Life Automation Report 01-22-2024

Greeting colleagues. Here’s brief report about what was automated and some stuff which I’ve found out about automation and related things. These reports I assume will appear when some results regarding the topic would be present. Like new software I’ve found, new techniques I’ve used and so on. So let’s the show begin!

Implemented

So the things I’ve implemented. Briefly - not much. Mainly it’s planning, budgeting and some kind of CRM. And currently most of it is in beta stage.

Planning

Regarding planning. So what I’ve implemented could be divided into 3 points: financial, day to day and long-term. So regarding the first it’s mostly related to finances and will be discussed in the Financial block.

Day to day

Calendar

So regarding day to day planning. There’re a bunch of stuff I’ve discovered and the first big thing is calendar.
It’s just silver bullet for planning. It could sound a bit obvious but calendar just makes you stick to it and follow schedule. I don’t know how does it work but it’s so.
Still it gives you even more. And this even more is planning for a bit longer term like a week. Just like you knows when will you be free and when will you be able to do your personal projects which is crucial for personal development. Also as a bonus to this you’ll get understanding of how should you order your tasks to get the maximum efficiency out of your’. Like some should be set to the morning as you do it better earlier and some set to the evening because they don’t involve any mind efforts.
So it seems to one of the best things I’ve discovered lately

TODO list

Regarding todo lists, I’ve been using the plain paper notebook to keep track of tasks for a day. But lately I’ve started experiencing lack of statistics and planning for longer term. And that was the point to start investigating new solution for todos. I’d some experience with google tasks, org mode, todo.txt and such. But no one of them worked for me. And here I’ve found taskwarrior. It seems to be really fine solution for task management. The main cause for that is rather wide functionality like burndown charts, great and easy to use metadata which allows you to keep track of things and ease of integration via taskd server allowing you to sync stuff between devices. I’m still trying it out but it seems to be good fit for my use case. And the main thing I like it for is ability to customize it in any way you want to. And it seems that I’ll use this ability and the use case would be described in further articles.

uHabits

Still not sure how’s it named. But it’s a small application which I use to track how is it going with my daily habits and track progress. Rather straight forward things what I like. Just add habit and check-in daily, weekly or whatever time period you want. Definitely can advice it. Simple and do what I want it to. Also it seems to be easily integrated to any kind of third-parties with a bit of code.

Long-term

Talking about that… you know it’s kind of painful to deal with it. Currently I’m doing it via spreadsheets but I’m facing some limitations and lack of knowledge about. So it seems that it would be a great topic for new article to get deeper into the planning. I was seeking for some kind of software but mostly it’s oriented to business and not all works for me fine. So still seeking. But I’m already trying to decompose it. May be it will become some piece of software who knows.

upd: I’ve found some solution which worth giving it a try. It would be attached to links

Financial

Budgeting

Moving to finances. I’m still using firefly-iii and ghostfolio mainly. I’m happy with them as tools for expense and portfolio tracking.
But currently I’m looking for some kind of budgeting app. The main cause for it is that I’ve bunch of variable expenses. Like this month I want to purchase new backpack, next go to conference and so. And the annoying part is the fact that neither firefly-iii nor any other system I’ve taken a look at does not support budgeting in a way I want it to. So the main idea of budgeting is to get understanding of how much will come, how much will be spent and what’s it planned to be spent for. And just build up the plan starting from month through quarter and up to the year just by summing up all the stuff. And it seems to me that I’ll be forced to develop it my self ar stick to spreadsheets

Human relations

Human relations is the area where opening has been done. And it’s named Monica

Monica

Do you remember DDLC? Then you could find rather funny that Monica finally would be acquainted to all of your connections. But in case with this revision you would be happy with that. So Monica is rather simple system which allows you keep track of connections, meeting with those connections, communication with them and so forth. And it seems to be the thing I’ve been seeking for. I’ve rather pure memory especially regarding people and this kind of thing I hope would allow me to get rid of this annoying questions when someone texts you. Brief check up of connections would be a really great thing for that purpose. And also keep track of who are you acquainted with could be useful in some cases.

Life Automation Report 01-22-2024