My Ultimate Productivity Setup. (Free Downloads)
I have a weird obsession with productivity apps—todo, calendar, note-taking apps—I’ve tried them all.
I would spend hours building a workspace for completing projects as well as managing my personal life, only to abandon it when it felt too restrictive or I found a shiny new app.
I’ve been running with this setup for some time now and have no intention of changing it.
I finally think I’ve found the perfect combination of tools.
Here is what, how, and why I use each of them.
Photo by William Hook on Unsplash
Todoist
First on the list is Todoist, a todo app that makes capturing tasks super simple.
I use this app as my personal todo app and a way to capture things quickly, so no project stuff in here.
I’m an Apple fanboy, so I have an iPhone and iMac, but I still use Todoist over Reminders.
Todoist has lots of great features, but the best is its powerful Natural Language Processing (NLP). I can write ‘Pick up milk at 16:30 tomorrow p2 for 10min’, which Todoist will create the below task:
Creating Pick up Milk in Todoist
Paired with the app's widgets for the home screen, there is little friction in capturing, tagging, and scheduling todo tasks.
This is perfect for your personal todo app because these types of tasks are reactive rather than proactive. No one plans on running out of milk; you’re more likely to open the fridge at the end of the day for your evening brew and find there is none left.
This is in complete contrast to project tasks.
With project tasks, you think about what needs to be completed to deliver the project and then schedule.
For that, there is no better tool than Notion.
Notion
Notion is my favourite tool in the world!
I run my entire life out of this thing, but it's particularly great for projects.
When completing a project, you want a space where you can make notes, create a task list, and collaborate with others on work—Notion is the answer.
Like Todoist, this has many features, but they also have one amazing feature called Databases.
These databases allow you to create structured, customisable collections of information and each entry in your database is a page from which you can work.
For example, you could have a database called Meal Planning, which contains recipes. This could then have details such as a link, day of the week you will make it, etc and then in the body the actual recipe to follow.
Notion Database for Meal Planning
Admittedly, there is a bit of a learning curve, and because it’s so customisable, it may take some time for you to set it up, but it’s well worth investing some time in.
In my setup, I have a database for each project “entity” like tasks, notes, etc., and they all link together.
This allows me to see an overview of my project as well as focus on a space when I need to. For example, when programming, I just need to see my task list of what needs to be completed.
Here is a link where you can download templates of my setup.
Notion Calendar
Now tying it all together.
I don’t know about you, but I like to see everything I’m doing in a day in one calendar.
I want to see my personal todo list, project tasks, and all my events so I can plan what I’m working on and when.
With Notion Calendar, I can do that!
This app integrates your Google calendars, showing your day. However, you can also integrate Notion databases, as long as your database has a calendar view. You can then set dates and times for your pages, which will reflect in your calendar.
The best example of this is the tasks database for projects. If I need to complete a task at a certain date and time, I can set this, and it will show up in my calendar.
But what about your personal tasks?!
Well, Todoist also integrates with Google Calendar, which is pulled through when Notion Calendar syncs your Google calendars, meaning you can also see your personal todos.
They are also interactive; you can adjust the dates and times of all events you see from Todoist and Notion, which will be updated in the apps.
Notion Calendar View
In the above image, you can see my calendars on the left with Todoist highlighted and the pick-up milk task scheduled at 16:30 we made earlier.
You can also see my Notion databases Tasks and Social Media Posts (SMP) highlighted in the bottom left. You can then see this post is scheduled for 8 am from SMP and then Build Fast API from my Tasks DB.