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What habits, tools, services, etc. are essential to your day?

Whether it's a tool that increases your productivity, or something that helps you keep your sanity — what software, services, activities, strategies, etc. are crucial to your days right now?

Most immediate ones for me:

Morning exercise
A sit/stand desk
Interstitial journaling (a new addition)
Obsidian - notes and knowledge management
Penpot - design tool

on January 10, 2022
  1. 8

    Here are a few of mine:

    • Notion: project management (actually, life management)
    • Freedom: strong website blocking
    • Delay: soft website blocking
    • everyday: habit tracking (a cool alternative if you like gamification is Habitica)
    • Noizio: ambient noise, including alpha/beta waves for flow state
    1. 2

      I didn't realise Everyday was by an IHer — nice! Noizio looks good, definitely trying that. Thanks for sharing!

  2. 4

    Habits

    • At the end of the day, make a schedule for the next day.
    • Do not check your phone for the first 1-2 hours after waking up.
    • Have more whitespace in your life. (Sit idly for a few minutes through out the day)

    Tools

    • Notion.so (Project & life management)
    • Pocket (Save and read later)
    • Sketch your thoughts (Whiteboard / Notepad)
    1. 1

      I do something similar in terms of not checking my phone, but at both ends of the day. Same with the "whitespace", though never expressed in that term before :-)

  3. 4
    • Brave browser: I've tried all the others, and I wanted less tracking than Chrome and Brave is basically the same user experience. I wish I could use Safari for the battery savings and Apple interconnectedness, but it lacks some critical features (like separate profiles/user accounts).
    • Notion: I use it for as much as I can – mainly task/project tracking and a wiki of my life.
    • Apple AirPods Max: For some reason, my residential, dead-end street is just filled with constant noise (dogs barking, table saws, kids screaming and skateboarding, etc.) so I really need them to be able to focus.
    1. 1

      I tried Brave a couple of years back for the same reason, but I ended up going with Firefox and using things like uBlock Origin. I think maybe the developer console was lacking at the time.

  4. 3

    Habits:

    • Daily exercise
    • Drinking water
    • Go on walks or just get outside!!! This one is so underrated.

    Tools:

    • thesidekick.app - goal setting, time blocking, site blocking
    • good ol' notebook and pen - quick to-do lists and note taking
  5. 3

    Hypefury: write weekly tweets to be posted on Twitter.
    Beezr.io: I built a small CRM on Beezr to manage my leads & sales opportunities.
    Leadleaper: to fetch e-mails from LinkedIn profiles.
    Clicky Analytics: track my website traffic.

    1. 1

      Had never come across Beezr before... Looks like a no-code platform for businesses. Pretty cool.

      1. 2

        Yeah very cool! Beezr is the new kid on the block. We won several deals over big names in the competition.

        1. 1

          I'm in the exploratory phase of a potential project, which has naturally involved looking at different tech solutions. It's incredible to see what is available — I feel like I've been under a rock!

          Congrats on the success with Beezr, long may it continue. Perhaps I'll become a happy customer too at some point. 🙂

          Out of curiosity: how did you choose the name?

          1. 2

            I'm more than happy to get on a call whenever you're ready.
            As for the name, it was initially Beezer which was inspired by 'bees" and their work efficiency. That is how we pictured beezr to do for businesses; make work more efficient and automated.
            But then the domain name was taken and we had to remove the "e" ☺️

    2. 1

      How is Hypefury? I've been using Typefully so far.

      1. 1

        I have to say it's the first tool I tried and stuck with me. I like that it gives templates, inspirations, suggestions. I can schedule up to 2 days with the free version.

  6. 2
    • Exercise
    • Reading
    • Meditation
    • Journaling (I use Daylio, free tier)
    • I recently started doing yoga every night before bed. Prior to that, it often took me a long time to fall asleep (multiple hours). If I do yoga, I slip easily into slumber in a matter of minutes. It's remarkable!
    1. 2

      I've found that stretching before bed often helps me sleep more quickly, possibly even improves the quality of sleep. It's habit I allowed to be disrupted, but should really resume!

      1. 1

        It's a great habit for sure. Good luck picking it back up!

  7. 2

    Yo! Here's my list:

    Notion: my life wiki and day-to-day planner for both my personal and professional life
    VSCode: IDE of choice and most-common stomping ground
    Figma: for product design that hasn't made it to VSCode yet
    Wrap: (A plug, but true nonetheless) for capturing and editing shareable product screenshots and keeping my Twitter updated with good assets

    1. 1

      Thanks for sharing. I must say, Wrap looks pretty good. Will keep it in mind for later :-)

  8. 2
    1. 1

      I like the concept and UI of IA writer, wish I had a use for it.

      Do you use the free version of Typefully? It looks like a good option for me but I hate it when services aren't upfront about their pricing :-/

      1. 2

        If you're using obsidian, you can mimic the UI of iA writer with the Minimal theme and an iA font

        1. 1

          These are great recommendations — much appreciated!

  9. 1

    SOFTWARE
    Notion:
    To manage business & personal life by doing habit tracking and project management. Plus, using it as a Wiki of sorts for personal and professional use.

    Lofi.co OR Soundcloud OR Spotify: for when I feel like listening to music.

    STRATEGIES

    • Habit Tracking
    • Goal Tracking
    • Evening Journalling
    • Reading regularly