What FOSS applications do you use for habits, tasks, and notes?

I’m writing my PhD and sometimes feel like I’m losing my mind trying to balance home and work tasks, thesis tasks, personal and household habits, and potential connecting these to notes. I really struggle if everything isn’t in one place I can’t keep track of it.

I’ve been using Beaverhabits for habits, Baikal for Caldav connected to iPhone reminders and Thunderbird tasks, and memos and trilium for notes. I also, use a notebook for daily stuff and move it over to digital if it isn’t finished by 5.

Any recommendations? I would really appreciate it. I enjoy thinking about how to do and manage work efficiently but also need a firm system.

41 comments

You really sound like the taget for Logseq
- Thanks! Could you expand?
  
  You can write anything in the daily notepad and link it to any concept or page anywhere, and have backlinks, and it builds a graph of all of this. It can handle TODOs as well

I use Joplin for note taking.

I mean if you want one app to rule them all, there's only ever been one option... Emacs. It can be your text editor, task organizer, calendar... operating system. If by work efficiently you mean endlessly feel the need to make tweaks and modifications, and maybe learn an entire idiosyncratic language while you're at it... Emacs. Praise be.
- You mean Vim?
  
  Sacrilege.

So I've got a nextcloud instance set up, and using the notes, tasks and calendar apps. There's a note app for mobile already, for tasks I use Tasks.org and for my calendar I use fossify calendar. The last two I sync using DAVx5. It's pretty nice honestly, and all of these apps have widget options which is amazing and really helpful for my productivity setup. Are there better apps or software out there? Probably, but for me simplicity is best.
- Seconding tasks.org

For storing notes the best application I know is Joplin. It allows to deploy your own synchronization server and also use external providers

https://anytype.io/
I use this for tasks/calender & notes.
some caveats though:
the source code is open, but not entirely foss
its on the roadmap, but they haven't implemented notifications yet
theres a bit of a learning curve

I use HIIT on f-droid to time my stretching every day. It's actually meant for High Intensity Interval Training, but it's perfect for any activity that has regular intervals. I have it set for 60 second 'stretches' and 8 seconds for switching positions.
*Regular stretching (especially after physical activity) is shown to improve overall mood and health, especially if you have trouble sleeping.
*https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.atr.hiit/
- taking apps meant for one thing and using them for something else is my favorite thing
  even if this is still very related because it's physical activity timing
  
  Yeah, it felt really cool in a specific way when I found it.

Maybe something like Joplin, Org Mode for Emacs, Zettelkasten, Getting Things Done? Maybe a boring Nextcloud, that one has lots of individual apps and they're supposed to interconnect.
I'm not really sure what to recommend here, a personal knowledge management platform, a calendar software... I can see how it's a lot of different things you need to juggle. And I don't have a good solution myself. I always wanted to some good system, and we really have a lot of software available which connect tasks, notes, appointments, knowledge. But I think it's a lot about the mindset. You mainly need some dedication and it needs to be executed properly, or it won't work well. The tool/software comes on top and just makes it easier. At the same time it's really nice to have things digital and not just in a paper journal. And sometimes it's the small things like reminders about appointments on the phone... And that might be difficult with some tools if they're made more for knowledge than for calendar stuff.
I'm currently making ends meet with the several Nextcloud apps. But I don't have as much to coordinate. I've always wanted to use one of the Wiki-like personal knowledge management systems (Silverbullet), but I'm a bit too chaotic for that.

Maybe instead of choosing an app, you could consider the overall process of tracking what you need to do. Read David Allen’s book “Getting Things Done”. It’s short. Then you can apply that process using your favorite app.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Getting_Things_Done
My favorite app for GTD is emacs and org-mode.

The solution to this problem, as well as many others, is Emacs.
- The problem to this solution as well as many others, is emacs.
  
  There’s probably a package for that problem.

Tasks.org is a powerful Android tasks app - the best I managed to find. I sync it with Nextcloud.

For you, I'd recommend trying Logseq. It wasn't for me, but feature-wise it might be what you're looking for.
Failing that, using todo.txt for your notes might work better. However, the only usable app on iOS for this is SwiftoDo, and you would need to figure out how to sync the file yourself.

@ocean I have used my brain for that on occassion. Definitely recommended.
- Is that FOSS? I believe people haven't been able to run it in compatibility with other software yet.
- @ocean https://f-droid.org/en/packages/com.mhss.app.mybrain/
  
  You dividing this into two comments was sinister haha! Thanks, that looks really cool :) makes me wish I had an android. I’ll try it out on my pc
  
  LMAO sneeky splitting your post like that. I thought you were being a smartass

Over the years I've tried so many apps for this. In the end, I always come back to having a physical notepad and printed calendar where I can write stuff and have it visible in my room
- That's fine so long as you don't mind carrying your notepad and calendar around with you everywhere you go. I don't think most people want to do that considering there's already a pocket computer they're carrying around with them.

Kanboard
I got the ADHD. I got different shit going all the time.
Kanboard let's me throw together a project and very quickly add the tasks I know I'll need. I self host an instance for my wife and I, mostly for my chores, but its our honeydo list as well.
Seems like you'd have different boards for family stuff and PhD stuff.

To get organized, Getting Things Done in Standard Notes and my email’s calendar app.
To work, Scrum in Taiga.
To handle life, the Healthy Minds app and Calibre to read Acceptance and Commitment Therapy books.

Notebook is sufficient. If not -- you are either trying to do more than you can or planning further than you should or have some mental illness.
- I don’t find it that simple with so many things going on: PhD, baby, family, and bullshit tasks. Plus, really any friction in the tasks management makes it feel impossible.
  
  It’s not that simple. In David Allen’s GTD book he talks about how many people we consider successful like people in upper management are hiring coaches to help them get organized because they’re losing control. Granted, it’s a bit self gratifying since he sells the GTD book, but there may be quite a bit of truth to it.
  
  Bullshit is bullshit.
  Family should help. That's the reason for a family to exist. Anyway, most family-related tasks are routine.
  Baby is family :)
  Well, I know nothing about PhD. Still, just check if you're not keeping those notes too detailed. Some people love making notes and lists just for the sake of making notes ("mental illness" variant).

41 comments