General parts of a productivity system

• usable from desktop
• usable from mobile
• usable from multiple desktops
• preferably works on desktop when offline
• preferably works on mobile when offline
• data survives long term - outlasts the system
• minimal effort required to capture tasks
• should be long term usable - not just a burst of initial use
• shouldn't overwhelm you once you've been using it for (say) 5 years
• shouldn't be overhwhelming if you step away for (say) a year, and then return

Lots of different needs overlap in a productivity system:

• calendar items
• notes/records (for this i use TIL)
• journal (for this I use a digital journal)
• projects
• TODOs
• prioritizing
• team management
• recurring items
• deadlines
• customer relationship
• shopping lists
• sharing some lists with other people
• kanban / visible card / limits
• things to remember (memorization)

I currently use a mix of things:

• CleverDeck to memorize things
• TIL for things I need to know but not memorize (that are public)
• KV for snippets I need to re-use (not well shared across machines though)
• Password manager for passwords and the like
• Journal file for working memory with "today" command to bring in current calculated daily items
• "markjump" manages links to the folder of each project I'm working on (aliased to m and j and um)
• .ok files manage commands relevant to each project, e.g. opening a relevant todo.txt file (or azure devops etc, as the case may be, on a project by project basis)
• "Pocket" for things to read later (automatically synced to Kobo)
• "util" repo for keeping scripts/tools/profile, & TIL itself, synced across machines via a private github repo
• dropbox
• Apple calendar shared for family
• Work calendar is outlook (read with powershell and with daybar)
• Things I find interesting are written in wiki.secretgeek.net
• Contacts (scattered)
• Birthdays (mostly in FB, some in my head, some just take me by surprise)
• Plan file - collapsible plain text with .html extension, for capturing long term plans/ideas/notes on any project. single file.

The most fundamental concepts of productivity are

• managing your commitments (avoid being overcommitted, know when to say no)
• prioritization (this over that, only needed for things near the top, i.e. stack-rank the head)
• capture of ideas/resources
• habits (good habits, bad habits)

Tables:

- Next Action
- Tasks
- Projects
- Urls
- Tags
- Snippets
- Calendar-items
- Chores (recurring once completed)
- Dependencies
- Notes
- Quotes
- Articles
- Memorisation
- Surveys
- Focus tools