I noticed that 10 years ago, I published an article about the software tools that I use to manage everyday life. The nice thing about all of the tools are that they are free and mostly open source. The things that need to be managed fall into the categories of:
- money
- scheduling
- documents
- to do lists / task management
- note taking
- secure password management
See the article [[2014-01-14-life-tools]] for that original article.
Ten years ago I was focused on off loading most of my data to the cloud in some way. For example, I was using Intuit’s Mint program for money management and Google Docs for all my documents.
I’ve since undergone a major change in my thinking. I now want as little of my information stored online as possible. There are several reasons for this:
- Security: Information that is stored online is more vulnerable to being exposed through some kind of data breach. and
- Privacy: there is no guarantee that the companies that you are entrusting with your data will not be using it to profile you, target you for advertising, and sell your information to a third party.
- Data: I want my data to be in my possession. This means I’m responsible for keeping it backed up.
I realize it is near impossible to totally pull your data offline, but moving in that direction seems to be a better idea.
Money Management
LibreOffice Calc Spreadsheet is now the home of my money tracking. I use a budget / tracking spreadsheet that I’ve developed over time to keep track of my income and expenses.
Thunderbird is now the home for my email. Yes, I still have gmail and Microsoft live accounts in addition to some more private accounts. All of these multiple accounts can be set up within Thunderbird and allow easy review of all email.
Scheduling
Also Thunderbird. The calendar tool in Thunderbird allows me to connect multiple online calendars into one view. Very handy. This is especially useful in that I can add calendar events to some shared calendars.
Documents
You can probably guess. I’ve moved all my documents into LibreOffice or into Obsidian.
To Do Lists / Task Management
I am currently using Obsidian to manage my tasks. My system isn’t perfect, but by creating a note for each project, I can track tasks using markdown check boxes. It works well enough given the scope of my projects.
The other thing I’m looking at is Task Warrior, a command line task management application that is pretty good.
Note Taking
Obsidian. Works great. I have a couple of different vaults and have been using it for a several years. I find that many things that were documents previously, can simply be added to Obsidian and the document deleted. The searching and note linking features make gathering and storing all this information incredibly powerful.
Joplin is also an excellent note taking application.
Secure Password Management
I’ve moved from LastPass to Bitwarden in the last few years. Functionally, they are about the same. Bitwarden is open source software and can be self-hosted. Not doing that yet, but it is an appealing option. I do pay for the
Bitwarden is online and has the risks associated with online applications. Keepass is a good offline option. In fact, I periodically export all my Bitwarden data into Keepass in order to keep local copies of that information.
Conclusion
The focus these days is on simplifying the number of tools used to manage life’s tasks and keeping as much of my data in-house as possible. Here are links to these recommended software tools.
Primary Tools
LibreOffice - spreadsheets, word processing, and presentations Thunderbird - email and scheduling Obsidian - note taking and task management Bitwarden - password manager
Extra Mentions
TaskWarrior - command line task management Keepass - For Windows and has links to other unofficial ports for various operating systems. KeepassXC - For Linux Joplin - note taking application