I have been searching for an app to replace Evernote for quite some time now. Although I thought Notion was the one, I eventually gave up after using it for nearly two years as it was too heavy for personal use.
First, I stopped using it to capture my “read later” links. Instead, I used bookmarks and read later in Safari until I stumbled across Anybox in a newsletter or blog post. Since then, I’ve been bookmarking everything I read in Anybox. It works across all my devices and browsers, helping me stay synced between my personal and work laptops.
Recently, I started using Apple Notes as a primary rather than occasional tool. I use it as my journal and for storing digital keepsakes. I’m still exploring its features and learning to use smart tags to my advantage.
My awareness of the relative ease and utility of Notes began as my family collaborated more in keeping track of my dad’s Cancer treatment. We shared documents where we captured his systems and care plans, wrote official messages from the family, and even managed memorial service planning together over the last few weeks.
At work, I use Google Workspace for writing meeting notes, making to-do lists, and planning. It has many new features, and they’ve made it quite enjoyable to quickly draft or insert meeting notes or documents or tag someone into something.
I’m also using Habitify to track my habits. It’s a paid app, but not a subscription, with a one-time fee to unlock all features. It does the data visualizations I was missing before, and it’s cute and simple to set up. Tiffany goes with paper, though, because apps be snitchin’.
Today, I recreated my run tracker in Sheets after exporting and transforming the data I kept in Notion. It now presents my data precisely as I want, and I can tweak it when my needs change.
I have learned that I don’t need one perfect app to rule them all. Most apps have gotten very good at doing one thing or a limited suite of similar tasks well, and separating these tasks makes it much easier to switch or sample other things instead of worrying about the sunk costs in one über-app.