I often get asked what my favorite tools are and how I use them to get my work done, and I'm writing this both to answer that question, and also for me to just paste a link to this post next time I'm asked. Efficiency!
I wrote about this last year and realized that I both didn't include everything I wanted to, and also had more to add, so let's dive in!
Also: This post will not cover my code editor(s), terminals, or other developer tools. This is just a list of the tools I use daily to get my tasks done! Also, all of them work across operating systems. I use both a PC and a Mac, so that's important to me. There might be better options out there for one machine over the other, but that's not my jam.
Obsidian
I take notes with Obsidian, write my newsletter with Obsidian, write blogs with Obsidian (like this one), keep track of projects with Obsidian, plan classes with Obsidian... I'm alllllll in on Obsidian.
It's a local-first markdown editor. I love that I can keep everything local to my machine (so I don't have any slow load times), and just write markdown without anything getting in my way. Beyond that, they have an open plugin + theming setup, and you can pay for syncing across devices as well. I often jot down quick notes on my phone, and then I access them later on my computer to flesh them out, and it's perfect for that.
Centered
When I use Centered, I get more work done, simply put. I was a little slow to get into it at first, I had to give it a second chance, but now I can't imagine getting all that I want done without it. I often have trouble focusing throughout the day when I have a lot to do, and Centered helps a ton with that.
Centered is a flow state to-do app. It's kind of hard to explain quickly, because it does so much while being pretty simple, too. You plop in your to-do list for the day/session/whatever, each task has a certain amount of time assigned to it, and then you hit start. It'll play some music designed to help you focus, and it has a coach that speaks to you about how much time is left in your current task, gives you breaks, and pokes you when you're distracted. It also has an optional thing where you can have your camera on while you work, which is weirdly good at keeping you feeling focused.
I made a group in it if you'd ever like to flow with me! Other groups in there include students, web developers, special interest groups, and you can make private groups with your friends as well.
Raindrop
Raindrop is an all-in-one bookmark manager. It's one of those apps where I used the free version for about 5 minutes before deciding to pay for it forever, because it works perfectly. It works as a browser extension, as a mobile app, and as a desktop app on all the platforms, and lets you very easily and quickly tag and categorize your bookmarks.
It lets you do public bookmark collections, so for example if you head over to cass.run/ref, that's a public collection of my referral links to various services. It also lets you save permanent copies of your bookmarks (so if something goes offline, you still have access to it, I've saved some of my favorite blog posts this way), does a full text search of the pages you save, and annotate web pages, too.
Cron
Cron is a keyboard shortcut-powered calendar app. I've tried a bunch of calendar and scheduling apps over the years, and Cron is my current favorite. It lets you quickly use keyboard commands to see your teammate's calendars, share availability, view multiple timezones, and create events. They were bought by Notion recently, so I think we can expect some interesting integrations from them soon. My only complaint with this one is that it only works with Google Calendar so far (and I've been wanting to move away from Google for various things), but it's not the end of the world.
todometer
This is a shameless plug, but I use todometer for task management, and... I built todometer.
todometer is a meter-based to-do list for your desktop. I use this to keep track of things that I'd like to get done throughout a given day or week, without the restrictions of a flow state session. I made it because I am motivated by progress bars, and sometimes I just need a simple list prominently on my desktop of what I need to get done. Plus, it's local-only, so you don't have to worry about loading times. Here is the repository if you'd like to see how I built it (full disclosure: I want to maintain it more, I have a roadmap in mind for a few things, but I've got other things to do, so if you make an issue, I'll get to it... someday).
Dabble.me
Dabble.me is a private, email-based journal. I've been using Dabble.me for literally over a decade and it's the only journal I've been able to consistently work with, probably because it's just super convenient. It emails you regularly (depending on the frequency you set) asking how your day went, and will occasionally remind you of previous entries saying, "one week ago you wrote..." or "two months ago you wrote..." etc.
I have absolutely loved this service and is probably my favorite one overall, just because it's a treasure trove of memories for me at this point. Sometimes my entries are super short like, "I played way too much Minecraft today, ugh." and sometimes they are very long essays of me ranting about work or life or food or something. It's not so much a "productivity" app so I wasn't sure if I should include it in the list, but it's a consistent enough tool for me that I thought it deserved a shout.
That's it!
I've tried a lot of different tools over the years, and this is just my current "stack." I do think that it's worth reassessing your tools fairly regularly. I used to use other ones, like Bear, and Notion, and Vimcal, and Trello, etc, and they all worked for me at the time, but figuring out what you like and don't like about your "stack" is super helpful for upgrading how you work over time.
It's not just the applications, it's the dedication to them that really make them work for me. If something is scheduled on my calendar, whether it's flow time or dedicated time to one specific task, I follow it. If I put a task in todometer, I have to get it done that day.
If you don't commit yourself to your tools, or try to over-engineer how you use them, they become extra overhead to getting things done. You don't want the perfect work setup to get in the way of you actually working. Keep that in mind as you hunt for tools that might work for you!
Until next time!
Top comments (35)
Hello. I'm a big fan of markdown, using it since years and all my notes are .md files. I've therefore tried Obsidian but... do not see why to use it. I mean what are the added value against visual studio code ? What are for you the killing features of obsidian ?
Vscode can preview the file, can manage table of contents (using Markdown All In One plugin), ... and since I'm using vscode all the day, yeah, didn't see yet in which way Obsidian can be better for me.
Sure, that's fair! I personally like having my notes and my code separate, plus I like the plugins that Obsidian provides that aren't necessarily in the VS Code ecosystem, and also I take a lot of notes on my phone (which VS Code is not really set up for).
Thanks. I've read a few "obsidian vs vscode" articles yesterday after having read your post here and didn't see in which domain obsidian can be, for me, better than vscode.
I'm using it everyday (I'm developer) and, yes, I find there everything I need.
For smartphone, you've vscode.dev / github.dev i.e. a web interfaces. I'm storing my notes on github.com (public or private repos) and I can well edit my files on my smartphone.
(I don't appreciate the [[plugin]] syntax in obsidian because it's not standard in markdown and thus you'll loose features as soon as you stop using obsidian which is not really "open")
Obsidian is not an editor for markdown files. It's a separate system of notes which are supposed to be highly interlinked. Wiki-like link syntax is essential to it. The files are not supposed to be used outside (although they can, since it's basically markdown), this has nothing to do with openness.
The concept is also not unique to Obisdian. As a VSCode fan (apparently) you might be interested in checking out Foam.
Ah there you go, yeah, I don't want to store my notes in a repo, but that makes sense!
Also you're right about the [[link]] syntax, but it's not as proprietary as you might think; Notion, Bear, Roam, and a bunch of other note-taking softwares use it!
Also VS Code has a extension that does obsidian-like stuff.
Personally I'm losing interest in obsidian - and markdown in general. Ito formatting, It’s all or nothing for me.
Obsidian is a flavored markdown editor, and as soon as you commit to github, everything (dataview, etc) breaks.
What I do appreciate about markdown repos is that they're easily editable in notepad++ and vscode. I spend some time in notepad++ just adding (autosave) files to a subfolder in my obsidian repo. The notepad++ plugins are better than obsidian.
I guess there's a gradient of use cases for markdown. Oh and I appreciate being able to save files of any type (html, rtf, .txt and .csv, .Json, .xml and .sql) in my note repo.
Thank you for sharing your list!
Centered sounds interesting — I’ve been trying to get stuff like that just work in the background without having to worry about it and have not yet found a good solution.
For the others, I also tried a lot of tools and the only one to ever stick with me is Emacs orgmode. All others failed because I simply started to forget them. Org stuck with me and it’s the core of all my organisation today — from task planning over note taking and time tracking up to blogging (which is just org-capture saving into my org-based website). Plus it’s local (synced via Mercurial or git) and if history is a guide, it will still be around 20 years from now.
And I don’t work on a phone …
Wow, that is an amazing article. So many useful recommendations; thank you for providing them! I try to use not many apps, but a few, which will help me be productive and not forget something important. I don't like having many apps just for quantity; that's why finding something new and useful is always hard. That's why I always look for such reviews or recommendations, and it saves me time on "testing" new apps myself. Sometimes I'm lucky enough to find some interesting articles online, like the one I found recently. I usually work on Mac, and sometimes when I use it for too long, I notice that it's quite warm, which I suppose is not that good. And I found one amazing article, and I can recommend visit the website to read it, which is decided to Mac temperature and how to check it. Personally, I found there some new info, which helps me now, and I think it will help me to extend the "life" of my laptop. I know a few situations when Mac was overheating for some time, and there was nothing good about it. And it's cool that there is a soft which can help you with it.
A question for all the Obsidian users who don't work at a 1 person shop - are you paying for the license or do you use a separate app when taking notes for your work related things?
EDIT - and if you are using a separate app, which are you using?
I admit I don't use my work notes on Obsidian for this reason, but most folks I know pay for that license, or ask their work to pay for it (as a productivity tool)!
Huh? Create a repo anywhere you like, and add your notes to the repo.
Svn, gitlab, github, bitbucket, perforce.
Basically save your notes workspace in a shared location, even Google drive or Dropbox will do.
Specifically referring to the licensing. If you use it in any way related to work for an organization with more than 1 person (so like for my job) you're required to pay.
I think Obsidian is an excellent note-taking app that offers local-first markdown editing, plugin/theming customization, and syncing capabilities.
Centered seems like an innovative tool for boosting focus and productivity through flow state to-do lists with strategic time management and helpful features like focus music and distraction reduction.
Raindrop also caught my attention with its all-in-one bookmark manager that supports public bookmark collections, permanent copy saving, full-text search, and annotations.
Cron is another interesting app with keyboard shortcut-powered calendar features, though it currently only works with Google Calendar.
Todometer seems like a useful task management tool with its meter-based approach and desktop integration.
I use themindmap.app/ for keeping track of all the important events coming up my way for the upcoming week. It's like a reminder-as-a-service thing. It lets me add birthdays, work-anniversaries and other important events, then it sends me a consolidated email every sunday about what's upcoming in next week.
PS: I wish work-anniversaries to all my colleagues and I have never forgotten anyone's birthday since I am using Mindmap 😀
This looks well-built, nice work!
Hello great post, I think everyone has their special stack that fit with their own needs on my case I have another stack that I would like to share
I too use Obsidian, probably in some part because you (cassidoo) mentioned it :)
And I also journal in Obsidian, so I wonder what does Dabble do better?
I do take some journal-like notes in Obsidian, but I think the way Dabble.me reminds me to actually journal is what sticks for me, personally!
Templating and periodic notes auto-generation works well for reminders...
Nice article. Surprised I hadn't heard of many of these apps, guess am slacking on prod apps
Great tools, thank you!
Love this! Lately I have been super into the "Second Brain" Notion organizer! So good and super helpful to organize high->low priority tasks!
Thanks for sharing @cassidoo :)
Cron is a pretty weird choice for the name of a calendar app. I mean, it's appropriate, I guess, but it's so widely recognised as something already that it'll either get lost in searches or it'll confuse users.
I'm using ClickUp for my tasks. It's a powerful task management app, which is a bit bloated I admit, but similar to Trello, but with a few features that can be useful.
I don't see the point of using notes at this moment, but maybe one day. In any case since I'm using the Arc Browser, Notes are available out of the box, so there's that.
Hey @cassidoo
Qq on todometer. It is possible to open it as a default chrome tab?
Not yet, but it's on the roadmap!
That will be so cool, I use Papier atm
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