What if I decided to use only web-based tools? I asked myself that question this morning, and spent much of the day finding out. I had a blast.
Tasks
I normally use Org-mode and OmniFocus for task management. Today, I tried two alternatives, Nirvana and TickTick.
Nirvana adheres closely to the Getting Things Done workflow, which I appreciate. It looks nice and has been around for a long time. People do complain about a lack of updates, but since I just started I don’t really feel that yet. Nirvana seems a bit light on keyboard shortcuts, which is a shame. Overall, it feels similar enough to OmniFocus that I could adapt quickly.
TickTick is more like Things. It lets me organize tasks using lists and tags. Once things are scheduled, I can view everything upcoming. It goes way beyond Things, though. There are Kanban and Timeline views, a calendar, habit tracking, Pomodoro timers, etc. I feel like I’ve barely scratched the surface.
RSS Feed Reader
I have used NetNewsWire for years, but if I want to live in a browser, I need something else. There are tons of options. I decided to look at Feedbin, Feedly, and Inoreader.
Feedly was out immediately. At first glance, it looks nice, but it felt all wrong after that. I can’t explain it, but we didn’t click.
Feedbin is what most people I know recommended. I used Feedbin for a while years ago. It’s good. It took too long to figure out how to tidy up the column showing the list of articles. By default it’s filled with giant images, which means only a handful of articles fit on the screen. Once I fixed that, it was better.
Inoreader comes up a lot, but had never looked at it. Once I did, we clicked immediately. It just felt right, if that makes sense. It has a zillion features that I don’t need, and I’m hoping I can filter out any “trending” or “recommended” nonsense. I signed up for a year.
Notes
This is funny. I pinned a Roam tab. It’s unlikely this will last more than a hot minute, but man Roam was great. Still is, honestly. It’s hard to justify using Roam these days, even though I still have 6 months remaining on my 5-year subscription. I have to admit that hammering notes into a Roam outline with super easy linking/backlinks/transclusion/etc. is still pretty cool.
Next?
This was only meant to a fun, very temporary experiment to kill a few hours this morning. It still is, but it’s been so fun that I’ll probably continue doing it tomorrow.