Evernote + Calendar + E-mail. Calendar and e-mail both provided by Fastmail.
How do you crosslink?
Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
21–30 of 272 posts
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#22Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are some apps but I found that sshing to another machine was the best solution. An alternative is to run Emacs locally.
Absolutely agree - I've got most of my stuff hosted such that I just need SSH (or a VPN) to access it. However, usability on a mobile device in this case is limited (albeit not impossible).
Usability is not a great problem if the phone has a big display (5.5>) and you use evil(vim)/evil-leader for your keybindings. JuiceSSH and mosh also help with latency and disconnections.
The main problems for me are:
1) Keeping everything synced. Especially Emacs's state.
2) I don't trust a VPS with all my personal information. I have *everything* in org-mode files.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#23With many ~/development folders on various containers organized by "tag" and a ~/projects folder, a top-level todo.txt, and a todo.txt in each ~/development/project_name, with vim and ssh. Just use ssh + vim + a "server" at home, basic files and directories and containers to organize work.
Documents, sheets and notes, are in nextcloud, as well as pictures and other things. Calendar is there as well. Its all in one server, with raid0 ssds, raid5 for massive storage, a few "service" VMs like for nextcloud, a few containers here and there, with easy access and overview of it all on the hypervisor. Android phone has notes which is nextcloud notes application for simpler reminders/buy-milk kind of things.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#24* Emacs org mode to prep for meetings, maintain TODO lists, and general notes
* Also keep Slack open when I am working. If someone needs something, they can ping me on Slack and I will be available within 5-30 minutes.
* Gmail stars for everything I can't address immediately. Everything else is dealt with immediately and inbox count is 0 for most of the day (both work and personal addresses).
* Iphone calendar (with alarms) for everything I am putting off for later or need to schedule/remember
* Iphone notes for everything I am putting off indefinitely (movies/books/games to consume, gifts to gift, songs to learn, general goals for the next few years, travel destinations, events)
* Occasionally I leave things out of place so that I remember what I'm doing next time I leave the house (tennis racket on the bike + tennis shoes and shorts/compression shorts in my bag)
That's pretty much it. I really don't like having to keep things in mind. And when I want to zone out on a run or a vacation, I can safely do so knowing whatever I need to accomplish is on one of those lists and will probably get an alarm from my calendar if its urgent. I used to love using Pocket for reading papers/articles when I don't have a reliable connection, but its completely broken now and doesn't save pages consistently or renders pages unreadable.
IMO maintaining a wiki is way too slow and (depending on your work place) only accessible across VPN, which is incredibly inconvenient. Paying someone to act as scrum master/maintain a kanban is generally a waste of money/time as well, unless you work at a huge company (10,000+ people across hundreds of teams). But I'm biased and have always had a strong preference for small teams.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#25that's easy - I simply forget
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#26Emacs. - Todo lists and reminders. org-agenda. - Bookmark lists. org-capture and org-protocol. - Kanban boards. I don't use this, but kanban.el. - Wiki. Org-mode files and grep/ag with helm. - Financial tools. ledger. - Calendar/reminders. Org-agenda. - Files on disk. dired, org-mode. - General notes. Org-mode. - Literate programming. org-babel. - Mail. mu4e. - rss. elfeed, gnus, or rss2email. - git. magit. - irc. er…
This should be the best approach. I thumb up.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#27I think it's fair to say that there isn't a single tool that can satisfy all your needs. I'm meticulously organized but I doubt I can get anything done with just a Wiki or any other tool. You also have to remember that in many cases, staying organized also means collaborating with other people who may not share the same opinion as you about various tools.
It took me a long time to find the right mix of tools that are ideal for my specific workflow. These are the tools I mostly rely on now:
- Outlook.com (with custom domain) for my personal email. I find Outlook's 'Sweep' feature a lot more feature rich than Gmail's filters. I have rules that automatically move newsletters over 3 days old to archive and then delete unnecessary emails over 10 days old automatically.
- I've grown to like Wunderlist a lot for personal tasks. It has its limitations but it gets the job done well. I don't bother with many folders etc. I just throw everything in the inbox and add due dates to it. Inbox is sorted by due date. Works great for me. Also, it integrates well with Outlook.
- Evernote is where is store anything that's remotely relevant to me. Again, I don't bother with multiple notebooks. I have 2 main notebooks - Inbox and Cabinet. All notes start in Inbox. When they are no longer needed for my day to day work, they are moved to Cabinet. All notes are meticulously organized with tags. I am contemplating having a 3rd notebook called Library (offline notebook) with all my favorite online articles tagged by topic. This might work better than a Wiki to be honest. I also use their browser extensions a LOT.
- I use aText snippets inside Evernote to log call notes, meeting notes etc. using a standard format. I have quite a few other snippets that I use in other applications as well.
- All my favorite articles are in Pocket
- All my personal files are on OneDrive. Work files are on Google Drive (it's easier to collaborate on Google because everyone I know uses Gmail / Google Apps).
- Work tasks are on Trello
- Photos automatically organized on Google Photos
- My code editor (Visual Studio Code) settings are automatically backed up on GitHub Gist using https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=Shan.cod...
I also use a few other tools occasionally but mostly rely on these for everything. Like most people, I wanted one tool to fit all my needs but I came to accept that it's just not possible considering the complex needs of each function. You might not think about it but, task management in itself is more than just a simple list of to-dos that requires a lot of programming to be done right. Stop trying to find a one-size fits all tool. Leverage multiple tools and integrate them together. For instance, Evernote talks to Gmail through a browser extension so you can always save an important email easily. You can also create more complex workflows using IFTTT. That would be the best way to organize yourself.
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#28As a knowledge worker, I've found that there is no 'best' way of organising information. It depends on what it is that you're doing.
Having said that, the things I come back to are Trello (Kanban-style boards), Pinboard.in, a personal wiki, and Google calendar. I like everything web-based so that I can access things wherever I am and whatever device I choose to use.
Over and above that, I use a paper-based daily planner that I've iterated over time. I pull everything to do that day on to it, then bin it at the end of the day.
Version 3 is here: http://www.slideshare.net/dajbelshaw/dougs-daily-planner-v3 (CC licensed)
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#29OneNote + Outlook works okay for what you're asking, but I have a hard time sticking with it because the interface isn't well-refined. I like OneNote a lot more than I like Outlook, but the integration is reasonably good. You can create tasks from OneNote that give you reminders in Outlook, which link back to the rich-text "source material."
They are good for a fair few things (I looked hard at things like OneNote and Evernote in the wiki role, but chose a wiki because of crosslinking), but the data is hard to extract from their formats.
You can cross-link in Evernote and OneNote. Also, Evernote has a great feature called Context which is activated if you pay for a subscription (worth it) that automatically shows you relevant notes based on your current note. Also, Evernote is a lot more portable than a Wiki so you can carry it around and search through all your notes (including inside PDFs and other documents, OCR and images).
Re: Ask HN: How do you organise/integrate all the information in your life?
#30Emacs. - Todo lists and reminders. org-agenda. - Bookmark lists. org-capture and org-protocol. - Kanban boards. I don't use this, but kanban.el. - Wiki. Org-mode files and grep/ag with helm. - Financial tools. ledger. - Calendar/reminders. Org-agenda. - Files on disk. dired, org-mode. - General notes. Org-mode. - Literate programming. org-babel. - Mail. mu4e. - rss. elfeed, gnus, or rss2email. - git. magit. - irc. er…
Can you set up phone alarms/reminders with org-agenda or something similar?