Question
What are your favorite apps or workflows for managing non-work-related tasks?
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For grocery lists: AnyList
My wife and I have been using AnyList for shared grocery lists for years, and it's really fantastic and well worth the $15/year. A few features that I've found very useful:
- Cloud syncing: Both people can add to the same list, and lists are updated in realtime
- Recipes: This doesn't work perfectly, but it's pretty good. You paste the URL of a recipe into the app, and it pulls all the ingredients out to be easily added to your list. Once you clean up the ingredients list, you can add all ingredients for that recipe to your list in one tap whenever you want.
- Sorting: For most items, the app automatically categorizes them based on areas of the supermarket.
There are lots of other features but these are the ones that made it really stand out to me vs. other things I'd tried.
The Notes app on iPhone is the main way I list random things I need to write down but not keep around forever, things like store lists and house chore lists and such. I've found it especially handy when comparison shopping (write a note with every model I'm looking at, complete with pictures of the item and price tags, to then make the final decision) or when buying furniture (keep a list of room dimensions, photos of the location and things like windows that we'd need to watch out for, and so on). And it's also where I keep odd details like our water purifier and printer model so when I need to buy filters or ink, it's there. You can share individual notes with anyone, so I share store lists with my spouse and have used the same to share trip itineraries, ticket details, and so on when on trips with friends.
Then, I use Things for my personal tasks both at home and work, and have a ton of recurring tasks for paperwork, bills, and the things you need to do every so often but might otherwise forget (like changing the aforementioned water filters). I just add recurring tasks for those things as I think of them, and get a reminder a few days before that item is due. I use the same trick to keep track of subscriptions—if I subscribe to something, I'll add it to Things with a reminder to reevaluate that item a few days before the subscription renews so I have time to unsubscribe or downgrade if I want.
I'm pretty much completely embedded in the Apple ecosystem right now, so currently, my workflow is putting long-term stuff in Notes and categorizing it all in folders and more short-term stuff like grocery lists in Reminders. I tend to put larger tasks for a day in my Calendar though.
I still have never organized my Notes app, which is terrible... but I typically just find what I need via homescreen search, so I guess it works!
Same here... I tried too many to-do apps, and ditched all of them, stick with Apple's default apps - Notes and Reminders ... In general, I don't like to use extra software, for another, there's no outstanding to-do apps, almost all work the same. I use Notes to make random notes, keep track of books I read, or quickly jot down other things; I use Reminders to remind myself complete things that have a deadline or errands that I need run.
What's your favorite thing about Things? I remember seeing Things being one of the first apps I downloaded from the appstore on my iphone 3G 😂
Favorite single feature may be that you can split projects and task lists with section headers. It's not fully unique to Things, but it's implemented very nicely there. Otherwise, it's all the tiny design touches, such as the way sub-tasks look and the fluid animations.
It took me a while to get to understand and like Notion, but after using it for quite some time at work I've gotten a good understanding and grew to really like it. So much so that I switched the collection of Apple Notes, Wunderlist and some other things all to Notion. Available cross-platform, extremely customizable for simple to-do lists or more complex ones (with simple sorting, tagging, checklist, etc) and also handles pretty much as a personal knowledge portal for all my hobbies and interests. Everything from motorcycle builds, general aviation flights, art exhibits, cooking, etc...
I can’t agree more on using Notion.
While I still use Reminders on my phone because it’s more convenient for that, everything else goes to Notion.
As to reply to @maguay’s question he asked you: properly organizing things in Notion is vital IMO, because without doing so, its ultra customizable and flexible workflow will backfire.
Do you typically rely on search to get around Notion, or are you careful at organizing everything?
I have it pretty organized indeed. One workspace per hobby, one for all the small things that don't fit anywhere, and favoriting the places I go often and I don't need to rely on the search too much. It took me a while but I'm now a big fan of Notion!
Remember the Milk is a highly underrated tool. Low friction in adding and managing tasks is critical and RTM is trivially easy and intuitive to use. $40 / year doesn't break the bank either.
It's been around forever, too! When did you start using it?
About 2 years ago. It's unfortunate, they're not all sexy and buzzy like other tools but they're probably the best I've used.
Really loving Notion at the moment. Created a running tracker (http://trackingmyruns.com) which is a fun way to document my runs and look back on them. I like the different table views they support.
That's super cool; I've seen lots of simple sites lately built with Notion. Impressed you bought a domain for it!
Do you have any workflow to log the runs, or just opening Notion and entering them manually?
Thanks! Currently just using apple watch / Nike running app to track the runs, then manually entering... would LOVE a Notion API :-)
I started off making calendars, events and reminders all inside of Google Calendar, all for non-work tasks.
- Repeated reminders: The laundry and utility bill due dates, for examples.
- Calendars:
- One for adding events for discovering/exploring anything new e.g. "Explore Capiche" on January 1, 2020
- One for going to a place on schedule; if the time's unknown, mark the event as 'all day' e.g. "Buy groceries on Amazon Pantry" between 5 PM and 5.10 PM on January 2, 2020
Every calendar has a single category of events, and GCal allows hiding/showing calendars, viewing in different time ranges, and sync between devices.
Works like a charm unless forgetting to add some events disrupts calendar history.
As I didn't found a setup that worked for me I created Millikanban as a free tool. Just a little kanban board, nothing else.
Oh cool! What did you add to Millikanban different from other kanban apps?
Adding not so much. The biggest difference is that it in the first place works on your local machine, so being offline isn't a problem, sensitive data aren't a problem.
Sometimes simplicity is the best feature. Neat it works offline!
Looking for a better way to plan remote meetings across time zones, and keep up with events. What software is doing that best today?
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Thanks! Will try it out!