Over the years, I’ve put together a set of tools that helps me do meaningful work for myself and for my clients.
Whilst I love a new toy, these have all stood the test of time (with a couple of new additions), supporting how I think, plan, and deliver.
There are a lot of words, below, and I could have written a lot more! I will, in all likelihood, delve deeper into some of these in later articles.
Anyway, in no particular order...
OmniFocus
Maybe 15 years’ ago, when I started to have too many things to do than I could cope with, I started looking at time and task management tools. I went through any number of them; so many that I can’t remember what most of them were called.
I quickly settled on two methodologies; one for task management (GTD - Getting Things Done), and one for time management (The Pomodoro Technique).
OmniFocus, by The Omni Group is my task management tool of choice. It’s great for GTD. It looks after my task inbox, projects (in the GTD sense of the word), repeating tasks, everything. I rely on it for pretty much everything I do on a daily basis.
It’s easy to automate into workflows, too, so that I can quickly turn emails into actions, for instance.
LifeLine
It’s not restricted to being specifically for Pomodoros; it works just as great as a simple time recording tool (freelancers looking to track their time). It can integrate with calendars to automatically log time to meetings, and you can have it prompt you to log time if you forget. You can review and export the logs with ease.
Evernote
Evernote (by Evernote) holds onto stuff that I might want to refer to later. Web pages, PDFs, photos - anything. You can ‘file’ these into notebooks and/or tag individual items. The search is good enough that you can just not bother with these, but I file and tag because that’s the kind of person I am.
Great integration with web browsers, email, and the ‘share’ menu on mobile.
I use it for important documents - work or home based. It’s a search engine for my personally curated knowledge.
reMarkable Pro
The reMarkable Pro (by reMarkable ) is my first-and-foremost tool in my stack. I use it daily, almost constantly. I have been an avid user since the first version was released as a crowd-funder. I have an original V1, a V2 and a Pro.
For many years prior to getting my first reMarkable, I wrote extensive work notes in notebooks (and I still carry one or two around with me for comfort(!)), but now all my ‘thoughtful’ creativity, writing and editing happens in my reMarkable tablet.
Why?
- I retain a lot more when I write it, rather than type it.
- It’s great to doodle on - to knock up a quick diagram or mind map.
- It syncs to my laptop and phone via ‘the cloud’, so I can see & search my notes where I need them later.
- It’s also an eBook reader.
- Probably most important to me is that it is very limited in what it does. No email, social media or the like. No notifications. When I sit down with my reMarkable, I know I’m going to be experiencing distraction-free, quality time.
Scrivener
I use Scrivener (by Literature & Latte Ltd) to manage my content (in the very loosest sense). Articles, blog posts, talks, this very article.
I first picked up Scrivener when I thought I would write a novel. (It never happened.)
Now I’m using it for anything that’s likely to need structure, or that needs to live within a (content) structure:
- Poetry for my next book.
- Blog posts for my writing blog
- Reports for clients
- Articles, thought pieces, etc.
Scrivener was created for novel writers, and I find it really useful for helping me organise and make sense of any long-form writing.
You can move sections around easily and export to a variety of formats, including a number of markdown and eBook formats.
Whiteboards
If I need more space than my reMarkable affords, I have whiteboards, although they tend to end up being used as aides-memoire, with scrawly notes about things that are really important.
I have a couple of whiteboards in my home office; they are magnetic and I tend to use magnetic index cards, rather than write on the board directly, as it’s easier to reposition things (and, generally, be more creative and agile).
If I’m workshopping with a client, I would much rather use a physical whiteboard than virtual one. Not that there’s anything wrong with the latter; I just find the ‘friction’ to be too great to keep the flow going during a session.
Weekdone
It supports a strategic hierarchy- Objective -> Key results, and projects/tasks for the tactical aspect (though I prefer to manage projects in OmniFocus).
It supports a business hierarchy across the above: Company -> Teams -> Individuals.
You can also set up KPIs for lagging indicators, which you can automatically consume from a Google Sheet, if that’s your bag.
It also has a good reporting, and ‘information radiator’-style dashboards, which (for me) are both great for reporting progress to clients.
Liberty Spark
I love a good process!
I use Liberty Spark (from Skore, A Netcall Company), to describe processes.
The main reason I stick with it is because it gives you the ability to understand the effort and impact of processes on your (your clients) organisation. I have used it on several occasions to document a company’s processes, actors and systems, and glean information about where there are potential bottlenecks.
It’s really quick to use in realtime in a workshop, such that you can document a process as it’s being described by the attendees.
Fathom
In a rapidly expanding playing field, there are so many AI notetakers for video calls, but Fathom (referral invite link) is the one I’ve settled on. I’m on the free tier and it does way more than I need.
It transcribes and summarises meetings, with next steps and tasks assigned accurately. I’ve only once noticed a minor mistake in a task and, to be fair, the conversation around that point was confusing. But, hey, no worries, you just click on the action point and it starts playing the recorded session at the relevant point, so you can double-check, edit, re-assign. Brilliant..
It automatically integrates with a number of popular video meeting tools.
It does loads more (even for free), and the paid tier comes with some extra meeting type templates which I could see being useful for me in the future.
I love it.
ChatGTP (Gen AI of your choice)
I was a bit late to the AI party; now I've embraced it with open (but cautious) arms.
I use it to:
- Critique my work
- Spark creativity
- Look after my business strategy
- Understand what makes me tick, what I enjoy, what I’m good at
- Research
What I don’t do:
- Assume it’s right
- Use it to generate content. (At most I’ll maybe get it to outline the content, but nothing more.)
- Use it to manage my clients
I also use Napkin.ai to create diagrams (very occasionally). I might use it more when I expand my branded assets collection.
I’ve yet to delve into agents, automation or beyond.
The Essentials
Things I tend to carry around with me on business trips or client visits:
- Magnetic index cards - easier to manipulate on magnetic whiteboards than paper index cards and blu tack.
- Index cards & Blu tack - because not everyone has magnetic whiteboards.
- Portable whiteboard (mine’s really old - no longer available, but there must be others).
- Sharpies (like, maybe 30 in a bag, the modal colour being black).
- Coloured pencils.
- Card decks - because you always need a way to introduce randomness. These are not decks of traditional playing cards; these are themed decks that support my thinking and workshopping. I have decks covering Sales, Facilitation, Innovation, Strategy, and more.
Omitted
I’ve deliberately not included some things - video conferencing and messaging specifically - because I tend to use whatever my clients are already using, so as not to create unnecessary friction for them.
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I have my favourites, and I’m sure that you do, too. Stick with what you like and, importantly, what works best for you and your team/organisation.