My list:

1. Brainstorming: Rocketbook / Sharp Electronic Notebook / Mindnode
2. Random Notetaking: Workflowy / Standard Notes / Sharp Electronic Notebook
3. Scheduling: Calendars (Outlook at work)
4. Task Management: Sharp Electronic Notebook / Notebooks App
5. Thought Processing: Workflowy / TheBrain
6. Knowledge Archive: DEVONthink Pro / Notebooks App / TheBrain
7. Project Knowledge: Notebooks App
8. Mail: Tutanota (personal)
9. Writing: Typora / Gingko / or in Notebooks App directly

I started to use Sharp Electronic Notebook this year and am still evaluating. I also switched to Notebooks App at work recently. Before I used a lot of VoodooPad.

So someone else here uses erasable pens, I really like testing the writing on their different types.

1. Brainstorming :: Dynalist
2. Random Notetaking :: Drafts (iOS and Mac beta) (send to Evernote, DayOne, and Bear)
3. Scheduling :: Fantastical 2 and Calendar 5 (for the great "Week View" on iOS)
4. Task Management :: 2Do for personal tasks, Todoist for collaboration, and Trello for event planning
5. Thought Processing :: Dynalist
6. Knowledge Archive :: Evernote (receipts and web clips), Bear (non-private stuff), DayOne (private stuff)
7. Project Knowledge :: Dynalist
8. Academic Database and PDFs :: Paperpile (notes get archived in Dynalist)

Luhmann wrote:

8. Academic Database and PDFs :: Paperpile (notes get archived in
Dynalist)

Is this archiving automated?

Paperpile is working on improving the search of your highlights within the app - especially if you use their built in highlighting tools on the web or in their (beta) mobile app. But I like to work with my highlights in Dynalist where I can structure them and tag them, etc. so I manually export my highlights, clean them up with some RegEx scripts (I've automated this in Drafts), and then copy them to Dynalist.

Beck wrote:

Luhmann wrote:
>8. Academic Database and PDFs :: Paperpile (notes get archived in
>Dynalist)

Is this archiving automated?

Great Topic

1. Brainstorming :: iThoughtsX / Devonthink Pro Office (I would like it to be Tinderbox but IT IS TOO EXPENSIVE!)
2. Random Notetaking :: Devonthink Pro Office / Apple notes
3. Scheduling :: BusyCal/Apple Calendars
4. Task Management :: Things 3
5. Thought Processing :: Thoughts X /Devonthink Pro Office
6. Knowledge Archive :: Devonthink Pro Office
7. Project Knowledge :: Devonthink Pro Office ((I would like it to be Tinderbox but IT IS TOO EXPENSIVE!)

If Devonthink Pro Office added mind mapping feature/ better note/markdown editor it could be my everything app.

Paul Korm wrote:

Nice topic. My tweaks of the original list.

1. Brainstorming :: iThoughtsX and/or Curio (on Windows: MindManager)
2a. Random Notetaking :: Bear (sometimes Curiota -- but not much)
2b. Intentional Notetaking :: Agenda
3. Scheduling :: Fantastical 2 and DropTask (feeds Google ->
Fantastical)
4. Task Management :: OmniFocus 3 and DropTask
5. Thought Processing :: TheBrain 10 and Curio and Tinderbox
6. Knowledge Archive :: DEVONthink Pro Office and Evernote
7. Project Knowledge :: I'm not sure what this category means vs.
"Knowledge Archive"

8. Mail: Apple Mail (macOS) and Outlook (Windows 10)
9. Writing: Word (mainly Windows 10); Ulysses (sometimes)

Compartmentalized lists like this sound interesting. I also have a similar system. But, unfortunately, it is a huge burden of productivity because the division is often unclear; and the movement from one system to the other hinders the productivity.

An efficient system would have all the core processes in one place.

- Your brainstorming leads to ideas--> may to ideas that grow to extended writing. Should I stop there and move to the other app or keep on writing in the brainstorming app?

- random notes (Curiota) sometimes grow to extensive articles. Shall I stop writing in Curiota and move the note to Tinderbox as soon as it grow to few pages? When do you decide to move the note to another app?

- formal (intention note taking) sometimes end up being informal (too short). The division is also exhaustively difficult. How do you differentiate the random note from the intentional note? Can a random note be completely unintentional?

aren't the random notes, intentional notes & brainstormings thought processes? Isn't there any thought process in writing a note?


Too many tools --> too many decisions to make --> waste of time and brain power.
I am subscribing to Digital Minimalism.

1. Brainstorming - Scapple
2. Random Notetaking - Google Keep
3. Scheduling :: Google Calendar
4. Task Management :: Checkvist
5. Thought Processing :: Checkvist or OmniOutliner, sometimes Curio
6. Knowledge Archive :: EagleFiler (used to be Evernote)
7. Project Knowledge :: Checkvist or OmniOutliner

I see this "Digital Minimalism" guy all around the blogosphere these days. It's interesting that people need to buy a book to tell them not to obsess over Twitter.

Anyway, I don't find I need to make decisions about what to use for what. I just like software and learning what things can do and not do. I have documents stuffed all over the place. These things age out of relevance so it usually doesn't matter to find them at my fingertips a month or year or more later.

Dellu wrote:

Too many tools --> too many decisions to make --> waste of time and
brain power.
I am subscribing to Digital Minimalism.

Paul Korm wrote:

I see this "Digital Minimalism" guy all around the blogosphere these
days.

I havn't actually read the book: just find the phrase nice for this context. But, his previous books were very good (specially Deep work). But, the point is there is always friction between the tools.

It is nice if you don't have a problem of changing tools. For me, it has been a huge headache: how to sync the notes stored Devonthink with Tinderbox, how to get the notes written in Curiota inside Tinderbox...cutting from one tool and pasting it in another....a .whole lot of mess.

I am removing every productivity app except DEVONthink & Scapple.
I will see if I will be less productive.

Stephen Zeoli wrote:

I am curious. Does anyone use a ReMarkable Tablet in their workflow?

I do. I assume it falls under 2. Random Notetaking, except I only use it for meeting notes (which are many). The main advantage, for me, is that I can have the notes from all previous meetings with me, without needing to carry a heck of a lot of paper, while I can also quickly send around and archive PDF versions of the notes.

It seems from reMarkable's site that Search is limited to finding documents by name. Is it possible to search for specific notes by searching for text? Since handwriting recognition requires being connected by wi-fi to reMarkable's web site, I assume searching handwriting is not possible.

Alexander Deliyannis wrote:

Stephen Zeoli wrote:
>I am curious. Does anyone use a ReMarkable Tablet in their workflow?

I do. I assume it falls under 2. Random Notetaking, except I only use it
for meeting notes (which are many). The main advantage, for me, is that
I can have the notes from all previous meetings with me, without needing
to carry a heck of a lot of paper, while I can also quickly send around
and archive PDF versions of the notes.

I meant to mention something about Mellel. This app uses some unconventional interface elements that are difficult to get comfy with, but I am beginning to use it more now because (1) it is fast, (2) it doesn't make me jump through hoops every time I start it (like MS Word's series of logins required to use the college's license of MS), and (3) it has the potential of doing more things for me in the future (academic things that I don't need right now). For the past year or so, I've used TextMaker 2018, and like the user interface over that of MS Word.

Beck wrote:

Fun topic, Jake. :)

1. Brainstorming : Good ol' fashioned whiteboard, GoodNotes, Workflowy
(happy)*
2a. Random Notetaking : Bullet Journal, GoodNotes (happy)
2b. Intentional Notetaking : Tinderbox (happy)
3. Scheduling : Fantastical (wish for something more
elegant/spacious/accommodating of time blocking)
4. Task Management : Omnifocus 3 w/Bullet Journal for capture and
TaskPaper for weekly planning (imperfect, but works well enough)
5. Thought Processing : Tinderbox, Morning Pages
6. Knowledge Archive : DevonThink
7. Project Knowledge : Project Memos in Google Docs, Task Paper, in some
ways OF3 (could use a better system here)

8. Mail: MailMate (very happy)
9a. Writing: Currently unhappy and searching (considering Scrivener,
Ulysses, Mellel, have used... everything)
9b. Editing: Hemingway (happy)
10. Reference: Paperpile (considering Bookends despite Pp's elegance b/c
#9)

11. Reading: DevonThink To Go (happy cause of sync to DTPO, but like
GoodNotes and LiquidText a lot, too)
12. Grading: Annotated GoodNotes PDFs uploaded to Canvas (can't stand
Canvas of course, but otherwise happy w/this)

* Anyone else wish CMapTools wasn't so darn... pixelated? Darn retina
displays.

1. Brainstorming :: iThoughtsX and/or OmniOutliner and/or pen and paper
2. Random Notetaking :: Drafts and/or The archive
3. Scheduling :: iOS and Mac Calendar.app sync via google
4. Task Management :: Omnifocus
6. Knowledge Archive :: Devonthink + the Archive. Going back to use plain txt more and more. I index my text folder in Devonthink. Great feature by DT
7. Project Knowledge : Omnifocus + Devonthink
8. Journalling: Day One and sometimes, when in the mood for hand writing, a very loose bullet journal implementation

I found this very amusing, since I'm engaged in much the same process. I've been evaluating all the lovely apps I use for stuff, and have concluded that the ones I really need are limited to:

- Numbers (increasingly important to me as a general note-taker, calculation engine and whiteboard)
- Notebooks (although I'm impatiently looking forward to version 2 for macOS at the moment, due to the significant shortcomings of V1)
- DEVONthink Pro Office (invaluable for storing large quantities of information, especially bitexts in PDF format, random research stuff etc.)
- Notability for dealing with dictated input (doesn't [yet] require a subscription - hooray!)
- Soulver (as a quickie calculator when I can't be bothered to set up a spreadsheet-style calculation in Numbers)

Otherwise I'm still using MacJournal, because I've used it to store lots of encrypted info and don't have an immediate alternative (until the advent of Notebooks 2 above). I also still use Curiota, but will be replacing it with Notebooks 2 once the latter arrives. I occasionally use Scrivener, but don't write enough long-form novels/books enough to make it a heavy-use app.

Apps I have, to my surprise, decided are redundant include: Bear, Ulysses, Outlinely, Keep It. I'm in the process of exporting the content at the moment (quite tedious, but not as bad as I thought it might be). The savings should be considerable!

I use Scapple occasionally, too.

As you will see, I am expecting Notebooks 2 for macOS to take over most of the functionality of multiple apps (Notebooks on iOS is already more sophisticated). As for outliners qua outliners – I love the folding thing, but am increasingly convinced that folding should be part of a larger structure (Pagico does it quite neatly, as it happens, although I've replaced my Pagico setup with a Numbers setup; so does Scrivener), hence my abandonment of Workflowy, OmniOutliner and similar apps.

Saying that, I've worked out a way to make Numbers fold individual entries (tables, text notes etc.), which saves space and is actually quite elegantly managed by Numbers (which, when you unfold an item, pushes everything below it vertically downward - and then elegantly raises it up again when you close the item, so no disruption to the positioning of items even on a very extensive whiteboard-style worksheet. Nice. Actually, more than nice - everyone should do it!). The one major disadvantage to Numbers - and indeed all Apple iWorks apps - is the amount of space taken up by individual files. They really should opt for the compressed XML used by MS Office or, for that matter, LibreOffice etc. It's a bit ridiculous that a fairly basic spreadsheet should take up around a quarter of a megabyte!

I like HyperPlan, but it's not cross-platform at the moment, and to be honest, the Numbers setup allows me to create much the same kind of views (albeit manually, so without the neat automation - I love the x/y axis swap feature, incidentally). I'd love to see more variation in the HyperPlan card layout ("Appearance"), with e.g. the option to change font sizes for different parts of the display, use rich text, etc. But I'm sure that's all on the roadmap. HyperPlan is definitely something I could get into if it was just a little bit more sophisticated and - aha - cross-platform. It's already a very impressive product, however!

Cheers,
Bill

Dellu wrote:

I am removing every productivity app except DEVONthink & Scapple.
I will see if I will be less productive.

Darn, having just decided to give up Ulysses, I've received the promo e-mail describing the new features in Ulysses 15 (really!?!). They all sound rather enticing. On the other hand, Scrivener already has most of them - and doesn't charge subscription fees.

It's tough being a dyed-in-the-wool CRIMPer. But as you all know, someone's got to do it...

MadaboutDana wrote:

I like HyperPlan, but it's not cross-platform at the moment,

It is cross-platform, in that it supports Windows and Mac.

Are you referring to the fact that it doesn't currently support iOS or Android?

and to be

honest, the Numbers setup allows me to create much the same kind of
views (albeit manually, so without the neat automation - I love the x/y
axis swap feature, incidentally). I'd love to see more variation in the
HyperPlan card layout ("Appearance"), with e.g. the option to change
font sizes for different parts of the display, use rich text, etc. But
I'm sure that's all on the roadmap.

The ability to have a lot more control over how text is displayed on a card is definitely high on the wishlist for v3.

HyperPlan is definitely something I
could get into if it was just a little bit more sophisticated and - aha
- cross-platform. It's already a very impressive product, however!

Thanks!

--

Andy Brice
https://www.hyperplan.com

I've been playing with the beta...and it's really, really good. In fact, the new keyword manager and keyword filtering has just catapulted Ulysses to the top of the heap for me when it comes to storing and referencing my pure-text materials. It doesn't have a good way to quick capture, but that's what Drafts for Mac is for!

MadaboutDana wrote:

Darn, having just decided to give up Ulysses, I've received the promo
e-mail describing the new features in Ulysses 15 (really!?!). They all
sound rather enticing. On the other hand, Scrivener already has most of
them - and doesn't charge subscription fees.

It's tough being a dyed-in-the-wool CRIMPer. But as you all know,
someone's got to do it...

You probably already know this, but the Notebooks 2 for Mac beta is now public: https://www.notebooksapp.com/NBMac2-public-beta/

MadaboutDana wrote:

I found this very amusing, since I'm engaged in much the same process.
I've been evaluating all the lovely apps I use for stuff, and have
concluded that the ones I really need are limited to:

- Numbers (increasingly important to me as a general note-taker,
calculation engine and whiteboard)
- Notebooks (although I'm impatiently looking forward to version 2 for
macOS at the moment, due to the significant shortcomings of V1)
- DEVONthink Pro Office (invaluable for storing large quantities of
information, especially bitexts in PDF format, random research stuff
etc.)
- Notability for dealing with dictated input (doesn't [yet] require a
subscription - hooray!)
- Soulver (as a quickie calculator when I can't be bothered to set up a
spreadsheet-style calculation in Numbers)

Otherwise I'm still using MacJournal, because I've used it to store lots
of encrypted info and don't have an immediate alternative (until the
advent of Notebooks 2 above). I also still use Curiota, but will be
replacing it with Notebooks 2 once the latter arrives. I occasionally
use Scrivener, but don't write enough long-form novels/books enough to
make it a heavy-use app.

Apps I have, to my surprise, decided are redundant include: Bear,
Ulysses, Outlinely, Keep It. I'm in the process of exporting the content
at the moment (quite tedious, but not as bad as I thought it might be).
The savings should be considerable!

I use Scapple occasionally, too.

As you will see, I am expecting Notebooks 2 for macOS to take over most
of the functionality of multiple apps (Notebooks on iOS is already more
sophisticated). As for outliners qua outliners – I love the
folding thing, but am increasingly convinced that folding should be part
of a larger structure (Pagico does it quite neatly, as it happens,
although I've replaced my Pagico setup with a Numbers setup; so does
Scrivener), hence my abandonment of Workflowy, OmniOutliner and similar
apps.

Saying that, I've worked out a way to make Numbers fold individual
entries (tables, text notes etc.), which saves space and is actually
quite elegantly managed by Numbers (which, when you unfold an item,
pushes everything below it vertically downward - and then elegantly
raises it up again when you close the item, so no disruption to the
positioning of items even on a very extensive whiteboard-style
worksheet. Nice. Actually, more than nice - everyone should do it!). The
one major disadvantage to Numbers - and indeed all Apple iWorks apps -
is the amount of space taken up by individual files. They really should
opt for the compressed XML used by MS Office or, for that matter,
LibreOffice etc. It's a bit ridiculous that a fairly basic spreadsheet
should take up around a quarter of a megabyte!

I like HyperPlan, but it's not cross-platform at the moment, and to be
honest, the Numbers setup allows me to create much the same kind of
views (albeit manually, so without the neat automation - I love the x/y
axis swap feature, incidentally). I'd love to see more variation in the
HyperPlan card layout ("Appearance"), with e.g. the option to change
font sizes for different parts of the display, use rich text, etc. But
I'm sure that's all on the roadmap. HyperPlan is definitely something I
could get into if it was just a little bit more sophisticated and - aha
- cross-platform. It's already a very impressive product, however!

Cheers,
Bill

Dellu wrote:
>I am removing every productivity app except DEVONthink & Scapple.
>I will see if I will be less productive.

Dang, Jake, as a matter of fact I *didn't* know that - whoopee! I shall go and play...

Many thanks!
Bill

JakeBernsteinWA wrote:

You probably already know this, but the Notebooks 2 for Mac beta is now
public: https://www.notebooksapp.com/NBMac2-public-beta/

Dang, Jake, as a matter of fact I *didn't* know that - whoopee! I shall go and play...

Many thanks!
Bill

JakeBernsteinWA wrote:

You probably already know this, but the Notebooks 2 for Mac beta is now
public: https://www.notebooksapp.com/NBMac2-public-beta/

Oops, sorry, I crosspost into a new thread before I saw Jake's post (and heard Bill's shouts of joy all the way across the pond).

MadaboutDana wrote:

Dang, Jake, as a matter of fact I *didn't* know that - whoopee! I shall
go and play...

Many thanks!
Bill

JakeBernsteinWA wrote:
You probably already know this, but the Notebooks 2 for Mac beta is now
>public: https://www.notebooksapp.com/NBMac2-public-beta/

I made a Dynalist outline of my "digital toolkit" which is basically an extended version of my earlier contribution to this thread.

https://dynalist.io/d/gPrYw1qBaugWZqm9HUW3zWj5

I would very much love to simplify things, but each app has some essential feature which I am reluctant to give up. I tried to explain what those are as best I could in the notes.

Interesting and enlightening list. You've inspired me to put Dynalist to such a good use... working on it. My list headings will be somewhat different.

Thanks!

Steve Z.

Luhmann wrote:

I made a Dynalist outline of my "digital toolkit" which is basically an
extended version of my earlier contribution to this thread.

https://dynalist.io/d/gPrYw1qBaugWZqm9HUW3zWj5

I would very much love to simplify things, but each app has some
essential feature which I am reluctant to give up. I tried to explain
what those are as best I could in the notes.

Okay, so following my interesting but time-consuming Numbers experiment, I have to admit that I've now switched to... DynaList!

I've become a reluctant but increasingly enthusiastic user of DynaList, not least because of the generous "free" tier, and second, because of its outstanding tag filtering (vastly superior to everybody else, with the exception of FoldingText and Workflowy - but FoldingText is no longer in development, and Workflowy is a lot more expensive).

It's facilely easy to put together a GTD system, differentiated by "at" and "hash" tags; unlike other outliners (e.g. OmniOutliner, OutlineEdit), DynaList shows you the tiers above and below the tagged item - and you can edit the tagged view (in notable contrast to Outlinely, which has a "snapshot" tag view). I'm also finding the ability to colour items very useful for differentiating my various areas of activity (Home, Work, Family etc.); of course I could do that using multiple files (another area where DynaList wins over Workflowy), but clearly it's easier to keep all to-dos in a single file for management purposes. OutlineEdit also does colours very well, of course, but links them to tags.

For my purposes, DynaList is perfectly acceptable on iOS (although it does make me wish my iPhone SE had a slightly bigger screen; but why pay for a new iPhone when your old one is still working extremely well?). It's great on iPad.

Okay, so the free version of DynaList doesn't integrate with Calendar, or have a built-in calendar. But I can live with that. Maybe I'll even subscribe, once I've finished my Night of the Long Knives approach to my various subscriptions...