Other ways of tackling life (with or without neurodivergence)

PARA: personal knowledge management system

An area of personal organisation that isn’t much discussed directly is that of personal knowledge management. These days you can find pretty much any knowledge that you need, but once you’ve colle

Mind-mapping

I love making mind-maps. Mind-maps can be used for whenever you’re trying to think about something. I use them for planning, but also to prepare ideas for public speaking and for writing, for studyi

Pomodoros, Animedoros, Work-cycles, and Relays

Pomodoros Pomodoros are a classic focus technique of which you may have already heard. Here is the website for the original, official idea. It is essentially time-boxing: doing one task for twenty-fiv

Beeminder

Tiny Habits

The idea of creating habits out of micro-behaviours has gained traction and popularity with the more recent book Atomic Habits by James Clear, but well before that there was BJ Fogg and his Tiny Habit

Habitica and Loresome

Habitica The Habitica website is a wonderful community of people who all struggle to get things done, but often do a lot better by putting everything they need to do through the world of Habitica. You

Freedom App

I am using the Freedom app right now, in order to keep focused on writing this blog post. It lets you block whatever apps and websites you need to, across all the devices you need to, for whichever ti

WhatsMock

An unusual app that I use to help myself cope with life is called WhatsMock. (This app looks like a similar one for iPhones.) WhatsMock is used to create fake WhatsApp conversations, which you can the

Finch app

The Finch app is essentially a phone game where you can look after a virtual pet (a finch, shockingly). The difference is that the whole game has been designed to encourage self-care. You are presente

Writing down every step of a task as I do it

Mapping steps of a task as I go One of the problems with doing any task (although particularly something technical like coding) is simply how to hold the steps of a task in mind, and remembering what

Anki flashcards

Anki is an app/website for memorising flash cards. Just like with any flash cards, you have a question or prompt on one side and an answer on the other. A common use for flashcards is having a word in

The iterative method of practising

How to practise a physical skill As a child, teenager and young adult, I spent a lot of time practising violin and piano. As I have discussed elsewhere, I think the approach I took was far too rigid a

Forest app & Sleep Town app

Forest app The Forest app has a very simple premise: it helps you to stop using your phone (or tablet, or particular websites on your desktop) for a particular period of time. How? While the Forest ap