Tools of the Trade

For a number of years, I used a bullet journal to look after my calendar, to-do list, journal and notes. I did enjoy having everything all in one little book, so You could see all the parts of your life juxtaposed against each other. Later I moved to a travellers notebook, so I didn’t need to draw up the calendar/planner sections. Finally, I switched mainly to digital tools a couple of years ago. Here are some tools and resources that I currently use.

WORK:

• Outlook: we use Outlook for work, which I don’t love, so I pretty much keep Outlook for writing and sending work emails.
• Gmail: All my work emails are also forwarded automatically to my Gmail account, which I use to process and file. I prefer Gmail for its superior search function, which has saved hours when trying to find emails to complete historical reconciliations. Tasks that come in via email I either complete when I first open the email or move to a folder to finish later.
• Trello: My work is a mix of recurring tasks (weekly/monthly) and whatever comes in via email. I use Trello to keep track of my recurring tasks, larger projects and any tasks that don’t come via email.
• Grammarly: helps with typos and grammar issues. My biggest problem is not enough commas. I have the extensions on outlook, which means I rarely send out an unprofessional, semi-literate email. I also use it in word. I write our company’s process manuals for our cloud-based inventory and accounting systems, and Grammarly enhances the clarity of my writing which is especially important when you are writing for staff that have English as a second language.

PERSONAL ORGANISATION:

• Google Calendar: appointments, meetings and events
• Gmail: my personal email
• ROAM research: for to-do lists, project management, time logging, note-taking. I love this program. It starts on the daily page. Using the / command, you can add lots of different elements, including a todo check box (great for the todo list, obviously) and current time (to make a quick time log). Its main claim is bi-directional linking which I’ll get to later.

JOURNAL:

• Day One: A bit like a private Facebook. Easily update with photos, video, and text entries. Love the on this day feature where you can look back to previous years to see what you were doing.

FAITH:

• Pray as You Go: I start my morning quiet time with their daily devotion. The app is buggy, though, so I access it from the web page.
• YouVersion: bible app
• Accordance: for the Greek and Hebrew. I got a good deal on it through my university.
• The Bible Project: Fantastic video introductions to the books of the bible and various themes. Also, for nerds, a podcast with more in-depth discussion. I’ve been following on with their Torah journey in the app this year.

READING:

• Goodreads: whenever I come across a book recommendation that interests me, I add it to my Goodreads account.
• Bayside library: I love reading real books and read too many to buy, so I mostly borrow from my local library. I almost always reserve whatever I want to borrow, and once I’m notified by email collect it from my local branch. They have a pretty good selection, except for theology books. I’m considering getting a membership to the big theological library I used during my Masters.
• Kindle app on my iPad: Mainly for theology because I can’t get them from my library.
• Feedly: for reading blogs
• Gmail or Substack: For my newsletter subscriptions.

NOTE-TAKING:

• How to Take Smart Notes: One Simple Technique to Boost writing, Learning and Thinking – Sönke Ahrens: I follow the basic ideas in this book to take notes and process them into something I can use later.
• LEUCHTTURM1917 notebook: for notes on in-person talks and lectures, small group discussion, a short version of morning pages, random thoughts when out and about, prayer points and thoughts from the morning quiet time. I will transfer anything that comes up here that I want to follow up on or use later to ROAM.
• Instapaper: I forward web-based articles that I want to dig into to Instapaper, where you can highlight and take notes.
• Airr: a podcast app that allows you to save quotes as you’re listening to the podcast. When you hear something interesting, you hit the button, and it will save the previous 45s (this is adjustable).
• Readwise: For print books. You can use your camera phone to highlight a passage. The highlight will be converted to text; you can add the page number and notes. I’ve also set up Readwise to collect my highlights from Instapaper, kindle and Airr and forward everything to ROAM.
• ROAM: This is where the bi-directional linking comes into its own. The highlights coming through Readwise will appear on the books page but will also be linked to the daily page and the author page, and then you can start linking the ideas to other pages. It makes it easy to find related information and combine various ideas to develop new ways of thinking about things.

WRITING:

• ROAM: The end result of the note-taking process are notes that each contains a single thought, written out completely and coherently; a finished paragraph is ideal. When it’s time to write, there should be plenty of material already written to form the backbone of the piece. These are all in ROAM, and I can use the bi-directional links to put them together in new ways.
• Zotero: citation manager which has an extension for word.
• WordPress: blogging

RECIPES:

• Pinterest: for recipes, I’d like to try
• Evernote: recipes that I’ve tried, enjoyed and want to make again. (Evernote also has my old web clippings; I used this before switching to Instapaper and ROAM. I intend to go through this and explore what’s still of interest.)

RUNNING:

• Garmin vivioactive3: has GPS tracking and heart rate monitor.
• Strava: because if it’s not on Strava, it didn’t happen
• Wild.AI: this is a new app. Gives training, fueling and recovery suggestions tailored to your menstrual cycle.
• Rise and Run by Elyse Kopecky and Shalane Flanagan: great whole food recipes for runners.
• NB 880v12: my current training shoe. I probably need a second one of these to cope with rainy weather or another model to switch out for workouts. I haven’t decided which yet.
• NIKE vaporfly: for racing. They are an old model because I had a number of races cancelled, so haven’t clocked up the kilometres in these yet.

PHOTOGRAPHY:

• iPhone 12 mini: it’s always with me, so is my main camera for everyday photography
• Olympus OM-D E-M10 Mark II: I mainly use this when I travel, for special occasions or if I’m doing a special project.
• Blurb: photo books for printed albums. I have a very large backlog of these to do.
• Photoshop Elements: if I want to do more photo editing or fully customised pages for my photo books.

Do you favour analog or digital tools or a mix of both?