Hot answers tagged tools
18
Like first post said, the only future-proof technology is the ASCII (or UTF-8) text file.
However, you will soon find yourself wanting more. Amongst many others, I have made substantial use of the following knowledgebase systems. Presenting in chronological order of when I started using it and how much I've written in it:
Freemind (200,000+ words): ...
14
Evernote Advantages:
There is a free option that will be
good enough for many people.
Lightning fast search. Searches as
you type, instead of having to press
enter. This is highly preferable.
Good for loose, relatively
unconnected ideas that you want to be
able to access easily in the future.
Great for keeping a journal. It can
never be lost, it ...
14
I agree that these answers will probably be quite subjective and personally tailored.
For myself, I only use paper as a means to get things into electronic form. Specifically, everything goes into emacs org-mode. It also comes down to my specific line of work. I need to document my work for intellectual property purposes, and the bottom line, for me, is ...
12
I use Dropbox for a long time and I am very happy with it. I follow the following process:
I've Dropbox installed and all my projects are in the Dropbox folder, so they are synchronized. If I don't have Dropbox installed, I use a web browser to upload or download my files. The nice thing with Dropbox is that you can access your files everywhere. You don't ...
12
Where do you currently keep data you wish to see?
For me, spaced repetition is critical to internalize anything.
I put a lot of stuff on flashcards that magically goes to my phones, tablets, and interwebs.
I still have to consciously spin through my flashcards, but that's become a habit while standing in line, waiting for a long build process, other ...
11
I've been using RTM (both web and iPhone) as my GTD system for over a year and have found it incredibly helpful and ideally suited to my needs. I originally started with this advice from the RTM blog, but quickly streamlined the system to something less complex to manage and with less overhead.
What I've liked the most are the power of the smart lists and ...
11
I started building a while ago a personal knowledge base (kb) with similiar requirements and concerns as yours.
After considering a lot of different choices, finally settled with a mediawiki installation and haven't regretted since.
I'll fundament my choice considering your requirements.
future-proof
In my point of view, building and practical, ...
10
I use Checkvist with Mark Forster's AutoFocus 4 method. It has minimal graphics to show your progress, but I love it for the keyboard shortcuts.
9
When I end up working on a failed idea, I sometimes write it up anyhow because the value it provides is a warning to others that this is a dead end.
I'm making some assumptions here, you didn't post what your thesis was about. There is a question in philosophy about which end a gnat farts from, the front or the back. I suppose if my thesis was on that ...
9
Had the same problem. Several solutions:
Task Changer TITANIUM, adds a Alt+Tab functionality as overlay screen button, so you can switch between 2 apps with one screen swipe like hitting a keyboard shortcut.
Dock4Droid, touching screen on the margin yield pop up bar with recent and favorite apps
SwipePad, similar to Dock4Droid
All these apps make it ...
8
ManicTime is a time tracking solution that has been worked out well over the years, it has the following features and comes in a free and paid version:
Auto tracking of computer usage
Manictime sits in the background and records your activities, so you can just forget it is there and focus on your work. When you are finished you can use collected data to ...
8
Excel (or openoffice, libreoffice) workbook would work as well, with a worksheet for each group of tasks. Notpad++ is also great. Additionally, evernote will do that as well with a table.
7
Currently I've got a fairly close to purely digital GTD setup, although this could do with some refinements and tweaks.
To-Do: I use Things for my to-do list. It supports tags (which can be used to create contexts), an inbox, next actions, projects quick entry of items, and iPhone & iPad support. This currently uses a local network sync to keep devices ...
7
Since text is a popular answer for this question, I would suggest Emacs, with Org-Mode. It also uses plain text as it's backend but has a lot of features. Links, tags, todo lists, time tracking, tables, basic spreadsheets, publishing/exporting to html and or pdf and support for referencing and embedding source code. Synchronyzing Org-Mode's text files with ...
7
I am a Google power user since 2001, but I have become disgruntled with the company due to its service cancellation policies. Many applications I have poured data into have been discontinued. Given the recent cancellation of Google Reader, there is a high risk that Google won't keep Keep (pardon the pun). So evidently I recommend Evernote:
James Fallows: ...
6
One approach which I've often found useful is to mentally recast the action as a more productive or fruitful approach. Perhaps your thesis is a chance to improve writing technical documents, or a chance to figure out how new approaches to get things working again. Perhaps there are important process or approach observations which can be gleaned from the ...
6
If you know it already, it's certainly useful. You can get your thoughts to paper faster and more clearly than if you have to write out each letter, abbreviate, or omit words.
As for whether or not to learn it, it may be better than voice recognition for a long time, but it's a risk/reward analysis whether it will pay off for your particular circumstances ...
6
Emacs org-mode is probably the way to go. It's everything and the kitchen sink, including:
Stores all data in 100% future-proof plain text files
Allows easy manipulation, linking, and sorting of text.
Emacs is cross-platform, so put your org files in a dropbox folder and work on them everywhere.
Runs locally, so you don't need a server running php as with ...
6
Ooh, as a cofounder of Beeminder I'm very keen to learn why you say Beeminder didn't work for this kind of goal. Is it that you're not into the commitment device aspect of Beeminder?
Here's a list of tools that are just focused on tracking:
http://blog.beeminder.com/trackhack
6
I don't think keystrokes are a good metric. You can sit and type and backspace all day long to get a high keystroke count, and not have any productivity. Or play typing speed games.
You don't want to measure activity, you want to measure results.
I suggest a better proxy is "pages produced", using some standard definition of a page. For example, page ...
6
I use RescueTime, it's great!
It has superb reporting, you can see your activity per day, week, month, etc.
Another awesome feature is that it can distinguish between productive activity and non-productive activity, you can view per category / application how much time you have spent on it.
You can checkout Scott Hanselman's review for further details:
5
After looking more, I see RTM has an excellent blog post on exactly this. It suggests the following steps:
Create Lists for Personal and Work Daily Tasks
Create a List for Each Project
Brainstorm Project Tasks and Tag your Next Actions with “na”
Use Tags and Locations to Create Contexts (@Home, @Work, @Web, etc.)
Create Smart Lists to Separate Tasks Into ...
5
I use the very excellent Org-Mode for GNU Emacs. There is a lot of “startup” effort for it, especially if you are not already an Emacs user. As I was already an Emacs user coming to Org-Mode, it was much less for me.
At it's core Org-Mode is just a simple, plaintext-based, outliner. You can have as Projects as outline heads, tasks as outline sub-items, etc. ...
5
There are 2 ways to do this:
choose a solution that will last forever
accept that you will need to do a conversion every 5-10 years
The first will probably have a much lower functionality than the second.
Choose a solution that works best for you now. Make sure that it has "export information" functionality, that you can use when converting to next ...
5
Necessary/useful features of a MindMapping software?
Some ideas:
"Full navigation and editing" possible with keyboard shortcuts (without the mouse!!) is for me the most important thing for brainstorming, etc., that means:
create/delete/edit nodes
move nodes
navigate to a node
select nodes
show/hide child nodes or entire branches
search feature (full ...
5
Watches are a neglected tool. My biggest issues are that most of them take a (relatively) long time to do simple things, and that most make noise whereas I usually want a vibration.
My mutewatch solves both of those problems, although introduces some new ones unique to it.
I had high hopes for my motoactv but there's no SDK yet.
I had an earlier version ...
5
I would use a version control system like Git, SVN, or Mercurial.
(A tutorial on SVN vs. Mercurial differences).
I've been using this method at work for several weeks and it's helped immensely.
The main advantage of a VCS over carefully named files (as I suggested here in an answer you already saw), is that a VCS will store meta data, so you can capture ...
5
I think you want Evernote with some add-ons from the trunk.
Evernote lets you clip sections or full web pages, create notes, import files. You can do it from a browser add-on, a web application, a desktop program, or a handheld device (iOS, android,others) Anything you add from one client is very quickly available from all other clients.
The Evernote ...
5
I use org-mode a lot.
But you can really use the setup you want.
I tried to use todo lists inside org-mode but I prefer other dedicated tools for my todos (like Omnifocus). Mainly for the easier capture tools and sync options those dedicated tools have.
But I use org-mode all the time to take notes on projects, books, ideas, write articles etc. I am ...
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