2021 — My most used apps!

From ‘Interest only’ to ‘Work in progress’ — a journey of being better version.

Year 2021 – is the year when my genuine interest surfaced in the subject of note-taking and productivity. I had started putting up my thoughts into actions by experimenting variety of tools and apps to build my workflow.

To best of my understanding, I have yet to design a system which works inline with my usability.

The search, The work is ON! Meanwhile, here is the list of the most used apps in the year passing by: 2021.

1. Note-taking Apps:

• Mem.ai
• Bear

Yes, they both are my absolute favourite tool — as on date and looking forward to continue with Mem.ai, expecting to change my note-taking experience completely, however I may not continue use Bear app due to ‘only Apple ecosystem’ availability.

Looking forward to dive deep with Craft.do and Mem.ai in 2022 — reason for going with Craft.do is the availability of web version.

2. Task Manager:

• Things 3
• Todoist

I can understand the question in your eyes. why 2 task manager?

I have used both of the task manager parallely in 2021 to understand or identify key differences and my preferences for one, however I could not conclude.

Both the tools are my go-to task manager and sometime serves as a project management tool as well.

Looking forward to conclude on ONE in 2022.

3. Project and Knowledge Management:

• Coda
• Trello

After handful research with respect to my useability, I have concluded on Trello being my go to project management tool and tried to accomplish the same in 2021.

Trello — is still my preferred, visually appealing, easy to use, mobile friendly project management app, but after using it for awhile I feel there is some missing link with my expectation vs actual use. Main difference is the dashboard — overview of your active projects, status and tasks and limited data options (can be an advantage in some cases)

Coda — have all the possibility of being my one source of truth — note-taking, knowledge and project management and task manager but that comes with a cost of not super useful mobile app and if you are on personal pro plan, with a decent cost.

Apart from the above, Outlook — Email & Google Calendar are my daily driver;

Following are the honourable mentions and extremely useful apps, which I am using regularly and enjoying the most:

1. Pitch – An excellent tool for presentation and collaboration, super useful with templates for each and every meeting format. Loving it!
2. Medium – Not only to post my ideas, workflows but actually I read and consume the content on Medium, a lot.
3. Kindle – I really like to hold a book in my hand and feel the change of pages, fragrance and highlights with pencils but still when it comes to my preference for digital library is Kindle, have couple of books always available on all the devices.

Planning to have one more story, preferably the first of 2022 on the outlook of the above apps with plan to explore and deep dive into few more — :

Thanks for reading.

Keep reading, keep sharing.

Wish you all readers a very Happy, Healthy & Prosperous 2022.

Astu.