My Current Workflow (June 2023)

If you go to Google, and search for best productivity app, you will get like tons and tons of recommendation. With one from PCMag, another from TechRadar, another from Tom's Guide, another from Zapier, another from NBC News, another from LifeWire, and you stumble upon another search result from TechRadar.. It's a lot, you know, and it really takes a toll for me.

Then there's this so-called productivity app specialized for note taking, another one specialized for tasks management, another one specialized for document signing, and there's even another one for tracking time, to know whether you are actually being productive. It's horrendous how people are able to live with these many apps to make their life more productive.

It's all makes sense if you're on a company and the team do not trust each other. Well, you kinda need for a team management software, right? But who would need a team management software for personal use?

I'm writing this one just after I found a remote team collaboration software called Gather Town. Which is a bit fun, I can say, but I don't think this is something that people would be on for the long run. You (as a remote worker) need to be there, on your virtual table (which have a cute design, by the way), move your character using arrow keys to go to a meeting room, turn on your camera and microphone. It's a bit much for me.

Let's cut to the chase.

What am I aiming for productivity?

I only need tools to help me get things done. I don't say "get things done quickly", as I believe in progress and I understand that nothing ever comes out in an instant.

So what kind of stuff do I use?

• Google Mail for personal and work email, ProtonMail for public email that's related to programming/code. I've used Tutanota.
• Discord for chats and calls. I prefer to use Discord for conference call instead of Google Meet, although Google Meet might come second. I also use Discord for any communities, be it manga, movies, software-related (like Cloudflare, Solid.js, Sentry, Nuxt, Vite, and more), or friends'.
• Todoist for task management. I used to use Asana, but that doesn't really works well for me. I also used to use Google Task, but they don't seem to send any push notification to my phone, so I missed some stuffs. It turns out that a simple task management software that doesn't really offer that much really works for me.
• Google Keep for note taking. I like it to not be categorized by something, as people might do on other note taking software. I like it being messy and scattered, although often times I color some note that's have high importance level, or pinned them for some time. I've used Notion, Evernote, iCloud Notes (from Apple), and recently tried Anytype.
• Excalidraw for whiteboarding. Enough said, this one is so good.

Not really boosting my productivity, but I also use:

• Bitwarden to store my password, credit card numbers, and some notes that must be stored securely.
• Authy for token based 2FA (a replacement for Google Authenticator)..
• GitHub for hosting code repositories. I also use GitHub's features like projects, issues, and wiki to track and manage stuff related to the project.

How do I do it?

It's pretty simple, I guess.

When I have to get something out of my mind that won't make too much noise for conversations on my mind, I open Google Keep and start writing (usually on a new note). I don't tag them, but I always set a note title.

For every new task or things that I need to do, I immediately put it on my Todoist, set a due date. Every morning at 8:00 AM, I get a push notification stating how many things that set for due today, and every end of day at 17:00 PM, I get another push notification stating whether I have no remaining task or I have some more things that are due today. If the category for the task is "backlog", then I won't put any deadline.

If something's hard to explain verbally and easier to explain visually, I open Excalidraw and start drawing. Most of the time, I export the canvas to link and share it with the person I talk with before. Often more, I keep it to myself, or just throw it all away.

I don't really check email, until before bed or during morning commute at the bus or metro. Usually the email that goes to my ProtonMail is from GitHub, either for work-related (my company uses GitHub) or open source works.

That's all.