My most viewed story ever is the Digital Tools that Run my Life, which has surprised me somewhat!

I published that in early September, and most of those apps had long been in play. But it’s the eve of the eve of the New Year, and I have done a quick audit to make sure I’m happy with everything.

Little has changed, so if you want to read more, start here 👇 then come back!

The Changes

Goodbye to Routine (for now), Hello Akiflow

This one is a surprise to me and hopefully only a temporary change.

I’ve talked about Routine for months because I really do love it, but I identified that labelling my tasks with their relevant categories is a very useful workflow for me. I identified this as a drawback to the app back in May, but I was able to use pages as a workaround in the meantime.

However, since becoming a full time freelancer, I just didn’t find this to be effective in larger doses. The tasks don’t get deleted from a page once done, they just get greyed out (which makes sense) but in practice this just creates noise to me.

I need to be doing what I can to reduce that, which is a theme of my entire system.

Labels are on the roadmap for V1.2, but the latest release is V0.17.3, so I think I have some time to wait. Unfortunately I had to look at alternatives. I checked out Akiflow after Réka’s recommendation, and it works great despite its large price tag. I like the time slot feature too.

I will eagerly keep up with Routine’s development though, as I prefer pretty much everything else about Routine.. just shows that I really value labels/tags on my tasks right now. Sometimes it’s the little things!

Welcome to Sukha

Sukha is actually part of my task management workflow now because it’s what allows me to keep enough focus during my work days to actually do my tasks.

It’s honestly changed my life and improved my self-esteem and confidence more than I thought an app actually could.

I wrote a more in-depth review here which includes a discount code if you’d like to try it too:

Welcome to Obsidian Canvas

I like mind maps/canvas type things for working things out. I normally like doing mind maps by hand with Concepts on my iPad, but for the times a digital approach is more appropriate, I have been using Obsidian Canvas.

It’s free and easy, and because I don’t use Obsidian for anything else these days, there’s no noise. I can just play around with boxes and lines and see what thoughts emerge.

These canvases are normally left abandoned because the process alone has allowed me to unstick whatever I was stuck on.

None of this use is particularly regular, but I’m glad I have an app to go to when needed.

Goodbye Logseq and Zotero

Realistically I don’t use either of these apps enough to count them now. I rarely read academic sources these days, as I’m trying to take a slower, more intentional approach to reading by using physical books.

My old journals are in Logseq too but that’s just like opening a scrapbook rather than using it.

That’s it, everything else remains the same, and is working nicely!

I know my systems will change though, based off reasons I wrote in this post 👇

I’m just here enjoying the journey and learning about myself in the process :)

If you’re interested in what tools I use in my business, I’ve just added a page to my website about this which will expand over time, but it might be useful to other creators/freelancers starting out!