VS Notes

Noted Mess

My current productivity setup is a mess. I use far too many - often overlapping services. Some of which I fail to open for weeks.

The full rundown is:

Sound good in theory, but I often have overlap. For instance, where do I place something I want to check on another device? If it’s a link, I often go to Todoist, because it’s the fastest way to add a link and comment. I should just add the link to Raindrop, but I’ve never been fully satisfied with my categories there and I keep making redundant ones that are a mess. I do the same for quick notes sometimes as well. It should be for upnote, but it takes slightly longer.

Meanwhile I regularly neglect my tasks there, over-plan, change my setup, fail to use it, switch to a physical notebook or try to take away the functionality with Upnote.

Truthfully I love Raindrop, but I’ve made such a mess there. I’m scared to open it. But the real problem is that I find the idea of Todoist alluring, but not the execution.

Meanwhile I fail to open Instapaper even once a month. It's basically my link crypt. Dead but safely kept.

Evolutionary Branches

We all feel the intricacies of the software we use. Even if we don’t think about it much. How fast it loads, how responsive it is and what use cases it allows for, encourages, makes possible, discourages or makes impossible - they all bind our relationship to it.

The current state of software is it’s own sad tale, especially mass funded commercial do everything apps. Having useful tools, which do a set of things right, in their own opinionated way are a rare breed. The more users you chase, the more you tend to listen to user feedback and expand out from your initial “do a set of things right, opinionatedly” into a do anything you like app.

But the loudest voices you hear clamoring for features are the power users, a small set of weirdos who ask for niche features. They turn every app into the do everything app, never to be satisfied with all that can be done, endlessly chasing integrations with all the other do everything apps that will finally fix their setup. Meanwhile regular users have to resort to social media tips to understand what they can even do to use your service. Because it’s not self inherent. It’s abstracted away. If you know about it, you can do it, if not it’s as if it doesn’t exist.

Actually having your preferred software stack has gotten perversely difficult and I blame live updates. When we no longer have stable versions of software we can depend on, one app to rule them all becomes more enticing. A promise that it can do everything, even if most individual tasks are worse, it will eventually grow and kinda improve.

Boxed Software

Frankly I miss the time when we had good packaged software. I’m writing this post on just such an app, IA Writer. They treat their products like packaged goods, if you buy one version you are not entitled to the next, which I respect. (But a license is per device, which I find slightly problematic.) They make new versions when new features are necessary, novel, useful and thought out. They don’t test and engineer on you. Pay and be left alone, free from being their guinea pig. (I also use Typora and they price 3 active devices, which I find nicer but they don’t have any mobile apps. Plus I haven’t seen/noticed a new Typora version in years, but you get it for free, I think.)

We can have the best of both worlds for live updates and an actually finished product. Internet connectivity should add important security fixes, performance enhances and possibly fixing some truly dumb mistakes. But we lost the craftsmanship in our industry. It’s about time personal software actually became personal, crafted, thought out and enjoyable to use. Not a constant experiment being wielded by the lack of care of the masses and the overindulgent care of the 0.5%.

My thoughts here are admittedly all over the place, but I'll clear them up in subsequent posts. Please bear with me