It’s that time of the year again to review the productivity tools/system changes I’ve worked with, replaced, or refined over the last year.

Broadly speaking – not a lot has changed. Noteworthy bits are:

  1. I’ve moved away from Google tools. My mail, calendar, and file storage are now all Proton. I love Proton tools. The killer app will be when they finally deliver a spreadsheet tool. In terms of privacy-first, they’re a truly professional outfit. Mail and Calendar work great, VPN, Pass, and Authenticator are awesome products, and Docs is a great Word-like alternative. Sure, you have to pay for Proton, but the privacy and convenience make it money well spent.

    I’ve also removed myself from social media (unless you call YouTube social media). The only other social media-ish app I use is WhatsApp, as that’s the main source of comms for all the family. I’d prefer to go to Signal, but I’d be a voice in the wilderness there.

    I don’t see myself fully dropping Google, mainly because of YouTube. I have loads of purchased Google Movies (remember that?) programmes and films, and YouTube itself is hugely useful to me. In fact, I’m hoping to start a little fun channel in the New Year (“The Dunn Thing”) to talk about productivity, retirement planning, music, reading, general life stuff, and just to see how I enjoy it and if it can work going forward.

  2. Notesnook is a great little alternative to Evernote – again, it’s privacy-first, and with my student discount, it’s peanuts for a yearly subscription. I did take a look at Standard Notes (who Proton have sided with) but pricing is quite expensive for the Pro subscription – the Free version is too restrictive.

  3. I’m still using Obsidian. It’s mainly been a vault for work notes, and also to create Daily Scrum docs. It’s a great and powerful tool, although I haven’t really gone fully KPM/Zettelkasten or explored the new Bases feature.

  4. Analogue. This is where the biggest change has been for me over the year. I’ve rediscovered and am loving writing on paper again. I’ve kept a personal journal and filled it in daily over the last 7 months; it’s definitely a stayer. I’m going to go with the Leuchteurm 1917 “Some Lines A Day” 5 year book.



    Also, the Bullet Journal will continue to feature heavily next year. There’s a bit of friction between Daily Scrum stuff in Obsidian and my BuJo but I’m working on it. I’ve also tried a wide range of pens (gel, standard, fountain) as well as notebooks from Rhodia, Dingbats, and Moleskine. I like them all – and I’m not sure which I’ll go with next year, but I’ll definitely need a “Scribble” book for jotting down notes and ideas which I can use, then either reformat in digital or analogue formats.

  5. Todoist – yup, it’s still there! I find it so useful for repeating tasks. It’s so easy to set stuff up and the natural language makes it dead easy and fast to get tasks in with deadlines, assigned to myself or my wife, with priorities and project links. Awesome product.

  6. Nirvana. Yup, Nirvan is still there for all my project work. I still very much love the GTD framework, even if I’m adapting it further to become my own. Nirvana is to my mind the best list manager that embraces the soul of what GTD is about. I do wish they would produce more blog articles and features, but it’s a complete and highly useful app. I did try and forego it to put everything in Todoist but it just didn’t sit right. “Next actions” are a bit of a pain to implement in Todoist despite trying things out with labels.

I’m sure i’ll talk more about the individual tools in future posts, but I’m in a pretty good spot right now, and things are starting to come together!