Hello! It's a new year, so it's a good time for me to evaluate my cool productivity junk.
TickTick, a hybrid calendar and task manager, is out. Too much buggy. Some weird interaction with mobile device "next alarm" notifications, repeating old events (set as notes) with start times after they've been cleared, no development activity for at least a year, and it just has some odd work flow that doesn't make much sense to me. It's a decent idea that doesn't quite flow together. Maybe another half year of tweaks and fixes, and it'd be great, but again, there doesn't seem to be any dev activity.
Additionally, I've been pulling away from Google as much as I can. So I'm kind of on a general service review kick. I moved my Google Drive stuff to Proton Drive. Proton has a calendar, but it's not quite flexible enough for me.
So I went back to HEY Calendar, which is kind of like Google Calendar with some user interface and flow tweaks. It's not as innovative and opinionated about how you use it as HEY Email is. HEY Calendar will force some usage processes, but they're more common sense than HEY Email's very different work flow. I get HEY Calendar as part of my HEY Email sub, so it's no extra to me.
HEY Calendar's not a good task manager, though, with only a "do this sometime this week" task list functionality without any extra organization. So I've returned to Todoist.
Todoist was very good when I left it for TickTick, but it didn't calendar well, and I was irritated at multiple services for effectively scheduling. Now I think I have some better defined flow for what kinds of things go into what which services, and each of the services I'm using handles what I want to do with it very well. No one size fits all that doesn't really fit.
Todoist also looks like it's gotten even better since I'd left, especially in the regular language for scheduling. I can type things into its repeat like "after 6 months", and it sets up the next instance of the task 6 months after completing it rather than every 6 months. Perfect for maintenance type reminders.
So calendar, task manager, and then my knowledge pile Notion covers actual data keeping and project management. Todoist can do light project management, but Notion's incredibly flexible, and I'm familiar with PM on it. Notion's AI sales pitching frustrates me, but that's my only quibble, and it's a minor one.
I've looked at some other similar knowledge management services and haven't found anything that wasn't too limited or too costly. Notion's ridiculously capable at a pretty decent price.
What are you all using to keep organized?
Hope you all have a safe and wonderful 2026!
TickTick, a hybrid calendar and task manager, is out. Too much buggy. Some weird interaction with mobile device "next alarm" notifications, repeating old events (set as notes) with start times after they've been cleared, no development activity for at least a year, and it just has some odd work flow that doesn't make much sense to me. It's a decent idea that doesn't quite flow together. Maybe another half year of tweaks and fixes, and it'd be great, but again, there doesn't seem to be any dev activity.
Additionally, I've been pulling away from Google as much as I can. So I'm kind of on a general service review kick. I moved my Google Drive stuff to Proton Drive. Proton has a calendar, but it's not quite flexible enough for me.
So I went back to HEY Calendar, which is kind of like Google Calendar with some user interface and flow tweaks. It's not as innovative and opinionated about how you use it as HEY Email is. HEY Calendar will force some usage processes, but they're more common sense than HEY Email's very different work flow. I get HEY Calendar as part of my HEY Email sub, so it's no extra to me.
HEY Calendar's not a good task manager, though, with only a "do this sometime this week" task list functionality without any extra organization. So I've returned to Todoist.
Todoist was very good when I left it for TickTick, but it didn't calendar well, and I was irritated at multiple services for effectively scheduling. Now I think I have some better defined flow for what kinds of things go into what which services, and each of the services I'm using handles what I want to do with it very well. No one size fits all that doesn't really fit.
Todoist also looks like it's gotten even better since I'd left, especially in the regular language for scheduling. I can type things into its repeat like "after 6 months", and it sets up the next instance of the task 6 months after completing it rather than every 6 months. Perfect for maintenance type reminders.
So calendar, task manager, and then my knowledge pile Notion covers actual data keeping and project management. Todoist can do light project management, but Notion's incredibly flexible, and I'm familiar with PM on it. Notion's AI sales pitching frustrates me, but that's my only quibble, and it's a minor one.
I've looked at some other similar knowledge management services and haven't found anything that wasn't too limited or too costly. Notion's ridiculously capable at a pretty decent price.
What are you all using to keep organized?
Hope you all have a safe and wonderful 2026!