I’m in a bit of a productivity rut and whilst I suspect the issue is mainly between the keyboard and chair I’m also interested in what (FOSS) tools there are that people find effective.

One of my issues at the moment is cross managing different workstreams particularly with personal projects which are more in the “if I have time category”.

I’m interested in anything that helps manage time or limit distractions or anything that makes it easier to keep track of progress/next steps for project when there may be a bit of a time gap between.

  • OsrsNeedsF2P@lemmy.ml
    21·
    10 months ago

    One of my issues at the moment is cross managing different workstreams particularly with personal projects which are more in the “if I have time category”.

    Literally what I use virtual desktops to solve

    • devfuuu@lemmy.world
      7·
      10 months ago

      Kde activities should suit this well since it’s integrated to the level of the file viewer.

    • zerakith@lemmy.mlOP
      21·
      10 months ago

      So you keep a project open in the Virtual Desktop and then boot it up when you are working on it?

    • 8263ksbr@lemmy.ml
      1·
      9 months ago

      Is it possible to “save” those sessions between reboots? That would be awesome.

        • 8263ksbr@lemmy.ml
          1·
          9 months ago

          Thank you, I will look into KWin.

          Turns out, it is awesome and does more than I need. I already move a lot of my applications with xdotool to prediscribed positions and sizes, via hotkeys, which start some scripts. Now I found out, it also can move them across virtual desktops. Nice :)

    • ouch@lemmy.world
      51·
      10 months ago

      This is the way.

      Nothing comes even close. I just wish there was a distributed / mobile-enabled way to use org-mode. I guess there exists some project, but running full emacs org-mode mobile is hardly usable.

      • wigol@lemmy.world
        2·
        10 months ago

        I got acceptable results with org-roam cooperating with logseq. It took some fiddling with org IDs, config and a bit of elisp, but it’s stable enough for me.

          • wigol@lemmy.world
            2·
            10 months ago

            I forced logseq to use relative file links and skipped backlinking in org-roam. However, it looks like logseq now supports org-id links with backlinking. I might need another script to convert :).

            • fossphi@lemm.eeEnglish
              1·
              10 months ago

              Would you mind sharing your experience and/or the script? Would be nice for the community!

    • zerakith@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      I worry I’m not “hardcore” enough for emacs (I have tried in the past and now mostly use Vim). I will give it a try though as quite a few people recommend here!

      • pingveno@lemmy.mlEnglish
        2·
        10 months ago

        It takes a little bit of getting used to, but I found once limited myself to a few useful features I really started using it every day. For the most part I organize myself inside of Jira, but for tasks that I am currently thinking about I put them in a org-mode document. I have a few minor customizations, use a few hot keys, and that’s it.

  • cygon@lemmy.world
    11·
    10 months ago

    I’m running a few on my NAS:

    • Taiga to manage projects. It’s as easy and pleasant to use as Trello, but with velocity/burndown charts and the whole “agile” thing, but you can also turn parts of it on and off (per project even).

    • Trilium completely cured me of messy note-taking habits, simply by winning on the convenience side. I was firmly in the “folder tree of markdown documents” and “my Sublime Text tabs of random notes have no number” camp before.

    • I’m considering Habitica which lets you set up rewards and achievements for your real life (i.e. apply addictive reward/progress loop from video games to motivate your real self to do things). Also Wger for exercise tracking, but I’m not sure they’re the right thing for my ticket/tracking-averse self (I wish there was something that covered the whole MyFitnessPal/FitDay and the whole Polar Personal Trainer/Garmin Connect side, but FOSS and self-hosted).

    For leisure, I also run Stash (it bills itself as an organizer for your porn library, but it’s really good for any kind of clips), Jellyfin for my music and movies and currently both Mango and Kavita for books and comics.

    • zerakith@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      These are really useful suggestions, thanks!

      Particularly excited about Trillium. I’m current trying Joplin but labour and time reflect and organize the noted means I’m rarely using it effectively.

      Habitica sounds interesting. I definitely feel I need something like that. My struggle sometimes is in splitting projects into bitesize chunks (some are easier than others) some of my work can be quite open ended thought projects. I get caught in a trap of doing the easier work to plan work (like coding) rather than necessarily the most urgent.

      • cygon@lemmy.world
        1·
        10 months ago

        I’m not up-to-date with current NAS systems anymore – I’m running an older QNAP NAS (TS-453), and it has their proprietary “Container Station” which can run web applications in Docker + LXD containers. Not FOSS, though the containers very much are and can be moved to other systems.

        As an alternative, FreeNAS/TrueNAS sells NAS systems where at least the software side is FOSS. They’re quite expensive, though.

        The prices of other brands also quickly breach silly levels, but a basic 2-bay NAS is about ~$250 for QNAP, ~$200 for Synology and ~$1000 for a TrueNAS. Without hard drives.

        If you’re not interested in the data storage side, a Mini PC w/Proxmox (popular Docker/LXD container engine w/browser-based management) or even a direct install on a Raspberry PI are possible for under $100.

  • sgtnasty@lemmy.ml
    8·
    10 months ago

    I have found Kate to be very capable with python and rust. With Sessions I can also have my own set of notes in markdown. The plugins are plentiful and git integration is built in.

  • thepiguy@lemmy.ml
    8·
    10 months ago

    My biggest productivity booster is tmux. I constantly ssh into my pc to continue my work. I even restart my window manager sometimes if I wanna play games or something, but tmux is always there in the background. And being able to get up, go to my living room, open my laptop and continue the work I was doing on my pc has definitely saved me from a few mental blocks.

  • krash@lemmy.ml
    6·
    10 months ago

    Many have already mentioned Obsidian, I too ventured to it from Joplin and couldn’t be happier.

    Other (FOSS) tools I use for productivity… GUI tools:

    • nocodb - a web-based database which can be accessed over API too
    • I’m keeping an eye on vikunja.io, hope to have it mature and implement more features regarding project management
    • paperless-ngx, make order of your paper-mess.

    CLI tools:

    • Fish - a very nice and modern shell
    • chezmoi - a really nice dotfile manager
    • lsd instead of ls, dust instead of du, zoxide instead of cd
    • kopia - awesome backup tool. How backup is related to productivity? Disaster recovery ;-)
    • gazby@lemmy.dbzer0.com
      9·
      10 months ago

      Just because the phrasing of this post implies Obsidian is OSS, just FYI to others, it isn’t 😢

      Also +1 for Vikunja! 👍

    • zerakith@lemmy.mlOP
      1·
      10 months ago

      Useful suggestions, thank you!

      I’m going to try some of the more FOSS options (I’m on Joplin at the moment) first but if they don’t work out I’m going to give Obsidian a try.

    • Falcon@lemmy.world
      1·
      10 months ago

      Try bare git repos over chemo, I’ve been much happier with that over chezmoi

  • Dragonish@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    4·
    10 months ago

    For keeping track of tasks on my projects i use todo txt. For each of my projects will drop a file named todo.txt in the root. each line is a task, and i order them based on priority. I can walk away from it and when i start working on the project again, i have an simple way to see the list of tasks i have laid out for this project.

    http://todotxt.org/

    I personally find it less useful to see the “big picture” of all tasks, and this lets me focus on the details of my projects without forcing a bunch of structure.

  • yieldsfalsehood@lemmy.ml
    3·
    10 months ago

    I capture all my predictable work items in icalendar-encoded files that I mostly author by hand in emacs. I use evolution for a conventional calendar view on my computer. I adb push to my phone and use icsx5 to import so I can view events there as well.

    I’ve also been working on a project to produce a printable view that’s reasonably mature at this point. It accepts VEVENT, VJOURNAL, and VTODO entries and groups them by day, month, or year. Todo items are rendered as lists so I have a little circle to fill in when I’ve completed the work. I display both the title and description for all types, with the description processed as Markdown. So for instance a VJOURNAL with a weekly recurrence, a title like “This Week”, and a description like * \n* \n will appear every week in the printout as a blank list for jotting down two items not captured in my calendars.

    I’ve been using the daily grouping so far to produce a weekly “checklist”. Every few weeks or so I hack on my RRULEs based on what’s working for me. For instance I bake a loaf of sourdough every week so I have events for feeding the starter, mixing the dough, then baking. I set each of those to recur on subsequent days of the week so they all magically fall into place then I shifted the start days around until I found my ideal baking day. I also have an entry for changing the bed sheets every week, and another for washing the washing machine scheduled for the same day of week at a slower frequency. Capturing everything that needs to be done (with some editorializing on granularity) and evolving their recurrences is the fundamental way I synchronize independent work, leaning on icalendar for expressiveness like this recurrence for planting the garden on the Saturday before Memorial Day weekend:

    RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=5;BYDAY=SA;BYMONTHDAY=16,17,18,19,20,21,22

    The workflow doesn’t require the bespoke tooling since I can see all my maintenance items alongside my meetings using any application that can render icalendar. That was key to getting moving, but having the print out lets me feel more productive. I knock out all the routine stuff throughout the day and find that “if I have time” becomes “what do I want to do with this time”.

    There are tools in the project for generating events for solstices and equinoxes as well as sunrises and sunsets. I include all of those in my printed daily view but exclude the sunrises and sunsets from evolution by capturing them in separate files. I also separate routine/noisy tasks like “change the bed sheets” from holidays and operational work like “plant the garden” or “change the water filters” so those become more visible.

  • Marduk73@sh.itjust.works
    3·
    10 months ago

    python i automated a ton of repeatative and boring tasks. made my work life super easy. made some tools for my manager to harvest all drawings for a user specified product. sky is the limit. well until you type import cosmos /s

  • njordomir@lemmy.world
    3·
    10 months ago

    Nextcloud Calendar is where I’m blocking out my time. I use a proprietary task app with a Linux client because tasks.org/former Astrid/nextcloud tasks isn’t quite there yet… for me. If I was creating a system to keep me on track today, I would center the whole thing on Nextcloud. The one thing I despise about nextcloud is how it handled locales and formats. There is no easy way to move to YYYY-MM-DD and HH-DD without messing up other stuff like day of the week captions language. The thing I love about nextcloud is how it doesn’t spam you with garbage recommendations and clutter and such like Outlook.