Life Systems
Inspired off smallcypress writing about her organizational/life systems and really wanted to try to document my own; truthfully I'm still feeling out mine, and as I read about other people's systems and try things out to see how they work (or shake things up), things change or may stop losing their effectiveness for the time until I return to them later.
I'll start from the most prominent that's stuck with me for years, and whittle down to 'use often', 'new to me still/not used as often', and 'used to do it, either didn't work or it's paused.
This is currently a blog post, but I'll most likely be mirroring it into an article page on my site, it just makes it easier to write it out here, then have a barebone idea of what I need to do for a layout/what to write.
As always, systems vary for everyone, I also need to remind myself that. Systems come and go, they grow and shape themselves with you, it's all what works for you by the end of everything.
Apple Reminders
I don't acknowledge that my reminders history goes back to 2014 (same with my notes, curse of being in the ecosystem of Apple for a decade now LOL), but it's been my lifeline since I was in college and living on my own (as much as living on my own was living an hour away by car) ... but regardless I was basically left to my own devices during that time and taking care of myself, and sorely found I needed reminders for deadlines, tasks, even minor things like brushing my teeth, and since then I've never really looked back.
I've tried other apps (to-doist), using a physical journal, Notion, but I always end up circling back to the native Reminders to just jot down things I need to remember to do that aren't explicitly tied to 'I am working on this for 3 hours', because it's ... simple. Straight to the point. Doesn't need to be over complicated. I toss in a reminder, plug in a date, maybe add it in a certain category like self-care, or groceries, get dinged later about it. Win.
One thing reminders has not solved is habits, unfortunately any reminders that happens daily tends to blend in the background. I've not found a system for habits ... not one that's stuck anyway. Day-to-day I just kinda have to rely on myself which kinda sucks!!
Spirit City: Lo-fi Girl (and Pomodoro)
Oh my god, an actual godsend. I genuinely wish I had this during college. Having an avatar to do things besides you helps a lot to me, since I've found that body doubling is really handy for me; I do best when I'm streaming my work to my friend, or imagining one of my OCs doing things with me, or ... in this case, having them in Spirit City doing activities alongside me (which in the context of this image, was taking a stretch with me during my break).
This leans into my second item, pomodoro timers. This I also partially adopted back in college, but I didn't do it very religiously and kinda loosely for making sure I got some work done on projects. Being able to mentally split it up like 'oh I'm just working for 25 minutes then taking a break' really works with my brain to not be hit with 'oh you're working for an hour or two' on something.
Spirit City comes built in with pomodoro timers, normal timers, and countdowns ... alongside other tools I don't really use myself (journal, habit tracker), but might be useful for others. Rain/ambiance sounds, lo-fi music, ability to import your own music, or go through YouTube to boot up a video (with the minus that it's with ads, obviously).
The customization is really cool, and the fact it's indie made and actively updated is a major bonus for me as well.
Pomodoro
As an aside for pomodoro, this MAY not work for everyone if you do not like having your focus broken. I tend to only use pomodoro for tasks I really need to get done but fucking hate, so it's hard for me to get in a state of focus. If that does happen and miraculously I get locked in (it can happen, usually when I have an issue I'm locked into resolving), I can ditch the pomodoro and not take breaks cause it's easy to just pause it in Spirit City.
Obsidian
A new one to my system, and I am writing this blog post through it right at this moment. I'm still feeling out Obsidian, figuring out what I want to track with it, what's useful and what's useless. My recipes are now housed here, my HTML/CSS tips/studies, my blog writing, things I learn for game engines (Unity, RPG Maker MZ), and hell, even a list of my tumblr mutuals to try to remember people from the yume sphere (my memory is shit, unfortunately).
What I can say is it didn't work out as a to-do list, or a journaling area because I am not consistent with checking day to day on things when that isn't its primary task (unlike Reminders).
My brain dumping area, and information keeper for things I might want to either revisit, or information I may need to share with someone else later.
Raindrop.io
Glorified bookmark keeper where you can tag stuff and it looks visually nicer to search through than built in bookmarks. Also allows you to create public links to share such as my minecraft build links. I visit it on and off for certain things, and I really do like it for being able to organize more robustly + being able to use it on multiple devices.
I keep a lot of game resources, coding resources, and general resources, and try my best to maintain some organization to make it a little easier to find things + their tagging system. I do tend to rely more on the folders themselves, though.
Journaling
I'm on a journaling hiatus ... I think I've just accepted I will ravenously journal for months on end, then burn out, and cycle back and forth. In some ways it's because I have many outlets, I physical journal, but I also journal on my site (my diary/now pages), or here (thoughts in blogs), or on status.cafe, or on the Treefort forums, or on tumblr through posting my random snippets of thoughts ... and I guess more recently, microposting on Dreamwidth.
I cannot be consistent with journaling in only one way, and that's ok. Makes it a pain in the ass to look back on everything though LOL. I just kinda have accepted that I tend to bounce between my 'journaling' places.
Structured / Time-blocking
Time blocking worked for me for a bit, but like some other people with ADHD have brought up, sometimes time blocking just does NOT work if the schedule gets shifted too much, then the entire thing goes out of wack. I use Structured for mine, and I've kinda reduced it down to just 'hey I'm planning to do Some Work during this time, how much work I get done doesn't matter much' ... and even then I still end up sometimes delaying that because I get too focused on something else.
Good if you keep it very loose, otherwise stressful, and sometimes I just need a list of 'tasks' to do that I'll eventually do. This video inspired me to revamp my reminders to kinda have sections denoting important tasks I need to do rather than tacking them to a time frame, though I still use Structured to denote 'this time should be dedicated to working on this contract project' ... vaguely. Ish.
ScreenZen / Screen Blocking
Honestly I use blocking more just to keep myself from staying up too late rather than doom scrolling or what not; with how few social medias I use nowadays cause I'm too tired to branch my roots out too far (mostly only Tumblr and sometimes Pillowfort), I don't have much of a compulsion to scroll on my phone ... I do that on my laptop instead. 🤣
Sometimes I block games only because they're dangerous time sinks (looking at you Cookie Run Ovenbreak), or I can lose track of time easily on them (looking at you OC Social Network), and just give myself like 10-20 minutes to play them w/o frustration.
I might have to toss tumblr on that list soon enough to do during the day as well, the problem with screen blockers is it’s a very careful line to thread between ‘enough time to scroll’ and ‘frustrated’, and that can shift day by day too. At night at least I can understand why I’m blocking myself because it’s late, during the day … it’s a hit and miss.
Even so, surprisingly I spend more time just checking out indie web stuff on my phone (forums), or my pet sites I play (Flight Rising), where things don’t move that quick.
Notion
Man, I used to use Notion like how I use Obsidian now ... it's just slow as hell. The AI integration sucks too. I mostly only use it now for logging my sales from commissions and carrd sales. As you can tell for my 2024 resolutions I've not used this home page since then.
Stuff like my show tracking, games, and all that have been offloaded to sites specific to it. Would it be nice to have it all in one place? Sure! But I like having sites dedicated to logging my games, or what episode of a show I'm on, or what book I'm reading right now, than having it all clumped in a single area (also why I'm avoiding doing it in my Obsidian).
The problem with Notion is that it's very easy to get ... overwhelmed, or distracted with making your pages look nice. Especially when you get templates that are ... although automated, they make it busy, especially if you're like me and like tinkering with things. Pages I'd forget to update, or thought I'd use and they just rot and don't get trimmed out.
It's still really good for some stuff, especially if you use the calculations + functions in there to automate things ... but it's one of those very dangerously slippery slopes that is very easy to get lost into. I have respect for people who have managed to integrate Notion into their day to day systems, but sadly it and me did not work out well together.
Conclusion
... I think that covers everything; these are the systems that I remember trying, and how they've worked (or didn't work) for me. There's still gaps I have in trying to wrangle my day to day, case in point I do not have anything that properly handles forming habits ... and when I say habits, I mean the most barebones like ensuring I brush my teeth daily.
Unfortunately it's an issue where I know the root cause (not a good time for me to do it without overlapping times when I eat, or other people being in the bathroom, or not having it be at 1am and having to do it in the almost full dark because the bathroom is attached to my parent's bedroom, or having to do it midday and cuck myself out of allowing freedom to snack), and it's hard to really work around that when I have a tiny window of doing said thing, and if I miss it, it's over for the day.
Ridiculous, I know, but it's hard to budge my brain out of that.
Maybe in due time I'll figure out a system to work with that, but for now I think I've got some decent semblance of organizing myself.