Bear and TickTick

I love 😍 productivity apps. I’m always trying a new one out. Recently I’ve been using Bear and TickTick, upgrades from OneNote and Things 3. I don’t often pay for apps; I’m usually able to get by with free versions, but I quickly bought Bear and am getting closer and closer to paying for TickTick.

So what’s to love about Bear and TickTick?

Bear

1. Nesting
   • Easily organize your notes. I’ve digitized my bullet journaling, which may defeat some of its purpose, but hey now I can search through my notes!

Search

1. You can search for notes in finder/spotlight
   • The search inside of bear is incredibly fast and picks keywords out quickly.
2. Links to notes and headings
   • You can copy a link for a section of your note and when you click it from any app, doc, etc. The link will take you to the exact section within the note. I use this frequently in my todo list where I can add any context I need to complete a task.

TickTick

A powerful todo app combining my favorite aspects of Things 3 and Trello.

1. Todos grouped by project, priority, and being able scheduling for today or a later date make managing my constant stream of todos and follow-ups easy. Also helps you declutter your todo list.
2. A Kanban board feature like in Trello or the ‘active sprint’ in Jira but for more than engineering workstreams of product features is incredible. I’ve used it for updating my personal website and for business school applications, interviews, thank you letters, and networking.
   • Not only can I see the progress of my work, blockers, and done log, but I can see everything mapped out tidily—much like a mind map—and connect the dots or say no to todos that are not important.

How Bear could be improved

1. Table of contents
   • My notes get long sometimes and it would be helpful to quickly move to a section/heading.
   
2. Support for tables
   • It’s helpful to have a single place to refer to things. Rather than having to go back and forth between Excel or pasting a picture into a note that could have stale data.
   • I’ve been looking at Notion to solve this, but can’t stand the lack of offline support 😤(Maybe Coda is the solution…).
3. Freeform note-taking like in OneNote
   • It is wonderful to be able to write text next to each other (think 2 columns) rather than just in a linear format. Don’t get me wrong I love my nested bullets and lists, but having key pieces of horizontally spaced text with their own lists is incredibly helpful. E.g. when I compare 3 different ways we could implement a product feature it’s helpful to position the data in columns (here I may be asking for the key decision template in Confluence or an excel spreadsheet, but it would be helpful to position info differently depending on the need in the note).

1. Move notes
   • As a constant optimizer, I many times reshuffle the organization of my notes. It would be helpful to have an easy way to migrate notes between tags or update tags for a large selection of notes. This one is a nitpick.
2. Templates
   • This one feels like table stakes. It would be incredibly helpful to have a template (or be able to create one) for frequently used note types (meetings, tactical 1-1s, etc.).

Coming next

Trying out some new Productivity apps

1. Coda - I’ve heard rave reviews that this could be the everything app: notes, todos, project tracking, tables, teams, etc.
2. [Airtable5 - been using this for a few months and I’m loving it. Thinking about building it out like Rick Klau did in My Homegrown, Personal CRM - Medium, but Coda might change my mind…
3. ClickUp - another todo app trying to do everything even email and chat.

Bear template hack with xCallbacks

A couple of templates I’m thinking about sharing:

1. Meeting notes 📓 - boring I know
2. Startup Ideas 🚀- a framework for testing ideas quickly
3. Informational Interviews ☕️- helpful ways to deeply engage and add value during coffee chats or calls

The Productive Playlist

For this one, I went for some lo-fi gems. Listen to it on Tidal or Spotify.

TrackList: 💽

1. Early Spring – .Sinh, Masego
2. Grape Soda – Rook1e
3. Grace – j ^ p ^ n
4. Handsome People – Birocratic
5. Aloha Honu - Original Version – Flitz&Suppe
6. Yu Garden – Saib
7. Visions – leaf beach
8. I Thought We Were Lovers (feat. Basil) – In Love With a Ghost, Basil
9. Feelings. – Jinsang
10. swishers – [bsd.u], SwuM
11. For Her – Caleb Belkin
12. belas – eevee
13. she only likes me when I’m drunk – frumhere, Shannon Saunders
14. Flowers – In Love With a Ghost, Nori
15. Football Head – Flamingosis
16. Spring Vale – Fujitsu
17. Take Care – HM Surf
18. Pictochat – Dwyer
19. Affection – Jinsang
20. by my side – Flavors, Two Sleepy
21. Reefs – Fujitsu
22. Miss You – Mura Masa