ToDoist
This is my task manager of choice. For information on how I use this day to day and week to week then have a look at my recent post – How I am using ToDoist in 2023.
Over the years I have tried every app under the sun to manage my tasks (a spreadsheet, Task Coach, OmniFocus, Tick Tick, 2Do, Wunderlist, Microsoft ToDo, Notion, ClickUp & Nirvana. I have always come back to ToDoist. The accessibility, the power, the aesthetic, the UI and UEx all make this possibly the best To Do list manager on the market. Yes, it has some stuff missing, but it just works, works well and works with minimal fuss.
UpNote
If you do not know by now I love UpNote. I use this app every day for all my project related work and notes, for all my study and reading notes and for any and all information that I may need to refer to in the future. I also use it as place to keep my planning checklists and where I have some very basic dashboards, like my Command Hub, to help me stay focussed and organised day to day. If you want to learn more about UpNote, check out my YouTube series – Being Effective with UpNote
Google Calendar
Everyone needs a calendar and Google is my calendar of choice. Do I like the UI? No. But it is accessible on every device and is possibly the most functional calendar available. If I was Apple only, I would probably use Apple Calendar and iCloud Calendar, but I am not, so I can’t.
Ferdium
Ferdium is a free and open source app that basically runs a whole host of web apps all under one roof. It works like a web browser that is designed to run web apps rather than browse. It’s not perfect. It’s built on Electron, not Chromium, and so it doesn’t have access to any of the extensions that you would get on something like Google Chrome or any other Chromium Browser, like Edge or Brave. This is a big problem as I primarily use it for Gmail and Gmail without extension is pretty poor. However, I am not going to pay £100 per year for a similar app that has extensions such as Sidekick or Shift.
I use Ferdium for Google Calendar, my 2 gmail accounts, WhatsApp and Drive. But you can install as many WebApps as you want in this. It also has Ferdium Todos, which in my case is an expandable todo list sidebar powered by ToDoist.
Flow Launcher/Spotlight
This is the unsung hero of my toolkit. Both perform the same function though Flow Launcher is better. Both are global search apps that you install on your computer. Spotlight is built in to all Apple Machines and Flow Launcher is a free app for Windows. Both perform lighting first searches of your computer and can open files or launch apps and perform web searches amongst other things. Both are activated via a simple global keyboard shortcut. Flow Launcher has a plugin that means if I type the letter ‘t’ and press space, anything I type after that gets added as a task to my ToDoist inbox. I love this app.
