Open Q - organisational systems

[hwarium]

Question to moots and flyby visitors alike: how do you organise your life?! What do you use to track the myriad of sisyphean tasks that composite the human existence: chores, life admin, hobbies, social commitments and big events, side projects, reading lists, expense tracking and budgeting, journalling, article archiving, correspondance..... .... ..or perhaps do you just let go and speedrun raw.

I'm thinking about resetting some systems because items have been slipping off my mind into the ether. I'm currently looking at some kind of app for reoccurring tasks (ticktick / things 3 / microsoft to-do) and consolidating calendars, but would love to know what has worked, or not worked, for this corner of the internet.

Current profile:

• digital systems: android phone + pc + OS + iOS
• journalling, planning, expense tracking, general list-making: pen and paper (jibun techo + leuchtturm)
• budgeting: excel
• thoughts dump, flash to-dos, gym notes: google keep
• holiday planning: google maps and google sheets
• hobby tracking: todoist but ineffective

Comments

[themorninglark]

aw the warmth I felt welling up from inside when I read that line 🥲

Thank you for sharing!! It sounds like you have been a bit swamped, so I'm gonna go out on a limb and venture a guess that actually your problem might not be that your current tools aren't working for you but that you simply have too much on your plate to humanly do in the time and energy that you have, like your problem isn't task management, it's energy management? I feel like when this happens the first thing to do is to take stock and subtract as much as you can rather than add on new tools to manage all the things. Are there obligations you can let go of rather than trying to squeeze them in?

I think it's also helpful to really try to clock how much time it takes you to do things cos often it's easy to underestimate this... for a long time I was frustrated with myself for never going to sleep on time, then I stopped to calculate how much time I actually need to do all the wind-down things I want to do (stretch, journal, brush teeth/skincare, read) and I found that I need to block out up to an hour for all this not to feel rushed. In my head, it took like 15-20 minutes, and I just wasn't allocating enough time. Obviously anyone can tell it does not actually take 15-20 minutes when looking at all these activities, but heads are weird.

Minimising phone usage is a whole other topic! Do you have thoughts/ideas for what you think would work best for you?