNote does this well with a great interface, 3 levels of ‘folder’ hierarchy and great integration with my stylus. I pretty much use this as a whiteboarding app these days and nothing much else.- Vim
/ Typora
- I’m torn
between markdown as a store of data and OneNote. Typora seems to
bridge both worlds with a really nice UI and seamless integration
for images. I use this at work for taking notes, documenting what I
did each day, and so on. I have everything in a single
notesfolder and my LLM has access to it as well, so that is where I read all its markdown-based verbose reports.
Analog#
At work I used to take a /lot/ of notes pre-covid. I filled up several notebooks, mostly containing brainstorming and meeting minutes (and doodles of course). These days I use a couple of notebooks as a scratchpad for quick thoughts and throwaway notes.
I have made some attempts to move from Todoist and other digital solutions to a pure paper solution. But I like having reminders on my phone. And I like having a searchable notes database for work. So paper is something I use as a supplement alongside the digital tools.
When I need to cut down on my screen time, it is nice to have a notebook alongside the current book I’m reading, so I can take notes or just simply write for the joy of it.
References
Note Taking - Analog#
- Research on non-linear note taking
- Some analog To Do systems . For those who want to try something other than Bullet Journals.
- More paper propaganda