Focusing on my habits and practices over tools and technology has driven more productivity and sanity in my career.
Early on, finding new tools, languages, libraries and frameworks was exhilarating and something their knowledge was I cared deeply about and worked towards. And soon, I cared more about the tools and the language than the problem itself. Caring about the medium caused more pain and wasted time than joy and productivity when any one of them broke, when they didn't do what I wanted them to do, when I found a new tool that was older and more mature than the one I used, when someone disagreed for no good reason, when someone used a worse tool than ones I knew. I have wasted hours toying around with shiny new things only to realize later what a waste it all was. They all promised, never delivered.
The point where things got better was when I started keeping simple logs.
At work, it was mostly putting into words the problem I was facing, why it was interesting, how have others solved or avoided this, what possible solutions I could find, ideal and realistic solutions, pros and cons of each, whom should I convince for this, who can help, why would they agree or oppose. As things progressed, I kept adding updates and how things actually turned out. In personal life, its been about people and projects. People I've met, people who have helped me, people whom I'm indebted to, people whom I hold dear and those that I keep away from, memories and arguments, what I'm grateful for and what I want to change.
They are interesting to read after the fact. I've learned more from this practice than any person, blog or book. I've been more productive when I see a pattern emerge and going back to how I handled things before. Highly recommend it. Moreover, It helped me find good and bad habits, how I respond to what happens around me, what gets me worried and upset, what makes me happier, more productive. The 'right thing to do' is obvious looking back now but never make sense looking forward. What seemed like promising projects did not turn out so, People who seemed like friends, weren't.
So what tool did I use for this? Email. I kept drafts, one for each idea, problem, story, lesson learned etc across the different email accounts I had. When they were good enough, I'd sent them over to a separate email account to keep it all in one place. Ironically, I started keeping logs after getting frustrated with a good way to keep my notes.
Sun Tzu would say "Make the enemy fear not the weapon, but the hand that wields it."