One of my new year resolutions is to start where I am and use what I have, to invest in “tools that work,” and to minimize or resist Shiny Object Syndrome. Originally, that was prompted by me finally being happy with my skincare regimen but, upon reflection, I expanded the policy to include my “life management” and hobby tools.
In 2024, I last published my first and only State of the Apps post I had seen others do, with the intention of publishing one every year. I’m finally writing a follow-up to it but expanding it beyond my tech stack. I have qualms with the trendy “journal ecosystem” term, but this will basically include that.
Highlights
If you don’t want to read the full post.
- Obsidian remains at the top of my stack for the fifth consecutive year, but with reduced responsibilities.
- Habits, trackers and task management have since been offloaded to mobile apps, but I’m not terribly happy with that stack.
- Meco, Feedly & Folio are my triumvirate of read-it-later and RSS/newsletter aggregator apps, though I am not closed off to paying for a holy grail by next year.
- Wallet by BudgetBakers is my first invest-because-it-works subscription.
- I’ve completely stopped updating Goodreads, Fable and Pagebound, and use Storygraph exclusively for book tracking.
- My husband invested in Google One for us.
- I’ve started using Affinity, which I love and recommend despite the migration adjustment from any other design software really.
- I’m halfway through my sixth year with my Traveler’s Notebook as my primary analog notebook!
- I’ve brought my Kikki.K A5 binder out of retirement and am looking into inserts for her.
- My total fountain pen count is now five pens.
- I guess I’ll be building a visual art stack — colored pencils, markers, sketchbooks etc. but am suffering from Shiny Object Syndrome here.
The stack
Digital
Obsidian remains my personal knowledgebase, my ITE (integrated thinking environment), and the eventual digital archive of most things. If it’s your first time here, Obsidian is my digital catch-all journal and the software I advocate for the most. If I were to elaborate, it would take half this entire post.
So to give you a brief idea of its uses, my folders as of writing are:
- Auxiliary
- Binder
- Captures
- Grimoire
- Knowledge
- Makoltaverse
- Writing
Plugin stack as of writing (not exhaustive, as I have 32 overall):
- Dataview
- Dataview Serializer
- Homepage
- Lazy Plugins
- Metadata Menu
- Excalidraw
- Periodic notes (exclusively for weekly notes)
- Quartz Syncer
- QuickAdd
- Substitutions
- Tag Wrangler
- Templater
Publisher stack (what I use to publish to the digital garden):
- Quartz + Quartz Syncer with Dataview integration
- Cloudflare Pages via GitHub
WordPress is still my primary CMS, for what I think is 12 years now. It’s also my default home on the Internet, including the newsletter. I think ==I spoke last time== about wanting to migrate out eventually, but that’s still not happening this year.
Publisher stack is exclusively Hostinger; I no longer use a separate domain provider.
My unicorn goal is to build a joint or integrated knowledgebase and blog home. Besides the build costs (effort, time, knowledge, etc.), this leaves out my newsletter which currently does not have an alternative home I like.
I continue to resist Substack as a publishing option, although I have a “reader” account active to make subscriptions easier. I hope to publish a short “my stance on Substack” page eventually.
Meco, Feedly and Folio make up my “web-reads stack,” for lack of an existing available expression. Meco for newsletter inbox, Feedly for RSS feeds, and Folio for read-it-later, as a replacement to Pocket.
I am not opposed to moving to Readwise if they give me an exemption pricing for developing countries, as I did the trial version of Readwise and it was pretty efficient. It deserved to be called the holy grail of its category. However, it was and still is way too expensive for someone in my shoes, even if they grant me the discount. It’s the reason I haven’t emailed them yet: I want to be sure I will even commit to the discounted pricing annually.
I am also considering adding a bookmark manager (à la Raindrop.io) and research paper reader (à la Zotero and Mendeley) to the stack.
Loop Habits, Periodically and TickTick, supplemented by analog planning, make up my habit tracking and task management stack. I have never found a habit tracker that survived my ADHD. I loved my Obsidian makeshift tracker, but I didn’t like how it inflated my vault, and so I retired it.
Samsung Health, Digital Wellbeing, and Flo make up my very thin health tracking app stack. I also momentarily used Bearable for symptom tracking but it has fallen out of use. I will possibly uninstall within the quarter.
Wallet by BudgetBakers worked for me well enough as an expense tracking app that I paid for a one-year subscription for the premium features. It meets the criteria I most want from expense tracking, which is multiple “wallets” (like bank accounts) so I can also track transfers between them. It has web browser access but is very minimalist.
This app has been stuck in the ADHD mental pile for over a month now, but I still don’t really regret buying a year’s sub.
I admittedly have concerns about what looks like a lack of maintenance from the developers, and I am paranoid enough to note down interesting backup options when they enter my radar.
Password manager: For paranoia reasons, I don’t like disclosing what password manager I use, but I am currently using a free, highly reviewed one.
StoryGraph is my primary reading-tracker platform, but because I find page counts inaccurate, I keep a separate count in Loop Habits.
I was enjoying Fable until I realized it wasn’t keeping a reading journal or stats, such as the date I started/finished a book. I wanted to like Pagebound, until I read books that weren’t very popular or mainstream among users, and I couldn’t find any discussion around it.
This year I am also trying to bring back an analog media journal, but I don’t love it quite enough to remember it exists. I talk about this more in the analog stack section. My Letterboxd is similarly abandoned, and I’m thinking of deleting it altogether. I have no tracker for movies, TV shows and games (outside of Steam) so I suppose I am neutrally in the market for those.
Threads is my most active social media platform, while Discord and Telegram are my most active messaging apps. I rarely open Instagram nowadays, and then again mostly for chats. I reinstalled TikTok but I guarded my peace so well that I am rarely on it. I still have (and revere) Reddit and YouTube, but am on them a lot less. If my holy grail “web reads app” will allow me to follow Reddit and YouTube feeds, then all the better!
I really wanted OpenVibe to work out, but the lack of Threads browsing kept me away. (This is a limitation set by Threads, not the OpenVibe team.)
Google Drive is my main cloud storage, thanks to a shared Google One subscription with my husband giving us way more storage. I only rely on Google suite because it’s what’s easy and available.
For things that do need to be processed offline, I have Libre Office. Thankfully, I have a company laptop for my work so this is not an area of limitation.
Affinity is my favorite visual design software currently. I use it mostly for layouts, especially for my side projects, since it is not fit for all uses. I was supposed to produce more output on Affinity during my short experiment with the “personal curriculum” trend, but it fell to the side for health reasons.
I still use a mix of Snapseed and Samsung’s built-in adjustment settings for photo editing, and I on occasion use Canva, particularly when I’m feeling lazy. I’ve used it for minor infographics for wedding season, such as sending reminders to team bride or sending an introduction/brief to my hair and makeup team.
Spotify remains my music app of choice, so far because there is no true “better” alternative, besides YouTube and only in technical performance. Let me see if the YouTube RSS feeds + YouTube Premium conversation with myself happens this year. I also have Stats.fm around as an analytics alternative, but have not done any exploration after Spotify Wrapped season.
Analog
My five-year-old TRC Traveler’s Notebook (TN) Regular/Standard size in Camel remains with me to date. I used to try cheaper unbranded inserts, last year trying KKV inserts, but I always come back to the original TRC inserts in the end for their consistent quality.
TN refill/insert stack:
- dot grid insert for the main bullet journal
- blank insert for my diary/longform journal
- clear pocket storage insert (they’re as old as the cover itself, and are already mildly torn, but held together with scotch tape and devotion)
TN benched inserts (not currently in use):
- kraft paper insert
- watercolor insert (highly considering bringing this to my first international trip in eight years)
- clear card pocket inserts
TN accessories:
- original TRC brass clip
- generic metal clips from National Bookstore, brand name forgotten
- “paper clip” pen clip, a gift from my best friend to match her own
- “bottled herbs” keychain from @doc.purr converted into a charm
- a pearl pendant converted into a charm
- a pearl earring (whose twin I’ve lost) converted into a charm
My Kikki.K (KK) 6-ring binder in A5, which is an estimated 2-3 years older than my TN, is back in the rotation now that I’m a bit more stationary in my day-to-day. She still has a mix of Ifex Paper Bar loose leaf pages and Classify looseleaf pages, both of which were manually punched back in the day.
I’m struggling with how uneven and mismatched it is, but I also don’t want to be wasteful. I did buy a 6-hole puncher in preparation for this, and I am already looking into good quality loose leaf pages to try out. The last time KK was in use, I was not yet a fountain pen user or a deep paper snob, although I will say the current pages have been no trouble with my FP rotation.
KK is currently divided into three main “sections”:
- project notes: idea sketches, drafts (this post was drafted by hand here!) and niche brain dumps that require more space than I’m willing to allot out of TN
- media journal: currently includes books, TV shows, and movies. Very barebones, using a very simple template and no indexing system
- grimoire notes: drafts for esoterica pages that will eventually be digitized for the Obsidian vault
KK accessories:
- generic page dividers from years ago, brand name forgotten
- original Kikki.K bookmark/ruler, came with the purchase
- not really accessories, but KK has built-in inner pockets and a pen loop
Other analog tools and accessories in the stack or to be added to the stack:
- Clear 6-ring A5 binder with clear organizer pocket inserts. Will likely use for sticker and postcard organizer, inspired by @bellemaps on TikTok
- 1″ x 1″ square puncher
- 1.5″ x 1.8″ stamp-edge square puncher, which I love but would like to “trade in” for something smaller
- Muji glue tape
- newly added 6-hole adjustable puncher so I can DIY my A5 inserts
Writing tools:
- Pilot Metropolitan — currently benched or semi-retired until I can get my hands on cartridges
- Lamy Safari — as of writing, inked with J. Herbin Cacao du Bresil and is my primary diary or longform pen
- Kaweco Sport — as of writing, inked with standard Kaweco cartridge
- Platinum Preppy 0.3 — as of writing, inked with Arcus Artisan Heartwood Hues Byzantine
- Muji x Platinum Preppy 0.3 — as of writing, inked with standard Muji black cartridge and is my everyday general-purpose pen
- Muji gel pen 0.3 and 0.5 in black
- Pilot Juice x Sanrio 0.5 in black
Stack wishlist / roadmap
- an HTR (handwriting text recognition) / OCR (optical character recognition) tool to speed up my digitization process
- a tool for transcribing videos not my own (for annotating YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and other videos)
- archiving tools or system for my completed inserts and old notebooks
- holy grail A5 loose leaf inserts
- holy grail sketchbook/watercolor book
- holy grail task + habit management tracking and reports app
- pen/art/accessory case (or cases), preferably modular, for mobile days
Let's chat.