• Listen to my body; adjust instead of pushing.
• Consistency matters more than intensity or perfection.
• Routines beat tools; resetting beats reinventing.
• The tools I already enjoy are enough (yes, Nirvana, I’m looking at you!).
• Daily journaling brings me emotional stability. Typing works for me.
• Joy (music, reading, movement) is restorative, not optional.
• Movement should support me, not punish me.
• I don’t need to optimize everything to live well.
• Letting go is healthy and allowed.
• Experiences matter more than systems.
• Steadiness and simplicity win in the long run.

🎉 Happy 2026 !!! 🤗

#NoisyMusings #notes #lessons

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I started noticing this discomfort on my morning routine when I sit down to journal. I would open my app, to immediately get distracted with everything else on the screen, or just with the possibilities that the digital world offers me. It’s right there in front of me. I could just do a quick email check, look at my calendar or easily search for something online and get pulled in. So, I would have less time to journal before heading to work, and typing started to feel unsatisfying. It felt mechanical and disconnected from my thoughts. I wasn’t getting much out of it.

The irony is that I started to question my digital tools use while I was at work, of all places. We’re closing a major tender project in a month, and I was given paper copies of the architectural and structural drawings. Because this is a complex project, I realized how beneficial the paper copies were to understand the design and its complexities. I started taking notes and highlighting directly on the pages. This time, I really used the paper copy to annotate everything and used various Post-its to bookmark sections. I’m familiar with using paper drawings, but usually just as a reference for a quick flip-through.

My manager only reviews drawings on paper, and this time I understood why. I was able to focus for hours without interruptions or screen distractions. Walking into review meetings with just my paper copy, notebook, and pen felt refreshing. Not having my laptop made the meetings more focused and calm.

So, long story short: I’m leaning into writing, annotating, planning, and journaling on paper.

I’m testing drafting this blog post in a paper notebook. I don’t want blinking cursors, grammar suggestions, or any AI tweaking my words. I’m craving a blank page with nothing else to distract me.

I’ve started a dedicated notebook just for blog post drafts. I used some of the Bullet Journal Method recommendations to set up an Index, a Future Log, and a Collection for Blog Post ideas. This is my first draft!

I also begun a personal Bullet Journal for my daily logging and journaling. The goal is to replace the Time Block Planner and the Happy Planner. It’s only been a few days, but I’m already enjoying the spaciousness of a paper notebook. My daily journaling feels more in tune with my actual day. I like the space to unload my thoughts and log things.

This was the missing piece in my productivity system. Analog journaling gives me PERSPECTIVE, while my digital GTD lists and calendar give me CONTROL.

With a paper notebook, it’s easier to plan my day and make decisions about what truly matters.

This is just the beginning: more thoughts to come!

P.S.: I took about 30 minutes to draft this post by hand, then about 15 minutes to type it out and adjust some wording on the fly and adding the image.

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Post 97/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #Productivity #notes #journaling

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

• Lunch & Shutdown: Schedule the Lunch break and the Shutdown blocks.
• Email time: Add blocks to handle emails.
• Meeting Buffers: Insert buffer times before and after meetings for preparation and follow-up.
• Breaks: Add breaks/snack time.
• Check-ins: Rearrange my “Organizing” and “Check-in” blocks.
• Work Focus Blocks: Add work blocks by context or projects
• While I'm working on focused blocks, don't look at emails!
• Revise plan as needed.
• 🍵Take it slow, no need to rush!

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Post 04/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge (Round 2)!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #Productivity #notes

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I use an Arc notebook that I got from Staples that has refillable pages. It's a customizable system, so I can remove pages and insert them elsewhere in the book by simply pulling out the sheet. It’s really nice! I’ve had the same notebook for 5 years now.

I mainly use my notebook for meeting notes, notes from calls and notes about projects I'm working on. I also like to use a Pentel Energel 0.5mm in blue as my default pen.

Everyday I open up my 8-½” x 5-½” arc notebook and insert the day:

And then for every project or meeting that I'm currently working on I add a sequence number and a title/subject and start writing. If I change focus and start working on another subject/project/meeting, I will add a sequence number with the title and continue from there.

Some of those notes will generate new next actions, which I add an asterix or arrow so that I remember to capture those into my Nirvana inbox during my shutdown routine at the end of the day.

The notebook will hold 50 pages at a time, and when they are all filled up, I pull them out, and refill the notebook with new pages that I get from Staples.

I then scan all the written pages into a PDF and save the file. At the end of the year I will have around 350-400 pages scanned. Then I recycle the paper copies.

These are all the notes from 2023:

Thinking about Reusable Notebooks

After 5+ years of doing this, I can see the amount of paper I generate! I feel bad about using that much paper, honestly. That’s not even considering the paper I use for time blocking every day, and personal notes.

I'm curious to try out a reusable notebook, so I ordered a Rocketbook!  I will try the 6” x 8.8” Fusion (Executive size, like my current notebook) because I'm super curious to see how it works! And to know if I will enjoy writing on it.

It should be delivered later today, so I will write a post about my first impressions once I’ve used it for a while.

P.S.: Wow! This is the 100th post since I started the #100DaysToOffload challenge!! 🥳

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Post 100/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

#100DaysToOffload #100Days #notes #GTD #Productivity

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

• Monochronic: we prefer to finish one task to completion before beginning another task. We thrive on focused, sequential work.
• Polychronic: we prefer to juggle multiple tasks at once. We are comfortable with interruptions and context-switching.

Interestingly, Mark identifies a rare breed: the “supertaskers”. These exceptional individuals can seamlessly shift between tasks without sacrificing focus. However, most of us fall somewhere in the middle, balancing monochronic and polychronic tendencies.

While I was reading this, I felt represented in the more monochronic preference scale. And that explained a lot about the feelings of overwhelm I experience so often in my work life:

“As you might imagine, monochronic types are the ones who tend to experience role overload, and yet they are stuck switching among multiple tasks, trying to keep up. This is consistent with the many people in our studies who report feeling overwhelmed in their work.” — Gloria Mark, “Attention Span”, Chapter 4

I’m not a supertasker, but it seems there is this expectation from companies (and managers) that all office workers are natural multitaskers. The demands of our modern workplace are mixed with continuous real-time electronic communication, and that is exhausting!

The author points out that switching attention away from a challenging task can be beneficial at times. Moving to a new activity can refresh our cognitive resources. Incubating a hard problem can help us figure out a solution later.

“On the other hand, too much task-switching at a fast rate, where you are continually forcing yourself to refocus your attention, is often detrimental because of time and performance decrements, and it leads to stress.” — Gloria Mark, “Attention Span”, Chapter 4

Sometimes I feel bad because I can’t get to focus on something important and I wonder what’s wrong with my brain. But I’ve been learning that the problem isn’t my brain per se. The environment I work in does not foster focus. And then I might feel stressed and overwhelmed at the end of day. It’s fascinating how our personal preferences impact our work experience and vice-versa.

Anyway, this book is an interesting read and I hope the author will explore strategies to navigate this delicate balance between attention and productivity.

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Post 87/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge!

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I went back to a document I have called “Purpose and Principles” that I wrote as part of my GTD system. In this document, I have a list of my Core Values and a mission statement. Inspired by the blog post above, I updated my list with my:

♥ Things to Remember Every Day

1. Stay calm and remember to breath.

2. Wake up with mindfulness (yoga and meditation).

3. Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants. (— by Michael Pollan)

4. If overwhelmed, take 3 deep breaths and do a mind sweep!

5. I won't judge anyone (including me!)

6. Be curious about the world. Read books.

7. Sleep is essential.

8. Move your body a little bit every day.

9. Say NO! Avoid over commitment.

10. Celebrate progress 🙌.

I copied this list to the start of my daily physical notebook and I will also put a copy of the list on my whiteboard at home.

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Post 35/100 of 100DaysToOffload challenge! #100DaysToOffload #100Days

#NoisyMusings #journal #notes #GTD

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I had thousands of notes in Evernote that were accumulated during 7+ years of use. When I realized that all that information was trapped in one proprietary application, I asked myself: “What if I wanted to move these notes around?”. Also, Evernote got increasingly slower and bulkier. After learning about Markdown and Standard Notes, I exported all my notes from Evernote to the markdown format.

Starting over (almost) from scratch

So I had all my notes backed up in markdown, now what?

I didn’t actually re-imported all of them to Standard Notes. I archived my old notes because I noticed that most of those notes were assorted clippings from the internet. I realized I was a hoarder of information created by other people.

So I started over, copying only a dozen notes that had information I wanted to continue having access to.

As of today, this is how I’m organizing my notes:

(Note: I use nested tags, a feature only available on paid plans in Standard Notes)

My notes fall into one of the following 5 categories:

• INFO: Personal reference information that I like to have handy when needed. It includes postal codes, addresses, phone numbers (mine and my immediate family), personal document numbers, public library card numbers and passcode, important logins, memberships cards numbers, my house Wi-Fi password, car plate number, apps recovery codes, etc. So all these are very sensitive info and I was super worried that I had these in Evernote. Hence, the decision of using Standard Notes with its encryption capabilities.
• Lists/Checklists: booklists, movie lists, my favorite pens list, clothing sizes (for me and my partner), games list, travel checklists, GTD checklists.
• My Notes: notes that I’ve written myself, notes on books that I’m reading, thoughts, ideas, my diet notes, my health notes, my blog notes. They are usually related to my areas of focus.
• Reference: anything captured from the web I want to keep for future reference, links, and useful resources, books, writing, GTD, list of useful keyboard shortcuts, etc.
• [NEW!] @Projects: I will start using Standard Notes to hold what I call MPN’s (Master Project Notes). Whenever I have a project that requires me to store notes and info, I create a master note with a template of the Natural Planning Model (these are all concepts derived from GTD, btw).

My workflow, some examples

Below are some of the ways I’ve been using Standard Notes.

📥INBOX

We can create filters in Standard Notes and I have one to act as an Inbox. I have a filter that lists all untagged notes, and if notes are untagged that means they were not clarified yet, hence “stuff in an inbox”. Recently Standard Notes added the in-app “Untagged” filter, which works the same, but I like to have the “INBOX” label.

So if I’m capturing something that I know is reference information I’ll add it to the Standard Notes Inbox and process/organize it later. If it is something that I know is a next action, I use Nirvana to capture it. Sometimes I’m not sure if a captured item will be a next action or just reference, and that’s okay because I clarify both Nirvana and Standard Notes inboxes regularly.

📗Book Notes

This is my favorite use of Standard Notes. I’ve never had a centralized place and easy way to collect book notes. They are extremely useful to me when I go to a book club meeting and want to remember a character’s name, or an interesting scene or dialog I wanted to share with the group. I create one note per book, and sometimes one note per series (like I’m doing with “The Dresden Files” and the “Shadows of the Apt” series).

📚Book Lists

Standard Notes has a “To-Do list” note type and I use this one to track the books I already own and pick what to read next (instead of buying new books all the time).

I also have in there my list of read books, which is the one I use to update my blog reading list every month.

📝Blog Notes

I also like to keep notes about my blog and useful resources to use on Write.as, because I have a terrible memory. Those include ideas, admin/account info, codes, drafts (*), etc.

(*) Lately, I’ve been experimenting with writing the drafts directly into Write.as, so maybe this folder will be deleted in the future.

📌Quick Reference

Includes my !INFO📌 folder. I have a note that is always pinned with the information I need to provide on the fly and never get to memorize: postal codes, work address, insurance numbers, information that is useful in an emergency, etc.

Also @My Lists, with movies I want to watch, my clothing/shoes sizes (yeah, I’m still not used to the north American sizing/numbers), games I wanna play, my bike model and serial number, my computer configuration/specs, etc. You get the idea.

I store some links to my GTD files as well in @My GTD System. They are all spreadsheets or word documents files that I keep in OneDrive.

📒Note taking in general

I have a general @My Notes📒 tag to… notes, any random type of notes. But I also have some separate tags for my ideas, my “thoughts on” anything, my diet, my workout. Maybe I’ll regroup all of them together one day. It’s all fluid, and I’ll re-organize the tags if I feel like it.

📁Projects, Checklists, References…

Everything else that is text information that I want to store and will refer to later.

For Projects, I created an MPN (Master Note Template) template that I will start using. I used to have this on a Word document and I’ll test having it in Standard Notes for my projects.

The experience so far

Do you know when the tool doesn’t get in the way of doing things? That’s how I feel about Standard Notes. I was actually surprised to know that I have been using it for more than a year now!

It fulfills what I think note-taking apps are all about: taking notes. It’s a capture tool. But not to capture the Internet. It’s mainly to capture my ideas. Store my important information. It’s to scribble thoughts. Plan something. Have a list of things to remember. Do a brain dump. Simple checklists. All of it knowing that these notes are 100% exportable and secure.

#notes #standardnotes #apps #GTD #Productivity

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

I've always used this free service my.clippings.io to export my Kindle highlights to Evernote. It also exports to .txt, .pdf and .doc. But, the only way to have separate files (one note per book) is when I use the Evernote option.

My issue here is: how can I convert all these Evernote notes to markdown??😕 The solution: Joplin!

I installed Joplin on my computer just to do this conversion. So, I exported the notebook from Evernote as an .enex file. Then imported it into Joplin, and Voilà, perfect! Then I used Joplin to export all the notes into Markdown. Joplin created a folder with all the files in there. 😎

My goal with all of this is:

• to have my books note and highlights in a non-proprietary format and not trapped in any application
• to be able to import those notes into Obsidian, so that I can start building my Zettelkasten(!)

Yes, I'm reading about the Zettelkasten method and trying out Obsidian as a digital tool for connecting and developing ideas. I'm still grasping the concepts and wondering how I should organize Obsidian for this purpose.

This was a temporary solution to bulk export my notes from Evernote. From now on I'll export the book notes individually as I finish them, so I'll just use the .txt format for that.

To be continued...

#notes #productivity #apps

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

The inspiration came from a post from Cal Newport in which he describes his “Rooted Productivity“ document. For him, it's a one page document that he keeps in a plastic sleeve on his desk. The idea is to have a “root commitment” that includes all your productivity habits.

GTD is based on 5 steps, which are:

1. CAPTURE: Collect (Inbox)

2. CLARIFY: What is it?

3. ORGANIZE: Put it where it belongs

4. REFLECT: Review and Update

5. ENGAGE: What is the next action? Do it!

Based on Cal Newport's idea, I came up with a description of my system based on the following questions:

• Which tools do I use for each of the 5 GTD Phases?
  • What are my Inboxes? Where are they?
  • What are my list managers? (including tasks and project lists)
  • How do I organize the stuff that comes into my inbox?
  • What is on my Calendar?
  • What is my reference system? How do I file non-actionable things?
• Core habits and routines: what are the habits that are important to me?
• Periodic Reviews: what are the reviews I have scheduled to keep the system up-to-date?

In doing that I could list all the tools I was using. And I could ask myself:

• What is really working for me?
• Do I have too many Inboxes? Do I process them regularly?
• Do I have too many apps/lists? Could I simplify those lists?
• Do I have clean edges on my system: am I clear with what belongs to the Calendar and what belongs to the actions list?
• Can I trust that my system is going to remind me what I want to be reminded of at the right time?
• Is there any friction in my process?
• How easy it is to do a Weekly Review?

This reflection came in good timing with the end of the year when I like to do a full system review.

Here are some things I felt like I wanted to change:

Note taking

I used to rely heavily on Evernote for all my notes related to projects, checklists, references, notes. It was scary to acknowledge that after using it for almost 10 years I had so much information in there. And what if I wanted to back up all this information? How to make it available outside of Evernote? It turns out it's not that simple. Since I've been through the process of exporting/importing notes from Evernote to OneNote and vice versa, I don't want to be in that situation anymore. If I want to have a note taking tool, it has to be one that can easily export my data to an accessible format (like .txt). I decided to have most of my support material and notes using good old Microsoft Word/Excel. Nowadays with OneDrive cloud it's easy to access those files when I'm on the go if I need to. But I also wanted something to quickly jot down notes while using my phone or computer. Some quick, hassle free, simple tool. So I started using Standard Notes for that, which is serious about privacy and all the notes are exported to .txt. It syncs on my computers and mobile.

Lists Manager

I've been on a crusade for the best task manager for too long now. After fully installing my system on Evernote, Trello, Todoist and Nirvana I decided that Nirvana is my best bet.

Todoist is great for next actions and integrates with the Calendar beautifully, BUT it doesn't work that well for managing projects for me. I tried it. I insisted on it. And in the end I had friction on my system because of it. I was excited with the Google Calendar integration. But changing projects or actions status from active to someday/maybe has never been smooth in Todoist.

Nirvana is still the best GTD implementation in terms of organizing tasks and projects. It's simple and elegant.

Review Flow

I was never good at Weekly Reviews. I could never keep a steady planning routine. I tried doing it with apps (Trello, Evernote, OneNote) and I could never stick to it.

But I like spreadsheets, so I did some experimentation and created a template for my planning needs. It's for the whole year, separated into quarters and months. I also developed a simple Projects List Log, that gives me the list of all the projects I worked on in a given year. Its goal is to register what is done, rather what is ongoing. Everything that is ongoing is on Nirvana.

Routines and the Calendar

I identified the review routines that are part of my system. They are crucial to keep the system updated and my mind clear. But I've never had a clear identification of those reviews. So now I have a list of these milestones and a guiding checklist for each of them. I put reminders for all the following review routines on my Calendar:

Daily:

• ⛅[GTD] Startup Routine – Plan the day
• 🌂[GTD] Wrap-up Work – End of Day Mini Review

Weekly:

• ⏰[GTD] Weekly Review
• ⏩[GTD] Plan the Upcoming Week

Monthly:

• 📆 [GTD] Monthly Review and Planning
• 🏆 [GTD] Update My Big Picture Monthly

Yearly:

• 🚩 [GTD] Plan the next 3 months
• 💎[GTD] Mid-Year Review (July)
• 🎉 [GTD] Year-End Review – New Year

#GTD #notes #productivity #apps #Nirvana

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By Noisy Deadlines Minimalist in progress, nerdy, introvert, skeptic. I don't leave without my e-reader.

🎈 Things I write about :

Sections:

🎨 #NoisyMusings: a little bit of everything 📂 #Productivity: organization, methods, apps, GTD 📚 #Books: everything book related

Some Topics:

#apps | #Nirvana (the app, not the band) | #Todoist | #GTD | #MSTodo | #notes | #journal | #journaling | #BookReview | #ReadingList | #Reading | #ReaderGoals | #BookWyrm | #TheStorygraph | #weeknotes | #podcast | #GTDnotes | #100DaysToOffload | #projects | #goals | #DnD

#internet | #socialmedia | #attentionresistance #minimalism | #digitalminimalism #outdoors | #Hiking | #winter | #iceskating |#skiing |#music | #heavymetal | #puzzle | #health | #tech | #linux