Ask HN: How do you manage your home projects | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How do you manage your home projects

1 pointtathagatadg3 comments

Moving from a condo in the city to a single family in the burbs with a one year old during the pandemic has been both overwhelming and humbling. For the last 2.5 years while failing to optimize time and money across different projects, I have missed a system that has the following features: - Task based workflow - Calendar/Reminder - Contact management - price/quote management - Expense tracking - notes/wiki for howto, planning, research - Document management

I think having offline and remote/mobile access is invaluable as you are rarely in front of a terminal while taking care of such projects. Self-hosted would be ideal, primarily because of sensitive information, but also because I’m not sure how the needs evolve over period of time - for example, sometimes you have high setup cost (complexity/cost) but then with the systems in place, the effort needed reduces considerably.

So far, I have been doing it with notion, but the drawbacks are obvious. I was thinking of looking into open source erp systems, but felt like I am chasing tool vs having a disciplined approach - so wanted to see what(spreadsheet, markdown on git, notion etc.) are you using to track and ship long/short term projects at home?

Go low tech.

In my experience, there are very few places where a paper & pencil or pen solution fails. It is definitely more involved, but there is something encouraging about it, visually present. This is not the case with an app; it takes multiple steps to consciously dig the projects to the surface.

I have a to-do list on paper in my office and in my kitchen. It is a roll of paper, that I keep pulling down, and rip off items that I completed.

In the office it is in a Steno pad, while in the kitchen in a "wall mount note roll" (search for it for visual).

The wall mount note roll works for the whole crew in the house. Everyone knows what needs to be done. It is satisfying to tear down a part when completed.

I like Steno pads because they are not too big to travel with, and when walking around I can shove it in the small of my back. Anything smaller and my giant hands cannot write into it, anything bigger and it becomes cumbersome. Also, I know shorthand which freaks out most younger execs when I take notes.

I hate it, but it just works. I hate it because it is in my face, it reminds me every time I walk by that the gutters need cleaning, or that report needs submitted. No way of not "opening the UI".

Index cards and pocket notebook right here!

I use Obsidian for general knowledge tracking, google sheets for financial calculations, gcal as calendar and Microsoft ToDo for task tracking.

More important than the tools are the habits around, though. Once a year I define OKRs for my life, then have quarterly plans and weekly reviews to fill my Todo list, reflect on the progress and adjust plans. This takes no more than 15-30mins a week and could be done with pen and paper if you wanted.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com