Share the software products you can’t live without
I thought it would be interesting to see what software everyone loves using/ or can’t live without - either personally, professionally or both.
I thought it would be interesting to see what software everyone loves using/ or can’t live without - either personally, professionally or both.
Notion - For organising everything: todos, notes, goals, ideas, personal expenses, bookmarks, reading lists, contact lists, recipes etc.
Nice, really cool to see productivity software being your favourite too especially at the end of the year. Have you used workflowy too? What made you stick to notion?
No. I haven’t used workflow. I like the way Notion can be customised and as such it replaces the need of having multiple apps. And of course, its interface is neat and simple.
I currently use Evernote but have heard great things about Notion. I use Evernote a bit different than most people. Much like you are using Notion. I use it basically as my private library and resource center. The only thing I had to do was create my own Dewey Decimal system. I have tried speaking with Evernote to market it more this way but have had limited feedback. Part of my business is using Evernote (teaching) with a specific business in mind. Is Notion more open to this and have you found that it should be marketed as more then an organizational (personal) tool?
I love Notion too. I use it for everything from jotting down ideas for my product, collecting links for interesting resources, and my reading list.
I even used it for my first MVP, a learning path to web development for beginners.
Workflowy. Been a big unlock finding that.
It seems foolish not to explain the product... on the front page of your website.. lol
Yeah they really are not great marketers.
Essentially you can create arbitrarily deeply nested lists of lists. And it's got a reasonably good searching and tagging system too.
They say people either get it or they don't and the people who get it really get it and the people who don't just don't. Probably why they don't market so much as they just don't know how, but I agree they could do much better.
The really powerful thing about it is that you can fit all your knowledge on a single page and you can quickly drill down without having to use a search feature because you understand your mental heirarchy of organization. Very quick to find what you need and it goes infinitely deep.
I use it to keep track of basically 4 important things.
knowledge on subjects. This ranges from science to history, business etc.
famous people in certain domains. This usually is people in various domains of science and business. I store a quick sound byte description "20th century American sci-fi writer" and then I store what they are known for as well as quotes that are all marked #quote so I search #quote will show every single quote I've collected.
Thoughts and theses. Some problems are too big to store in your head. I keep tabs on my ideas and develop them further and list supporting evidence I find.
I keep a couple of swipe files. Mainly relating to uses of language, but other things too. For example I collect every metaphor/analogy I come across.
Those are my main use cases but over the last year it has really built into a powerful system for advancing my understanding of the world because I can crystalize the understanding I come to in the moment when I find new information regardless of whether or not it makes it into my long term memory. So it's massively efficient because I'm not at the mercy of my memory which is a huge boost.
The only time I've ever come across a piece of software with such a powerful ability to augment my brains natural capability was when I discovered Anki 10 years ago and used it to learn Japanese. The result of that was so crazy and I felt I found another huge unlock when I found workflowy in the same league as Anki.
Interesting, can only see a sign up page on their website. Do you mind explaining further?
Let Courtland and Jesse explain for you ;)
https://www.indiehackers.com/podcast/037-jesse-patel-of-workflowy
Good shout, really good episode too. I’m definitely digging this zoom in and out functionality. Think this might be me hooked on trying it.
Workflowy is a list tool where each bullet in a list is expandable and has its own page so you can focus on it. You can try it here: https://workflowy.com/demo/embed/
Ah ok, the demo still seems hidden behind the sign up page. I may give in to signing up just to have a look. Thanks!
The majority of my work heavily depends on PHPStorm, DataGrip and Visual Studio Code. My entire business runs on G Suite, with a lot of custom add-ons coded up for Google Sheets (including a capacity manager, invoice generator, financial forecasting, etc). I track everything in Toggl. All my code lives in BitBucket, and since I'm a Laravel dev, I rely pretty heavily on the official Homestead and Forge systems.
For task management I've gone back and forth between Asana, Trello, and Google Keep, but I'm honestly finding the best system to be the basic Windows 10 Sticky Notes app. I'll probably build my own version at some point!
Nice stack! What sort of functionality do you feel the keep, trello & asana are missing, what would you’re own version look like?
Connecting tasks and hours worked to the contracts I sign. Every customer has its own set of rules, limits and deadlines, and the manual reconciliation every month can get a bit tedious. Toggl is only a partial help here - the reporting is a bit difficult to use, and it can't integrate the results out into my invoicing tool.
Minimalism is the other problem. All these apps require a full browser tab to be open, when I really prefer the flexibility of sticky notes. I'd rather have a screen full of notes I can close, than a single app that forces me to navigate it to find the notes I need.
Keep can't integrate out into anything, despite having a nice mobile and web UI. Trello and Asana have nice APIs, but really pidgeonhole you into a particular way of working. Not every workload fits neatly into a single task, or card - sometimes I have a list of tasks, sometimes I have a half-baked brain-dump dealing with an architectural question.
Emacs org mode might be a good tool for this, but again, I don't like having dedicated applications open for this one function.
😂
Following are the software:
1.'text-to-speech-extension' convert audio into speech and opposite of it.
2.'youtube-enhancer' to improve the experience of your youtube channels.
3.;find-website-used-fonts' find fonts on webpages ,paragraphs and from websites.
I depend upon Flipboard (https://flipboard.com/) daily to capture ideas or products I want to look into further. I must have 30 magazines at this point on a whole host of topics.
I really like Air Table. It is simple to use and can be very powerful once you learn more about it.
Gmail, GCal, Trello, Bitbucket, Emacs + org-mode
Super cool discussion. I learnt a lot already. my flow
Information bytes capture (notes audio etc): evernote.com
Turning information into Knowledge thru process (formulas or mapping): airtable.com
Adobe suite
Im generally a github + SSG jekyll or Gatsby or middleman + firebase + bootstrap hacker. I couldn't live without those.
Stoked to try google flow and workflowy
My pick!
Tools to organize myself
Tools to make stuff
Notepad 😅😈
• Dynalist: an app that basically cloned Workflowy and ramped up the feature set substantially. I use it for everything: task management, life management, journaling. If my Mac is on, my Dynalist workspace is open.
• Freedom: the most powerful URL blocker I know of. Subscription is $30 a year, but I'd easily pay three times that amount. I see the internet as a Siren-infested ocean: sensationalist headlines, tantalizing ads, juicy social media gossip. So solid URL blocking is the beeswax that I stuff my ears with.
• Airtable: collaborative and/or complex project management. Although I do a lot of simple task management in Dynalist, it's not ideal for collaboration. In the past I've used Trello and Asana for project management, but Airtable is vastly more flexible.
• Underhead with a floating browser[1]: this is a one-task-at-a-time todo list app I built. It was inspired by NowDoThis — whose creators stopped development years ago — and it is, for the most part, a digital implementation of David Allen's Getting Things Done method. Not a public-facing app yet (or perhaps ever), so I haven't taken the time to build a FAQ/demo page. The basics are: ❶ write your todo items in the text field; each new line represents a new task. ❷ You can add a timer to tasks by including the duration in the text of the task itself, e.g. "comment on the forum (5 minutes)." When the time expires on a task, the next task will automatically start. ❸ You can play with various settings using the button in the bottom right. I load Underhead in a floating browser, so at all times, the task I'm currently working on is hovering over every other window with a timer counting down.
[1] I personally use Fluid App, but Helium is simpler, lighter weight, and free.
PM here, so...
Slack for communication, Skitch for screenshots+, Jira cloud for organising tasks, Spotify to feel good
https://www.alfredapp.com/
Best productivity app for me on macOS.
I use it for lots of things:
Another example of workflow: I do a lot of web scraping, I sometimes have to look at the HTML code fetched by a script in a real browser, so I have a workflow that takes the content of my clipboard, copy this content in a file, and open the file with Chrome.
If you're a Mac user, just buy it, and invest some time learning workflows, downloading popular workflow, and even creating your own. Basically if you do repetitive tasks, it will save you a lot of time.
I can definitely see why the search function would be useful to any Mac users. The automation part looks really good too - I need this in my life! How long would you say it took to get used to it? Anything similar here for pc?
I don't think there is something similar on PC. Plus the Alfred community is great a lot of workflows are built by the community!
For how long to get used to it, I'd say it depends on the number of workflow you use, the number of shortcuts / snippet.
The best thing I think to get started would be to start "slowly". First try to add two or three snippets for the thing you use everyday.
Then try to use the clipboard manager, the clipboard history.
Then you will develop a "muscle memory" for these tasks, and you'll type it without even thinking. That's where the magic starts :)
And then you can introduce workflows and other stuff ! So yes, there is a learning curve, and you won't be able to learn everything in a day !
I use Todoist everyday to maintain sanity in my work life. I have written a blog post about how I use Todoist. Have a read https://www.kashifaziz.me/todoist-productivity-tips.html/
I am also exploring Notion these days and may migrate from Todoist to Notion at some point in future.
Apart from Todoist, I use VSCode, WordPress, Gmail, Hootsuite and Buffer for various tasks related to coding, blogging and content marketing.
Nice blog post ta for sharing. Any reasons you’re liking notion more now?
Todoist is, as the name implies, primarily a todo list although it has nice integration with GCal and other apps. Notion, on the other hand, is a comprehensive application that can be an all-in-one to-do list, journal, CRM and everything else.
I am currently managing my work, and life, using a combination of Todoist and plenty of text files. I intend to merge them all into Notion. This is one of the goals of year 2019 :)
I love Bear on Mac/iOS for taking notes/organizing thoughts/writing drafts.
Chrome
Gmail
Sketch
BearApp
Visual Studio Code
Bear app looks cool similar style to ghost cms
BBEdit: I've been using it for over 20 years and it's still by far the best code editor I've found.
CouchDB: (I never liked SQL for web apps and CouchDB addresses all the reasons why)
DigitalOcean: I think it's fair to say that is "software" and their stuff is top of the heap.
Bootstrap and jQuery. (I know some devs think jQuery is over the hill but I've yet to find a compelling reason to ditch it and that includes React)
Fetch (sftp) That little dog has run a zillion miles for me.
Facebook : I know that may sound silly to some but just this week I hooked up with two friends I've not talked to in decades. FB is why.
Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. It's really nice to have those choices. All of those browsers are great software.
Nice choices! Need to checkout BBEdit & couchdb, haven’t heard of them.
I use fb’s messenger app more than FB but I get you.
Also the browsers you forget you use them as they integrate very seamlessly with what you’re doing. If you had to pick one what would it be?
I use Safari for most of my personal browsing but if I had to choose only one it would be Firefox.
I like the UI of Safari better, but I trust Firefox more.
Haha I’d definitely agree with that too.
Personally I like to use:
GooglePhotos - very easy to store photos on the cloud and not use up all your phone’s space for pics.
Google sheets - I’m a fan of spreadsheets what can I say.
Side-Hustling I like to use:
Wordpress.org - what I’ve learned how to use and find it relatively simple to put together a landing page for an idea or initial mvp for a website.
Mail chimp - easy to connect to Wordpress - I don’t have a large mailing list so it’s free.
At work:
Just getting into using JIRA and confluence from atlassian. Seems to be the best bug, issue and product management tracker I’ve used so far.
I think the award for best tool of the decade should go to realtimeboard.
Also, for team leads or product owners I think greenshot is an excellent time saver.
Links:
https://realtimeboard.com
http://getgreenshot.org/
Other tools that probably everybody is familiar with:
Postman
Hubstaff
Notepad++
JetBrains products
Putty
WinSCP
Adobe products
Invision
Craft
Studio
Principle
Haiku
Flaticon
Slack
Skype
Discord
Hangouts
Meet
GitHub
SourceTree
DockerHub
Robo 3T
If you like Greenshot you'll love ShareX: https://getsharex.com/ - I switched over when I first learned of it and haven't ever gone back.
Hey thanks Wogan, I'll check it out!
Wow realtimeboards looks excellent, definitely need that in my life.
Greenshot - a screenshot tool -for team leads and product owners really?- am I missing something here. Their website even has adwords on it.
I’m definitely familiar with the rest of your list there and don’t get me wrong they are solid products but are these all software you couldn’t live without?
Glad you like realtimeboard!
Greenshot is great for showing people what you mean, rather than describing it. You press print screen, select the specific area, copy to clipboard and paste it directly into the chat system. Or you can very easily draw arrows and selections on the print screen before sending it.
Well, let's be serious here - "couldn't live without" basically means you find it very useful in your workflow. The same critique can be used for most of the answers I read, everything has an alternative, and most people could live without software altogether.
Fair points there! I’ve always used snipping tool as it has been already available on my work pc, it definitely has its limitations but not been a big enough annoyance to force me to go looking elsewhere.