There’s a bunch of projects that make my life a whole lot better. I can only preach about them to my friends so much, so here’s some links to spread the word otherwise.

Todoist

Todoist (warning, reflink) is quickly becoming my favourite personal task management system. It’s simple, powerful and cross-platform. I tried many similar apps before but this seems to be the version that feels the best day to day.

Notion

Notion is basically the endgame of productivity tools and something I’ve been looking for years. It does rich-text hierarchical note-taking with Markdown-style shortcuts (on web and mobile), team collaboration, the ability to publish any section of your workspace online and much more. The killer feature are their “databases” - a way to work with structured information with convenient UI. Depending on your use-case a database can be used like a google sheet, a turbo-charged calendar, a kanban board, a gallery, or all of the above at the same time. I’ve seen Notion used a CRM, a Trello alternative, internal or public knowledge base and much more.

In the interest of objectivity, Notion isn’t without its flaws: It has very limited offline capabilities, the “databases” can be problematic in more complex use-cases and hundreds of rows, it lacks isolated password protected sections for the more private notes (which I used in Standard Notes). It’s not a google sheet replacement either - there are limits to its power of expression. Still, it’s my go-to for basically any brainstorming, note-taking or organisational task.

Miro

Miro fills in the gaps of Notion as a brainstorming / system design tool. It’s a digital whiteboard perfectly suited for running workshops, making diagrams or just free-form brainstorming. I tried many similar tools, but Miro is hands down the best of the bunch, especially when it comes to UX and collaboration tools. The free tier is very full-featured and doesn’t struggle even if you throw a lot of content at it.

1Password

1Password is the password manager I use ever since I abandoned LastPass after they locked me out of my account for a day or so. It integrates beautifully with OSX, alright with Windows and more than good enough just in a browser under Linux.

I used it in a team context as well and had no problems there either.

NeoVim

Ever since university days I liked keyboard-focused tools that allow you to do exactly what you need quickly. Also, as a developer I appreciate being able to work on a project in any technology without fighting my muscle memory or giving up on the convenience of workflows I built up over the years.

NeoVim gives me just that. Between the config I automatically pull to my OSX or Linux dev machines and LSP for tech-stack related tools, my NeoVim feels like home regardless of what I’m working on. I used it for backend, frontend, embedded programming, and writing documentation and it works, and fast too.

At one point in time I did try and make Spacemacs what NeoVim is for me right now, but I definitely lost that fight :D

Dash

Dash is a universal API documentation browser. It comes with hundreds (!) of docsets, for both language core libraries and third-party libraries, all under one convenient UI. It’s only available for OSX, but the author worked with other developers to provide alternatives for other platforms.

You might not think like it’s much different from googling code and bookmarking a handful of api docs pages, but from my experience it really is.