Question
What tools do you use for personal administrative tasks?
I recently added 1Password and Backblaze to my "home stack" to coordinate thing within my family. In addition, I use:
- 1Password - So my wife and I can share passwords
- Backblaze - Automated ackups to the cloud
- Google Drive (soon) - Where I plan to store scanned documents (I have way too many papers on my desk).
- Mint
- Zapier + Retool + AWS Lambda - Automate reminders to move my car during street cleaning
I'm looking for other tools and automations to further simplify things. What do you use on a regular basis at home?
Mentioned
#1Password #Backblaze #Slack #Productivity #Zapier #Retool #IFTTT #Dashlane #Zoom #Superhuman #AnyList #Evernote #Roam Research #Notion #Things #Dropbox #Google Workspace #Instapaper #Spark #Capiche #Fastmail #Screen #Todoist #ClickUp #Toodledo #Google Drive #JiraShare
- Things for personal todos (never got tired of the UI, but no sharing)
- Google + Fantastical (calendaring/shared todos)
- 1Password (shared accounts, credit cards, key documents)
- Notion for most other things
- OneDrive (Excel + Word better than Google Apps)
- Google Drive (file sharing)
- BackBlaze on every computer
Google Drive: for files and documents
Notion: Tasks, Notes, personal CRM and database.
1password: all passwords, card details.
Toshl: for expense and budgeting.
Spark: for email
- 1Password for passwords
- Anylist for shared grocery lists (Anylist is THE BEST for this)
- Superhuman for email
- Playing with Roam for notes recently
- Tile for all the things I constantly lose
- Ring for doorbell etc.
- Zoom for family calls
- Siri for reminding me to take the pizza out of the oven
- Amazon for a constant flow of diapers
Tile looks pretty interesting, but the nice thing about living in a studio is the lack of places to lose things lol.
For Anylist, is it useful bc you're sharing lists with others?
This is copy/pasted from my response on a previous thread on here, but these are the three things that make AnyList unmatched for shared grocery lists IMO:
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. Even in cases the parsing doesn’t work all that well, you still only need to correct once and then those ingredients are tied to that recipe forever.
Sorting: For most items, the app automatically categorizes them based on areas of the supermarket (e.g. produce, frozen, etc.)
Seems like people like to hate on it, but I find Evernote to be great for note-taking, things to remember that have no other home, etc. I use it every day to write and retrieve.
The family is using google drive/sheets/slides/docs more and more every day. We homeschool so we have my kids write papers in Google docs, and then I can use the comment function to give them feedback in context. Sheets for my wife and me to collaborate on family finance-related stuff.
Wunderlist for shopping list, to-dos, family assignments.
Google photos: better search than any apple product by a mile.
ChowNow for ordering food, so Grubhub doesn't get 25% (disclosure, investor in ChowNow)
Ruuvi for checking temps of outdoor pet enclosures (chicken coop, rabbit hutch), as well as monitoring my semi-functional and ridiculously overpriced fridge.
Considering I have a MacBook and an iPhone, a few days ago, I've decided to migrate some of my tools to the Apple suite. It'll be better to maintain a pattern and saving money of other subscriptions:
Note-taking: Apple Notes (was using Evernote).
Task-management: Apple Reminders (I tried literally all the solutions of the market).
Calendar: Apple Calendar (was using Fantastical).
Mail: Apple Mail (was using Protonmail in the browser).
Besides that, I'm still using some subscription-led solutions:
1password: all passwords, card details and top-secret notes.
Notion: project management.
ExpressVPN: security.
That's it!
Really amazing that you are using inbuilt apps and super happy about it. I am lost in so many subscriptions, maybe should start giving this tech stack a try.
Interesting to hear you’re switching back from 3rd party apps to Apple’s built-in solutions. Anything you’ve found you’re missing so far, versus the free/bundled apps?
My everyday work is basically to create meaningful knowledge and enable conversations (I'm a product marketer), so Notes, Reminders, Calendar, and Mail is more than sufficient for that job. I always try to simplify my stack of apps as much as possible.
Those Apple built-in apps provide a smooth integration between my devices (iPhone, iPad, and Macbook), and they are powerful enough for me.
I know that other apps have more robust features (Fantastical, Superhuman, and Todoist, for example), but I don't need them.
I miss an Apple built-in app for password management, but 1password does a great job in this field.
- Dashlane for password management
- Google Drive for file sharing
- Gsuite for email (work), Gmail for email (personal)
- IFTTT for auto-tweeting links *Fantastical for calendaring *Evernote for longer notes (also as a big clipboard for pasting things I need to review temporarily) *Feedly for news/RSS + Apple News *Screen Time for family time limits *Life360 for family tracking *Alexa for home automation *Messenger Kids for family messaging *Ring for home security/visitor management
Whoa Life360 looks pretty Wild.
I've never used RSS feeds before. Do you use that for newsletters and blogs or are you actually using it for daily news?
Asana for task lists across my grad school, 2 internships, extracurriculars (especially helpful for organizing things by when they are due or tasks that repeat cyclically)
G Suite (especially G Drive for personal filing system - i hate paper)
Airtable for personal CRM/networking tracking
Evernote for recipes, saving articles, capturing handwritten notes, business cards
password manager
Very similar to what other said on the basic categories. Here are some overseen categories for MacOS:
Working at night:
* f.lux
* scheduled native night shift
* native dark mode scheduled with Night Owl
* dark web with Dark Reader
Screenshots, recordings and GIFs:
* Quick: Xnip
* Detailed: CleanShot
* Pro: ScreenFlick
* Browser pages: Full Page Screen Capture
Time Tracking:
* Projects: Harvest
* Computer: RescueTime
Internet:
* Browser: Brave
* Save tabs: OneTab
* Search tabs: TabSearch
* New tab: Momentum
* Tab collections: Session Buddy
Bookmarking:
* Reading:Instapaper
* Project specific: Notion
* Else: Raindrop
Window arrangement: Magnet
Snippets: TextExpander
Quick web search/switching: Alfred
One place to see all apps: Stack
One place to get apps: Setapp
Digital payment cards: Privacy
Wow, love this detailed list!
How many apps do you use out of your Setapp subscription? I already owned enough apps in the bundle and have an existing Ulysses subscription that it never seemed to work out for me.
Thanks for mentioning Screenflick; that looks like a solid upgrade from using QuickTime to record screen capture videos!
Evernote: It contains my writings, cake recipes, passwords, period dates and literally everything else.
Notion: Though I use it for work-related stuff, I enter the book recommendations here so that I don't forget.
Grammarly: I use it to review my newsletter articles.
Zoom: For calls with my friends
Google Pay: To pay bills and buy walnuts. And yes. I also use it to send my share of Netflix subscription money to my friend.
Getting by with the free Grammarly, or do you find the paid version worth using?
The paid version does add value. Especially for someone working on their writing skills. You can write within the macOS app.
Just remembered the paid version has a plagiarism checker as well; that was worth paying for on a previous team with a rotation of freelance contributors.
Dropbox: backups / scanned documents
Google drive: collaborate docs and sheets
Gmail: personal email ( Gsuite at work)
1Password: passwords and card details
Tile: location tracking for keys, purse and phone
Notion: tasks, personal CRM and notes (caveat: increasingly using Roam Research for research and 'free writing')
Zoom: pre-covid this would have firmly sat in the 'work tech stack' bucket but has become a staple for socialising with friends and family
Project & Task Management : Microsoft To-Do (the best one in the market)
Calendar: Outlook Calendar
Email: Outlook on web, desktop, android.
Note-taking: Obsidian (networked note taking tool based on Markdown)
Automation: Keyboard Maestro
Creating desktop apps from web: Unite3
*Coding: Sublime Text (and Spyder for Python)
**Browser: Opera (with chrome extensions)
Extensions: Roam-Highlighter, Pocket, Markdown-Clipper, Hola, Add to Microsoft To-Do, Dark-Reader, OneTab.
For Backups: Google Drive.
I've been curious about Keyboard Maestro. What kind of things are you able to accomplish with it?
Automating annotation with hotkey combo. If i find a tweet i like, i select the tweet and hit CTRL+T and the tweet automatically gets appended to a Twitter Highlights markdown file i have for the month, in my reading inbox.
I press ctrl+a, it opens all the applications i use every day, all at once.
I press ctrl+i - it saves the image that's on the active window to my image inbox folder.
Whenever i want to extract highlights from an article, i use the key combinations to create a highlights markdown file for the article, and append each sentence/paragraph/section i select and press the key combo on, to the markdown file. By the end of reading the article, i'd have the highlights stored in the markdown file ready to be processed in my reading inbox for further summarization.
This is touching the tip of the iceberg. Keyboard Maestro can do so much more.
- Things for personal tasks, along with a paper to-do list
- Apple Notes for random household notes like shopping and packing lists, room measurements when shopping for furniture, printer model numbers for ink, and so on.
- Dropbox for family shared documents, iCloud for mobile backups, a 3TB network-connected external drive for local backups (with most important stuff in Dropbox too).
- 1Password for passwords, shared via Dropbox inside the family
- Reeder + Newsblur for RSS feeds, Instapaper for longform reading, Kindle for eBooks
- Hey for personal email for now, otherwise G Suite with my personal domain
Have you tried another RSS Backend service? If yes, how is Newsblur compared to that?
I have tried every service Reeder supported, except Newsblur. Finally I settled to Feed Wrangler because I've paid and the David Smith won't respond my refund request 🤣
Back when Google Reader first shut down, I switched to Fever which was a self-hosted RSS reader that I loved. That’s unsupported now, and after trying a few others (Feedly especially) I picked Newsblur as it also has a self-hosted option (though I pay for their service). It’s been consistent for years so far. It does have a more unique interface that might take a bit of time to adjust to, but if you sync it to Reeder or another 3rd party reading app, its backend is solid. And if you take the time to set it up, its filtering features can be a great way to only get the posts you actually want to read in your feed list.
I just tried Newsblur in their Website, I like that it parses footnotes anchor. If a footnote clicked, it will scroll to the related footnote id. that is one feature other RSS service lacking! (except Feedbin, that uses javascript to show footnotes as tooltip, just like how Instapaper parses footnotes)
For several years I’ve been basically leveraging everything the Apple ecosystem has to offer since there is great continuity between devices.
For a “home stack”, here’s what I typically use:
- Reminders
- Calendar
- Notes
- iCloud Drive
- Numbers
- Photos
- Safari
- Keychain
Interesting you're using Keychain. Are you using that to generate passwords too? Has it generally worked well?
I've only used it essentially to re-find wifi passwords I've saved on the Mac, defaulting to 1Password for actual account logins forever.
Keychain is probably one of my favorite parts of the Apple ecosystem and I think it’s pretty underrated. Having passwords synced between my phone and laptop is great and I’ve encountered very few issues. The functionality has only improved over the years. Filling account details in apps or Safari is a breeze in comparison to when I didn’t really use it.
Of course, it lacks the sharing capabilities of something like LastPass, but most applications out there allow multiple users to have their own accounts anyways, so it’s not a huge issue to me.
Zoho mail, Slack: Communications regarding work
Gmail: Personal email
Basecamp: Company-wide project management
Slite: Company's knowledgebase
Google Drive: File sharing
Notion, Workflowy: Personal Knowledgebase
Pocket, Instapaper, Raindrop: For reading and saving articles
Tick Tick + good old Pen&Paper: to-dos
Todoist - For all my personal & work tasks
1Password - logins, cc, sensitive documents
Backblaze - Backups of important stuff (photos / server configs)
Superhuman - Email
Fantastical - Allows me to easily have google / outlooks calendars
Reminders - Why reminders & todoist. Too easy to say siri remind me of X. I have a shortcut that pulls any items from my reminders inbox and puts them in Todoist. It also acts as my shared shopping list, this way my partner doesn't need another app to support a shared list
Google Drive - cloud storage
Siri Shortcuts - To automate anything I don't want to do
Ahah, it's funny how there's a few apps that seems to be used by literally everyone in the Capiche community. Talk about like-minded people 😉
Many of use function daily with Notion, 1Password, and Google Drive.
For my part:
- 1Password
- Notion for project management and personal databases
- Google Drive to store files in the cloud and sync some app settings
- Apple Notes for on-the-go notes and scan archives (receipts, paper, bills, etc.)
- Roam Research, for brain dumping and todos
- Spark for email, but I started using Hey seriously this week.
For those interested, here's my full setup (including hardware) and how I work every day.
It’s honestly surprised me how many people in the community use 1Password. I knew it was popular, but felt like it was more on the Todoist level of popularity where some use it but plenty of others use other apps. Nope. Every time passwords get mentioned, the vote’s strongly in 1Password’s favor. They’ve really done a great job.
How are you liking Hey so far?
I use Toodledo, and some rude scripting to enable Org-mode syncing. 2do supports Toodledo by default and my script (based on Org-mode toodledo project) forced the integration.
I quit that approach just last week because there is bug that I’m too lazy to figure out the fix for
Everything automatized with ClickUp and Zapier - then I have seen when something to be done coming and mostly also how it impacts my personal things like Home budget.
Have an idea to connect it with Notion but Notion still hasn't Zapier integration.
- Google Drive for sharing documents and for easy reference.
- One Note for checklists and To do, on a regular basis.
- Notion for shared tasks and lists.
- OneDrive for select content.
- 1Password
Tools to share things with family members:
* 1Password: with a family account that is shared with my parents and my wife's parents
* Airtable: I built a food inventory during the quarantine. I just have to scan the barcode and enter the "best before" date for things I store in our cellar, and I have a ruby script that will look up the food data and autocomplete the name/brand/picture.
* Notion: for now, I share recipes with my wife, we can both add things we scout, and we have a "goto" tag for easy recipes for busy weeks (and a comfort food one for winter 🤫)
* Dropbox: I'm moving away from Evernote for scanned documents now that Dropbox offers search with OCR. I store admin papers, user guides but also special projects (like a video for a birthday)
* iCloud calendar: we have a family calendar to share important "appointments" (doctor, planes, trains…)
* YNAB (YouNeedABudget): to track our family budget & professional expenses
* ScanPro on iPhone to scan files and save them into Dropbox
Lastly, I rely heavily on Things and amongst other things I have:
* a "Routines" area with tasks that repeat weekly (I have one for digital stuff with subtasks like "Clean Screenshots folder" or "brew update && brew upgrade brew outdated") or template projects (think "HolidayKit" with lists of things I should not forget to take or do before leaving my home for some time)
* a "Family" area with projects like "x years Birthday" or "WE in [cool place]" or repeating projects like "Taxes"
We have 15k newsletter subscribers, and have around ~2k of them in a Slack group. We're starting to encounter issues in terms of community management - specifically, it's hard to pin content like c...
Google lets you subscribe to a calendar using a URL - although when using an Outlook 365 Calendar link, events are copied over once, and then the syncing stops. This seems to be a relatively new is...
Three major considerations I have been using to evaluate the plethora of options available: 1. Effortless/non-intrusive: It shouldn't feel like a video call 2. Price: As this app would be complime...
What do you like about Toshl compared to Mint or YNaB?