Design your own life — using apps (3/5)
Design goes beyond a pixel perfect user experience. I asked myself the question: “Can I apply design thinking to my own life?”. Today part 3 about the apps I use.
The two most important apps are my to list and notes app. They function as the perfect braindump tool for all thoughts, prompts, and reminders. With these two I can get done 90% of the work. From day to day I will probably only look at my projects. On a weekly basis, I also review my areas to decide what the focus for the next week will be.
Things 3
I use the to-do list app Things as the hub of my life. Things is a beautifully designed to do list app by the team of Cultured Code. It is a bit on the pricy side (€60 for the Mac and iPhone app) but I would probably pay double for it as well. It helps me to focus on the things that matter. If you love design, you will love Things 3. You can easily schedule your tasks per day and divide your tasks among your projects. It has this really intuitive way of using designs.
The goal of my task manager is to never have to remember something. Whenever I have a thought I use Things to just jot it down in the inbox folder. It enables me to save my brain effort for more creative work. Remembering to do the laundry doesn’t spark me joy as Marie Kondo would say. By just putting it into Things I can free myself from the thought and let the app remember it for me. I make sure that Things is the only app where tasks come in. I move all tasks that come in my mail directly to my to-do app. This ensures that I only have to look at one place to know what the open loops are. Any email I get will we be either replied or archived. I process the information and transfer it to four different apps.
- An agenda app, to add something to my calendar.
- A to-do app, when I need to add a new task.
- A read later app, for article and link storage
- A notes app to use as a reference app.
Apple Notes
Do you need a notes app? Yes, you need a notes app. It is simply one of the best creative hacks I ever discovered. Making notes has been a keystone habit that helped me in a lot in my thought processes and creative output. By writing things down you can unload your brain and benefit from serendipitous outcomes. You not only make notes for your current self. You make notes for your future self. Trying to solve a problem? It makes a lot of sense to write down the answer wants you had found it. It will stick better and besides that will
So which notes app should you use? It depends. I literally tried them all. From Apple Notes to Evernote to Notion and now back to Apple Notes. It took a long time to find the perfect notes app for me. In the end Apples, native notes applications stick for me because of the simple design, easy way to jot things down and perfect synchronization across devices. I also love Notion but for me, it is a bit too flexible. I end up tweaking the way my Notion looks all the time. With Apple Notes it this really simple way of storing and categorizing my notes. Sometimes simple is simply better.
Other apps
There are some task-specific apps where I prefer to not log it on Things or Apple Notes. These apps are built for a single function like running (Strava), fitness (Strong) or reading articles (Pocket). I have toyed with the idea to move this stack of specific information to my notes but some specific work is just better on a single app.
