Staying organized in a world full of distractions is tough, but I’ve found a way to make it work for me without losing my mind. My system is a mix of digital tools, gamification, and good old-fashioned pen and paper to keep me on track. If you’re looking for a way to stop doom scrolling and focus on getting more personal projects done, here’s how I use Habitica, Focumon, Hobonichi, Notion, and the Eisenhower Matrix to stay productive without burning out. I would also recommend checking out my previous article on utilizing RSS feeds to escape from apps with infinite scroll.
The way in which I use these tools may not be the best way to go about using them, but I hope that sharing how I use them can open up new ideas for you in which you can use them.
Habitica, formerly Habit RPG, is an app that essentially gamifies your daily to-do list. The party system helps add an additional level of personal accountability since during quests you can cause damage to the rest of your party if you fail to complete your tasks. Discord servers for individual Habitica parties over the years have led me into several communities that have persisted long past the original parties themselves, where users support and encourage each other while also holding each other accountable. If you’re struggling with motivation, having a group to check in with helps big time.
 |
| Here is what my Habitica task board has looked like in the past, in order to give you some ideas on how to best use the tool. (Click to enlarge) |
One of the drawbacks of Habitica is that longer drawn out tasks don’t always reward you the same way that smaller tasks do. Chunking your tasks is one strategy to address this issue. You can also set the difficulty for different tasks, but the variation in rewards is not much. What I’ve found to be helpful in this case is to use the site Focumon in conjunction with Habitica.
Focumon is like the Pomodoro Technique but gamified, breaking work into short sprints with quick breaks. This keeps me focused without turning me into a burnt out zombie. Focumon is great for deep work - writing, coding, brainstorming, cleaning, and even working on this blog. This tool works really well in conjunction with Habitica because it rewards you for much longer tasks that are difficult to chunk in a way that feels better than how Habitica handles them. Nothing in this article is promotional, and if it were, it would be clearly labeled as such. However, if you do want to start using Focumon, please add me (@Carm_GeDK) as a referral on your Community Page so that I can get some extra in-game items.
Habitica and Focumon work really well for recurring tasks that come up through the week. For appointments, deadlines, and one-off tasks: I stick to using my Hobonichi planner. The Hobonichi planner is simply a Japanese daily planner. However, in all my time using daily planners since elementary school, it's simply the best one I have used. They're compact and minimalist - which as a result makes them highly customizable. They're also incredibly high quality - which means they stay in excellent condition after a year of daily use and extensive travel. The planners do tend to be pricey, but the annual purchase price has always more than paid for itself with how organized they've kept me.
I used to use Google Calendar, but got freaked out when they started showing me specific images for my appointments. For example, my dentist appointments would should an image of a tooth and toothbrush, which meant that Google parses the information that you put into the Calendar application. While Google says that they will never use Calendar data to advertise to you, if they are lying here, it’s not like it would be the first time they did; even if that is not the case, what's stopping them from changing their policy and retroactively parsing your data for marketing purposes in the future? They already have always done this with your email…
 |
| I've used Hobonichi planners for years now. |
I’ve used Hobonichis for four years now. While I tend to use it for one-off task management, please note that the way I use it is very rigid and maybe even an unimaginative way to go about using your Hobonichi yourself. I’d recommend checking out the subreddit r/hobonichi to see all the imaginative ways in which people do use their Hobonichis. Many people, for example, use the planners for journaling and drawing.
Notion natively supports organizational tools like Kanban boards, database tables, and lots of other pre-built templates that are free. I find that Notion is the best way for me to keep track of notes over a long period of time. I do still tend to take a lot of notes with pen and paper, because note-taking is how I tend to best learn. But in Notion, I track blog post ideas I haven’t gotten to yet (since it allows me to quickly add notes on my phone or computer as new fleeting ideas come to me), as well as films and books I have yet to read, all my music lesson notes with links to class videos, questions for my instructor that arise throughout the week, and a list of new songs I want to learn or have already learned.
Notion also includes an AI tool that quickly allows you to generate all of those organizational tools efficiently. For example, you could quickly create a Kanban board with a list of all your long term project Notion pages listed. In less than a minute you can have a Kanban board that tracks all of your projects and what status they are in. (I’ll likely make a further instructional video on how to do this in the near future.) If this AI functionality is ever removed from Notion, or put behind a paywall, just about any free AI or LLM tool can do this for you with Notion, it’s frankly just convenient to have the tool available inside the application. 
Eisenhower Matrix from Wikimedia Commons
The Eisenhower Matrix helps me figure out what actually matters. Prioritizing is half the battle, and applying this matrix to all my work keeps me from wasting time on low-impact distractions, and helps me focus on bigger-picture impact rather than one-off tasks.
I didn't want to host an image of someone else's work, but here is a link to the specific Eisenhower Matrix image I have posted on my wall behind my desk.
