After writing about my task management system yesterday I thought I’d get to my insane reminders & calendar setup today.

Calendars

I have 2.5 calendar setups. The .5 is the corporate Exchange / Outlook calendars I have at work but don’t use more than I have to. Outside of that I have a digital Fantastical setup where all of the calendars live in iCloud and a analog A5 Hobonichi Techo Cousin.

Let’s start with the Hobo.

It has two big calendar spreads or it has more. But there are two I use a lot. It has a two page spread for each week, and a single A5 page for each day in a different section.

What I use the week spread for is two things.

The first: it has this section on the left that isn’t really a part of any day, in there I write a bulleted list of all my goals of the week. Like what my targets for weight loss are, how many times I want to go to the gym. Habits I’m working on etc.

The second: in the day sections I write down anything I do that day that either involves other people or me going anywhere. No times or anything. Just write them down there. Plus that I always write down where I’m going to work that day (as a consultant I sometimes work from home, sometimes from my employers offices and most of the time the clients offices). I find this very useful to see that I don’t over-book myself. And make sure I have some days of the week without other people.

This is obviously very high level. But it makes it really easy once I got into it to use it to see where I’m open to doing stuff.

Now onto the day pages. The first thing I do with them is that I take a ruler and divide them into three more or less identical columns. And then I write down all the most important things I need to do during the day. It isn’t like a very detailed TODO list like the ones I have to work after. But it is more like a all the most important things that I really should get done that day. It typically contains all the stuff from the weekly page. Plus a bunch of priority tasks. I treat it like a lot of GTD purists treat due dates.

Fantastical

I have a bunch of different calendars here: personal, work, routine, Molly(my dog), Ea(my daughter). All of them are color coded.

The way I use digital calendars is that I add everything to them, because it makes it much easier for me to accurately know if I have time for something or not. Pluss full day events for where I’m working if I’m working or if I’m traveling somewhere or if I have my kid etc.

I put in when I usually get out of bed and when I typically get up so it is easy to scan what my available area is. And you find a lot of weird stuff like taking the dog for a walk or travel back and forth to work etc.

I don’t always fill it, but if I’m doing something important or something that require going somewhere I put it there.

Reminders etc

I use two kinds of apps for reminders that notify me. The default Apple Reminders app and Due.

Due I use for everything that I want to be nagged about until they are done. This are typically things that are really important that I get done at all or things that are really important to get done at a specific Date/Time. If it is the latter I usually use a combination of Due and Calendars.

And Reminders I use for shopping lists and things I want to be reminded about that isn’t that time sensitive.

This probably sounds insane to most people with a normal brain. But I keep three separate task lists, and this is all separated from things like calendars, reminders and things like this.

I have one big todo list system. It is neatly organised most of the time into projects, sub-projects and so on. Tagged with due dates, flags etc. It is managed through a plain text system called Taskpaper.

This is kind of the database or master list of everything.

Then I have a bullet journal like system in the iOS/macOS app called Agenda. I have different notebooks and templates for different things. One for work, one for going to the gym, and a bunch for personal stuff usually organised into Daily, Monthly and Yearly notebooks.

I basically use agenda for two things. I have a notebook where I write bullets for everything I do. Just to have a log of things. Useful surprisingly often. And I have template for all of my routine stuff that I do every day, every week or things I need to do before I have my kid, after I have my kid, while I have my kid etc. Plus that everything I need to deal with now or soon are added to my daily note.

In addition to this I always have either a Rhodia dotpad (or similar) or my pocket notebook. This is where I just write the 5-10 next things I have to deal with. When I run out of things on it, I update Agaenda and find some new things from there and add to it. And so on. If I for some strange reason run out of things there I look in the Taskpaper.

And I usually do the same kind of dance for work things.

It is a ridiculous system that is very redundant. But it is really efficient at just letting me file stuff away without it disappearing and focusing on what is right in front of me without getting overwhelmed.

Yes I have to update three different things. But the thing I actually use as I work as close to zero potential for getting lost in a settings screen or some dumb automation rabbit hole. I just look at the pad and cross things off and move on to the next thing. When I’m done with a page, I just tear it off (if it is a Rhodia) or turn to the next if it is my pocket notebook.

For a really long time I’ve had some tab organisational issues. Not sure for how long, but I can at least think back to like 2010 or 2011 with Chrome tabs being so small that it was just an infinite list of tiny barley tab looking thingies.

And in more recent times things have grown more into issues of me wanting to have a clearer distinction between work and private. For various reasons, ranging from legal or “kind of legal” to work/life balance.

Plus also being able to actually organize things within them in a meaningful way.

Earlier this year two browsers showed up on my radar that try to do something interesting with this. In a much better way that Apple’s Tab Group feature. My main issue with Apple’s Tab Groups is that I have lost faith in the tab-bar at the top on desktops and tablets.

The two browsers are: - Orion - Arc

I started writing this weeks ago trying to do a gigantic post of first outlining the problem, then talking about each browser and finally comparing etc. But I just have up on that and will just write a few smaller posts about it doing the same thing instead.

I’m just doing a super quick summary of the features of both browsers that I use and how I use them here. At the moment I’m using both at the same time just to figure out where I want to go in the future.

Orion

• Is available on macOS and iOS.
• It is based on webkit and aims to be compatible with Chrome and Firefox extensions.
• But the most useful and interesting features are only on macOS.
• They sync stuff between your devices through iCloud.
• It supports tab groups similar to Apple, just that it works way better
• It can pin tabs. They are visible across groups but not visible on iOS
• It let you have a top bar or side bar for tabs
• It has a tree-tab feature that is awesome (only on macOS)
• It looks very similar to Safari

Arc

• It is based on Chromium
• Has a side bar for tabs
• Let you organise your tabs in different workspaces
• Kind of similar to Tab Groups but more like another level of tabbing
• Have different types of tabs, and let you group them in folder and sub-folders
• Only on macOS

Both of the browsers have some weird issue where 1Password is really slow. Not sure why or what is going on there. At the moment I’m experimenting with both of them trying to figure out where I want to go. I really like the organisation of Arc, but I also love the tree-tab stuff of Orion. Plus Orion looks so much better.

snowy dark landscape snowy landscape snowy landscape snowy landscape snowy landscape my shaddow and my dog in snow at night

I recently changed CMS and because of that the URL to the RSS feed changed, I have configured redirects for them, but it still might not work as expected. The new feed url is: https://blog.hjertnes.website/feed.rss

After a long and tiresome and expensive process I have finally an ADHD diagnosis, and will be starting treatment this weekend.

I think I first started to consider if I have ADHD or ADD back in 2011, and since then I have slowly gotten to the point where I wanted treatment. Unfortuanatly it wasn’t an easy process to get it, and I had to go outside the Norwegian Public Health system and pay for it myself from a private clinic and a private psychiatrist.

The good thing is that it was really expensive. The good thing is that it have gone way faster than it probably would have if I went through the public system.

I got a new coffee scale. Long story short: I’ve been using a cheap scale made for cooking for years. Probably got it in 2019. It’s not great, but fine for what it is made for. Brewing coffee or anything where you want a fast response time is not it’s strong point. So I finally decieded to get a new one.

There was two things I wanted from a scale:

• As already mentioned: fast response time
• And a easy to use timer

After looking at option all over the price scale I ended up going for the Felicita Arc. And I like it a lot this far. It responds really fast, is really easy to use, once you get the basics down. And it has multiple timer modes.

The manual mode is great for when I use the Chemex and pour water, then start the timer and wait. While the pour based timer is awesome when I make Aeropress and want it to start the moment water hits. Like it a lot.

The only thing I would like to change about it is for it to be a little bit bigger. Other than that perfect.

My go to pour over for years upon years, when I don’t use my Mocca Master have been to use a V60. I’ve had multiple models over the years. Currently I have the smallest version in plastic. It’s great, and is still what I go for when I want to make a single smaller mug of coffee.

But earlier this year I finally decided to try out a Chemex, and I got the 3 cup version. I really liked the coffee it makes and it have become the method I use 9/10 times these days. But as I found myself more and more often wanting to make a full 1 litre pot of coffee. Either because I have visitors or if I’m working from home or with my daughter and just want to make coffee once and not every 2-3 hours I finally pulled the plug and bought the 8 Cup version, instead of doing 2-3 rounds of the 3 cup.

It’s great, and the filters in the larger models are also much easier to deal with.

The way I usually brew these days is the following:

• V60: for when I brew a single smaller mug
• Small Chemex if I’m just going to fill my travel mug
• Large Chemex if I’m filling my large coffee pot

I usually use the 8 cup as if it was a 6 cup model, but I bought it because I’d like to have the option of using it to brew like 3x what the small one can handle if needed.

For a long time I’ve had my own Mastodon instance at https://dog.estate, something I’ve considered to shut down a while now, largely because of expensive it is to have it running relative to how many users I have on it. But also because I’d like to be in a place where the Home feed is a cool place to find interesting posts and new follows.

This process have taken me back and forward a few times over the last few months. At first I tired out https://social.lol, but the wibe there wasn’t really for me. Then I was back at my own instance. Trying out a few different alternatives to the current hosting to see if I can do it in a less expensive way. Finally landing on https://tenforward.social which seems to be a really good fit for me.

So on to the changes:

• I’ll be shutting down https://dog.estate soon
• I’ll continue to share blog posts to micro.blog, twitter and mastodon
• But “toots” or posts without titles will only be posted to mastodon moving forward.