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Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

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Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#61

The Daily Activity Schedule by psychiatrist Dr. David Burns in his book Feeling Good is the main technique I use, and the current software I use to type it out is OneNote. The main idea is to create a three-column table with the time of day in the left-most column; an hourly schedule as the middle “Prospective” column; and an hourly log of what you actually did in the right-hand “Retrospective” column with a score of…

Logged in to say this is an excellent mind blowing book if you are feeling bad or dealing with depression. The key is to do the “stupid exercises”. Reprogram your mind.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#62
post #16

A simple A4 piece of paper: +-------------+-------------+-------------+ | Mon.| Thu.| Todo| | | | | | | | | +-------------+-------------+ | | Tue.| Fri.| | | | | | | | | | +-------------+-------------+ | | Wen.| Sat.| | | +-------------+ | | | Sun.| | +-------------+-------------+-------------+ Every week a new piece of paper, the main todo list of the week on the right, I push the items on each specific day, I put t…

I also prefer a paper approach. I use a Hobonichi Techo in a leather cover to plan what I need to do, then supplement with phone reminders. Works well for where I am at in life.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beat me to it, though for me it's a Black n' Red notebook and fountain pens.

The ultimate open standards - pen and paper. I find writing it down helps me remember the tasks or things needed, and a fountain pen is just a joy to use plus you get to take mini breaks from the digital world.

There are at least two very deep rabbit holes with fountain pens: inks, and vintage pens.

Writing with an ink the color of Crimson Glory Vine, for example, is a meditation all on its own (Pilot Iroshizuku Yama-Budo).

The vintage pens rabbit hole tends to force you toward inks that are "safe" for vintage pens (Waterman Serenity Blue, for example).

But either way, what you write with them, and what system you use is constrained only by imagination.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#66

I read a comment somewhere in hacker news about a guy managing their daily planning on a locally saved plain text file. I started doing it and _loved_ it. But after a while I was missing some of that nice WYSIWYG UI interface. I couldn't find an existing tool which allows me to continue to use that local text file and also have a nice pretty interface. One thing led to another and I ended up scratching my own itch by…

You should try Typora, a markdown editor that looks really nice.https://typora.io/

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#68
post #16

A simple A4 piece of paper: +-------------+-------------+-------------+ | Mon.| Thu.| Todo| | | | | | | | | +-------------+-------------+ | | Tue.| Fri.| | | | | | | | | | +-------------+-------------+ | | Wen.| Sat.| | | +-------------+ | | | Sun.| | +-------------+-------------+-------------+ Every week a new piece of paper, the main todo list of the week on the right, I push the items on each specific day, I put t…

I also prefer a paper approach. I use a Hobonichi Techo in a leather cover to plan what I need to do, then supplement with phone reminders. Works well for where I am at in life.

I do too. Slightly different template:

Left half of page: "work stuff." Right half of page "personal stuff." Bottom two inches of page: "long term goals for the week."

I use one sheet per week, adding bullet points to the relevant column. I created a template for printing on the office printer, then realized it was ecofriendlier to just recycle one-sided scrap paper (every office had tons of it), and draw my own lines. I use the To-Do app for tracking things from week to week, but when I put down my coffee cup and set down in front of my computer, thinking about what needs to get done, the notebook/pen combo somehow works best for me.

Edit: exchanged diagram for text since the diagram got mangled.

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#69
I don't do intraday planning, but for TODOs I settled on a A5 paper with handwritten task list. It's very satisfying to strike out completed tasks. From time to time I rewrite pending tasks to new piece of paper. It is a physical reminder of repeatedly uncompledted tasks and somtimes I leave out a thing (I it was not done until now, I can safely not do it at all). Keeps me focused on important things (not to be confused with urgent things).

Re: Ask HN: What’s your favorite tool for planning your day?

#70

After reading the other comments I feel very low-tech but I'm using Apple's Calendar and Reminders apps, synced though iCloud. I get notifications on my devices including my watch, I can manage entries via Siri when I'm driving, and it can detect appointments from my text messages and emails. I don't think I'd want to give any of that up. (I also make intensive use of Apple Notes, which I really love.)

Same! I live off my iOS calendar and reminder list (shared calendar with my spouse and a couple of either individual or shared reminder lists for things like grocery items), although reading through this thread I’m intrigued at the variety!

I also use slack reminders a lot for work primarily.

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