Tools that helped me live through 2020
December 2020, the final month of a year that looked like turkey but ended up like cake. Throughout my year of social hibernation and isolation, I managed to discover tools that helped me stay productive and live better. I was able to save time for more naps, stay focused through meetings, and have a better approach to managing my obligations and need to rest.
These tools come from a variety of places and functions, but they each helped me tackle 2020 in many different ways - keeping me sane, productive, and the year liveable.
Notion: Documenting, Organisation
Before I started my counselling studies, I was in the middle of reviewing my existing workflows and applications for reading and note-taking. Bear had been my primary note-taking platform for the past several years, the product was cross-device ready and had an intuitive way of categorising notes based on groups and hashtags that were easily managed.
Notion was a new product I noticed weeks before I started second class in counselling. What I personally loved about the product is the way they reframed what exactly a note-taking experience can be. Notion empowered me to look at my notes and organised them beyond just pieces of information and text that I needed to folder and categorise. Instead it helped me create workspaces around my notes, and categorise them based on specific tags that are more tangible and in full view. As I started to build my workspace, each page was filled with notes, articles, and assets that I could easily embed.
I started with a single workspace for my Counselling modules. Now I've got a separate workspace for Activiste, my upcoming new business, as well as my general notes and interests. What makes Notion is changed the way I look at documentation. No longer does it become an experience that's tedious and boring. Instead it becomes simple, accessible, and deeply focused on accomodating to the style of organisation that you prefer.
Miro: Brainstorming, Workshops
At Activiste, we spend a lot of time brainstorming and exploring ideas to help our clients review their positioning and brand opportunity. Most days I would find myself looking at a problem, staring at a blank screen, and finding my own way to identify my thinking and logic to a brand solution. I find empty pages frightening, and the most difficult part of any exploration is giving yourself the courage to put your thoughts on paper.
I discovered Miro as I was looking at the broad range of tools that Notion allows you to embed directly on the platform. Miro is a tool that helps me easily create mind maps and spaces for me to brainstorm my ideas and thoughts together. My favourite part of Miro is their templates; easy to use frameworks to help facilitate the flow of my thinking and ideas. It feels great to be able to immediately select a template to help you explore topics, review a piece of work or identify opportunities and ideas. Because it's cloud-based, anyone can access the work that you've put in. And I love being able to compile screenshots, hyperlinks, and notes all in one space.
Miro helps me express my ideas and brainstorms quickly. It goes straight onto a tangible screen, and that helps with both reviewing your ideas but also allowing space for new ones to jump in and fool around. And because of their wide range of templates, I don't have to be afraid of empty pages anymore.
Goodnotes: Annotations, Studying
I personally am the kind of person that loves to jot things down and scribbles notes on books and texts to help me reframe and remember my thought process. Annotation continues to be my most important way to think and remember. And thankfully with Goodnotes, I'm able to easily annotate my highlights and ideas on all my textbooks and journals and organise them based on my modules and classes.
The most basic value of GoodNotes is your ability to annotate PDFs and images, and the app is great for handling all my academic materials. I like to categorise my highlights, using yellow for generic quotes and blue for key concepts and descriptions. The app provides different strokes and colours which is great for helping me create my own pallette. And because the app is on both Mac and iOS, I'm able to upload all my texts via iCloud.
GoodNotes is the kind of app that's so seamless you forget you're being given an opportunity to easily handle and manage all these tasks. And now that my counselling training continues to be more and more comprehensive, the app gives me the tools to read and remember quickly.
Nudget: Saving, Forecasting
There's nothing worse than taking money out of your savings account two weeks before payday. I've tried countless ways to manage my expenses, from taking notes to making google sheets and excel templates. This year made it more difficult with my changing fluctuations of tuition fees coupled with the global pandemic.
I came across Nudget on Twitter, after following a few conversations about ways to manage expenses and finding the creator Sawyer. After using Nudget for a month, it's become my go-to app for everything related to my spending and my budget workflows. Being able to tag my expenses is incredibly easy, and being able to tag them with emojis makes it enjoyable and fun. My favourite feature is the budget setting. After putting in my monthly income, it was easy for me to swipe my way to find the right ration between savings, recurring expenses, and spending money. And the widgets make it easy for me to review my spending and see how much more bubble teas I can afford for the rest of the week.
Managing money used to feel like an activity that demanded a lot of attention and energy. But Nudget made it become a series of simple, colourful swipes. It’s an entirely new experience that saved both my spending and my wallet.
Figma: Designing, Creating
I discovered Figma when I started exploring new graphic design tools beyond the traditional Adobe Creative Suite. CC is a great platform, but unfortunately, I don't have the devices for it, nor do I feel like I'm skilled enough to invest in a year's subscription. At the same time, I was using multiple devices to help me with my work - my iPad Pro, PC, work laptop, and MacBook Air. Being able to work on the cloud and sync up in between devices was crucial for me. And that's exactly what Figma has delivered.
I use Figma for both my work and personal projects. My work colleagues use Figma primarily to house their UX drafts and collaborative designs. We've been using it to also provide opportunities for us to simultaneously review and build on key designs and diagrams. I think that's the best part of Figma - the platform invites collaboration and doesn't stop you from sharing and collaborating with other people and devices to achieve that.
Personally, I've been using it to create my social posts for @asmallwin. Figma starts by being a really powerful and accessible tool for you to design and create. Reading the basic tutorials was enough for me to get my hands dirty and have fun with my designs. Being able to easily add in content from my other devices sped up my workflow. Exporting frames and key assets was a breeze.
Figma enabled me to be more confident with bringing my designs to life. With little instruction I’m able to create something and export it in minutes. I know there’s more to learn but what I have is enough. It feels great to be able to design quickly. And I'm not even a graphic designer, that's the best part.
Poolside.fm: Chilling, Working
The best tool that helped me focus, enjoy, and escape 2020.
From the moment you load the page, you're not in 2020 anymore. Poolside.fm is the kind of experience that's just too good to be true. It's a jukebox of neverending songs and tracks made to make your desktop turn into your next tropical pool. Each track makes a wave and is accompanied by random but time-warping videos of old TV ads and home video promotions.
I've been using Poolside primarily as my background music for work. The website provides a number of channels for you to choose from, and once you've signed up you're able to favourite them to make a channel of your own. Using Poolside on an afternoon makes my day less tiring, and it gives me enough beats and sustained rhythm to keep me on track to finish my proposal or email trails.
It's very easy for any 2020 afternoon to be filled with dread and boring work that takes place at home. But put on Poolside.fm - you might be able to start enjoying work again.