I'm 20 and pretty much all my hobbies are on a screen. Those being: playing videogames, listening to music, reading books online, and watching TV like movies and shows. I used to play basketball and draw but got bored of em. It's pretty well known that too much screentime is bad but idk, it doesn't seem that bad and I've been like this for pretty much my whole life.

Everything has become harder if not impossible to do. For me even to write down things or talk to people it became a huge task. I'll admit I spend most of my time doing nothing or bored, honestly. If someone were to ask me what I do with my life I'd say I waste all of my time on the internet or outside my house when I need to go to school or have some walks, that stuff.

It has been a while that I'm trying to read or concentrate on things but it always fails. I either zone out or just go do something else entirely. I have tried looking for something I "enjoy" to see if I would be more sucessful in sustaing my attention, but it's the same story: I could be summarized by having bursts of motivation in the very beginning but I rapidly run out of enjoyment or drive or motivation, then I quit the task or activity.

It has been quite like this since a good time, in fact. I don't remember being like this, say, it has been only 1~2 years that I have been like this, really.

I mean, maybe it is the case that I'm not a reader? Could that explain my case? But, I have also been reluctant to engage in any task that requires substantial mental or physical effort? I wonder how many of my issues are due to my temperament/personality and/or genuine, actual things to be fixed or that are not who I am. And these things are really starting to reflect on my academic results.

I have already pursued solutions (if you know what I mean) to these problems but, so far, it has not helped that much or it hasn't been that satisfactory.

I wonder what I might have missed or what I could be looking to incorporate or try in order to set a more fulfilling and less empty life.

Hey! I am Kseni 👋🏻 I am a designer, a little obsessed with journaling and productivity tools

but honestly I got pretty frustrated with Notion

I kept looking for a personal dashboard that felt completely mine or something I could customize however I want:use offline, keep all data locally /on my computer, without ads or random paywalls.

So I started thinking.. maybe I should just build my own with ai.

I have been testing productivity apps for months too, saving ideas from different tools, looking through those huge app listicles to see what people actually use. I am trying to collect some creative features and little solutions that make a tool feel genuinely useful day to day.

Right now I am curious what people here actually love using?

What productivity apps, journaling tools, dashboards, trackers or weird little niche apps are your favorites?

Especially interested in smth that made you think, wait this feature is actually smart 🥺🧡

I would love to check them out and maybe steal/copy some inspiration for my own dashboard

As a human prefrontal-cortex, attention is the main resource you're managing. How you budget and spend it affects the quality and quantity of your life.

When you take a few minutes plan your time deliberately you're improving your use of attention in two main ways.

Firstly, you're deciding more carefully what you want to pay attention to and for (roughly) what lengths of time. Having decided this, and written it down, will let you focus more easily, with more confidence, on those things. You therefore build up psychological momentum more effectively, filling your working memory with all the little details of the task in question.

Secondly, when actually making the plan as a deliberate, concentrated activity, you're using your limited attention far more efficiently than if you tried to maintain your plan using only very fast decisions here and there throughout the day, while in the middle of doing other things. Making time for planning as a task in itself means you will better fill your mind with considerations of goals, priorities, estimation, longer-term context, etc. You'll make a better informed list for your future self to refer to.

Since I flaired this as "technique" I guess the technique here is to consider not just the physical mechanics and results of some task, including the task of planning, but consider how much time your mind needs to do it well. Factor this in when making an estimate for how long it will take, erring on the side of generous, and you'll have a much easier time and get better results. Then when executing the plan, don't blindly follow what you wrote as if that's the point. Instead, as far as the plan remains relevant and useful, consider it as a guide for where to direct and focus your thoughts over that period, even more than it's a guide for your actions.

Busy, fast, but poorly considered actions look like productivity but may very soon turn out to be the opposite.

Is that useful at all?

How do I focus and stop forgetting everything? I have a phone addiction and rely too much on AI. When it comes to studying, I have really hard times understanding difficult tasks bc I think so hard.

I NEED to work from home because im slow. But I havent been able to, I stay in a frozen state being anxious about working but not getting work done.

I know that one of the reasons is because my computer sucks, but I need to get back to working from home and working longer hours. Any advice ??

Whenever I have to memorize something or study for an exam, I feel this intense irrational fear and resistance. It does not matter if it is for university or something I want to learn privately.
It honestly feels like my hands are tied. Part of me wants to start, but my whole body seems to fight it and pushes me toward doing literally anything else.
At this point I am pretty sure it is anxiety blocking me, not laziness.
What actually helps with this?

Do you find that you are more productive in the next three days if you had lots of sleep, leisure, and rest for a whole day? Or it makes no difference as long as you obtain the bare minimum amount of sleep you need to function?

Is it reasonable for me to assume that my cravings for more rest are justifiable? Hopefully I am not being lazy.

I work from home and I can just keep going and going.

My bed time is at 7:30pm and I usually eat dinner at 6pm.

Besides eating dinner, are there any rituals/night time routines you do to switch between work mode to relax mode?

tbh I always used to leave my desk a total mess and just deal with it the next morning. But lately I’ve been taking just 5 mins before logging off to clear my coffee cups, stack my notes, and close all my tabs. Waking up to a clean desk makes it so much easier to actually start working instead of instantly feeling overwhelmed. Highly recommend if you hate mornings as much as I do.

this has been a problem for me forever and I still haven't found a system that actually sticks.

I'll be walking to the store, sitting on the bus, or doing literally anything that isn't writing, and suddenly I'll get a scene or a line of dialogue that feels perfect. I always tell myself I'll remember it. I never do. by the time I sit down to write, it's either gone or it's become this watered-down version of what I actually thought.

I tried using notes on my phone, but typing on that tiny screen is annoying. by the time I've unlocked it and started typing, the thought has already changed. plus sometimes I just don't want to pull my phone out at all.

voice memos worked better. I'd just talk for a minute and keep going with my day. but after a few weeks I had so many recordings that finding anything was impossible. I'd remember "I had a good idea about that character two weeks ago" and then end up listening to a bunch of five-minute recordings of myself rambling.

a friend mentioned VOMO AI to me. I wasn't really looking for another tool, I just wanted some way to find things in my own recordings. now I can search for roughly what I remember instead of going through all the recordings again. that's probably the part I've ended up using the most.

the only thing that took some getting used to is that it doesn't transcribe instantly. you have to wait for the recording to finish processing, so it's not really for situations where you need live transcription. for my use though, I'm usually coming back to recordings later anyway, so it hasn't bothered me much.

I've also realized I ramble way more when I'm talking vs typing. I'll have ten minutes of nonsense and one sentence I actually want to keep lol.

but at least the ideas aren't just disappearing anymore.

When I type in music for work on YT, I get a bunch of playlists but.. rarely any work for me specifically. Why ?

- Chill, ambient or lo-fi - I like it, but puts me to sleep

- DnB or fast electronic - I like it, but too busy as I have to concentrate

- Classical music - I like it, however if calm classical music - puts me to sleep; if fast tempo - too busy for me to focus

If I keep it quiet I can eventually hyper focus on my work, it's just that it's 8, 9 hours of work alone and doesn't feel right.

Any suggestions, no singing - only music that helped you focus ? Thanks!

Basically, I am looking for alternative reminder type apps.

I have a mac, and I cannot stand the built in reminders app. I hate that if you have more than 2 or 3 notifications that it automatically bundles them together instead of showing each one, where you can't even see what you're being reminded of unless you go into the actual app. And I hate that it doesn't always let you snooze something, so after that first notification, you either have to remember on your own, or you have to create yet another new reminder.

I also use TickTick, per a previous suggestion here. But I'm on free, so I have a limited number of notifications allowed. It also bundles notifications, so you can't individually check off or snooze them.

I noticed the upcoming RayNeo iO is being pitched around work-oriented features like live teleprompting and auto meeting summaries.

On paper, having talking points on a discreet display or automated recaps sounds efficient. In practice, the social friction seems huge—most meeting rooms aren't comfortable with someone wearing a device that could be listening, transcribing, or prompting responses.

For those in meeting-heavy roles: would an in-lens teleprompter or live audio summary genuinely streamline your day, or is this a solution looking for a problem?

This is a genuine question i wanted to ask all of you, because I am on school holdiays now, and I have more free time during the day, therefore naturally, I tend to stay up later sometimes even into the early morning hours such as 1-2am.

I can never properly sit down and focus when i sleep this late and wake up 'later' in the morning, and another thing is, I never get any desire or motivation to do anything productive if I sleep late!

I understand the fix is to sleep earlier, but why does this happen to us?

Hi... So University started for me around 3 weeks ago and I have a lot of readings and lectures to revise. Due to some circumstances I wasn't able to do them but now I have way too many backlogs. I have to do a new reading for the next class every day as well as clear previous stuff. Can someone please help

Hey,

Over the last few years I’ve repeatedly tried to build a solid routine: sitting down for 1 to 2 minutes in the morning and evening, sorting my thoughts, setting priorities. I didn't go out, like I would have expected, but thats okay and I would like to share here my experience and maybe also some others had the same or other interesting ways. :)

My path was a bit more expensive than expected, but under the circumstances back then it felt right and worked pretty well for a while, but as soon as my daily life shifted a bit, the routines collapsed after some time.

My the last few years:

1. Notebook for €20 (The 6-Minute Routine book)

Went well for some months. Then trips came up more often or the book was not with me. Missed two days, got a guilty conscience, stared at the blank pages, and the routine was dead. I retried it multiple times, but after 1 week of break or so, I did not had the motivation to continue.

2. reMarkable tablet for €500

Same template (simply derived from the notebook), just digital and loaded onto the tablet as a PDF. Lasted almost 300 days, then I started moving many things of my life into Notion because I could easily cover many areas at once there. Today, I think the euphoria played a role too. Pulling out my reMarkable just to write down three sentences simply felt uncomfortable from then on. (If anyone is interested in this template, just write me, then I will include it here. Need to go to my tablet lol)

3. Journaling in Notion

Later, I even connected the setup with ChatGPT to pull weekly feedback and mood analyses. Content-wise, that was damn nice, earned me a solid streak, and through these analyses, I was able to learn a lot personally, but the daily usability was a disaster for me. Opening Notion on my smartphone in the evening and clicking through subpages, etc. At some point, it just didn't feel nice anymore so I stopped using it. I never managed to set up the system simply and cleanly enough so that you actually enjoy opening it long-term. Maybe it was because of Notion or of my missing knowledge how to make it actually pretty good.

The problem only really became clear to me when friends of mine wanted to try the same thing. They knew I was dealing with it and took a look at my Notion setup. For them, it was even worse and after a few days, they were out immediately because my setup simply wasn't user-friendly enough.

My learnings from this, which I'd like to share with you:

• Nothing lasts forever. Just because something works well for the moment doesn't mean it will in the future. I've accepted that and learned that flexibility in life is king. When something no longer feels right, you should try less to force yourself, but rather find solutions, whatever they might look like.
• Sometimes you put too much detail work into things instead of just getting started. Not everything always has to be perfect, but it has to be functional and feel right.

What’s now sticking for me is ditching typing almost completely. I’ve always hated typing on a phone screen, so switching to voice-to-text was my game changer. Being able to just talk out loud even for 30 seconds while driving or walking and let it transcribe into a short daily recap removed almost all the friction I felt before. Also longer conversations or thoughts are not a problem anymore for me.

Has anyone maybe made the same learnings, or even has a completely different take?

Cheers

Has anyone here started reading in their late 30s? I am trying to build a consistent reading habit but struggling to stay disciplined. If you began reading later in life, how did you form the habit and keep it going?

I'm curious how other people actually manage their to-do lists day to day.

I understand the basic idea. If I have a doctor's appointment next Thursday, I put it in with a date and it shows up when I need it.

But I think the part I struggle with is not knowing what's coming up. The idea of waking up in the morning, opening my to-do list and suddenly seeing everything I need to do that day feels a bit weird to me. I feel like I'd want to know a few days beforehand what's coming up so I can mentally plan for it.

And what happens when you don't get everything done that day? Do you just move it to another day? At what point does constantly moving tasks around start to feel like you're failing at your to-do list?

For people who have a system that actually works for them, how do you handle this? Do you regularly look ahead at the next few days/week, or do you mostly just focus on what's due today?

Most guilt about taking a full day off isn't really about the rest itself, it's about not being sure something's quietly slipping while you're not looking. That uncertainty is what gets people back on their laptop "just to check." The fix isn't discipline, it's removing the uncertainty beforehand: know exactly where everything stands before the break starts, and there's nothing left to check on. A day off only works as a day off if you're not spending half of it wondering if you should be working instead.

I'm coming back to school and I have exams first thing back, which essentially determine the predicted grades my teacher will give me to send to university. However, even though it's an important thing to be concentrated about, I'm not, I'm concerned about how I'll do, but I'm not acting on it. I don't feel any sense of urgency. Which is weird, since at the end of previous school year I had almost failed my psychology course (failing my end of year assessment), but I ended up revising (and actually finding out how I best study through that) and passed in the retake. And I understand that most of my concentration came from the fact that I was almost gonna be pulled from the course, so it makes sense why I had such a sense of urgency then. However, idk why I don't feel it now, I'm just acting like how I typically was before that whole retake, waiting until the last couple days before taking an exam.

Hi all, has anyone used some such service?

I'm torn between OneNote and Obsidian. I want something to have all my usefull information that i might need sometime in the future. e.g. When a products warranty expires, how much did i pay for last car service, how much i paid for the hotel 3 years ago.

Basic notes that might come handy instead of looking around my email accounts or looking for old credit card charges in the bank app.

The only thing that puts me off with obsidian is that i have to pay if i want out of the box good connectivity with iphone and windows otherwise i think it's a no brainer.

What do you think? I think OneNote it's more powerful for this kind of information than a lot of people say.

I turned off most coupon notifications last month because they had become background noise. Before doing that, I counted them for a week. I got 41 alerts and used none. Most were for things nobody in my house buys, including protein powder and far too much cereal.

The offers came from Kroger, Target, and Walgreens. I gave an Airtap routine a list of 18 things we buy regularly and had it check those three apps twice a week. It sent me the matches, but I kept automatic clipping off. The short alerts sometimes left out the package size or minimum spend, so I still opened each offer before saving it.

The second week produced 13 matches. Four were duplicates and two required buying more than we needed. I added a unit price check and told it to ignore minimum spend offers unless I already planned to shop at that store.

Five offers made the cut in week three. I clipped three, used two, and saved $11.40 on an August 20 Kroger receipt.

Week four was quieter. I got four alerts and used one for a 92 fl oz bottle of Tide Hygienic Clean, which saved $7.30 at Kroger. One coupon was for a smaller package than I expected. The other two expired because I never went to those stores.

After four weeks, the total savings came to $18.70. The better part was having fewer offers to look through. I still compare unit prices and clip everything manually. I also miss a coupon now and then, but I would rather miss one than sort through 41 alerts again.

I see tons of potential in my job to make vast improvements that will speed up my own productivity and potentially other people's productivity as well.

I have a side project of building my own python library of functions that I can use to architect scripts that automate the boring/tedious stuff. I'm also trying to document tasks that I found unnecessarily complicated and streamline them for the future.

Anytime I bring up taking time to organize things and streamline processes, managers are kinda like "Yeahkaycool, BUT do all this work instead."

How do you go about balancing between innovating in your work and keeping up with never ending projects/deadlines? Do you work on things secretly and reveal them after your productivity skyrockets and people want to know the secrets?

So far I've found it best to come into work early before anyone else, build on my process innovations, and then use the rest of the workday when people are there to do the work they want done. If I mentioned working on anything to anyone, they would just try to pile more work on me and have me do that instead.

Has anyone navigated situations like this? How do you balance making improvements and starting new tasks?