I’m interested in your hazel workflow? Does it file with course code and term??
Tell me if you need any help. 
Will do, thanks!
20…
I have retired and also had a bit of illness. My requirements have gone from zooming madly trying to fit everything in to pottering about slowly. I too try to avoid subscriptions and have migrated to apple apps.
My setup is
- Apple Notes
- Apple Reminders
- Apple Mail
- Apple Calendar
- Numbers and Pages
I still use Devonthink, ( I suppose the iOS app is subscription now.), and 1Password. I have even ditched Textexpander for apples own text replacement solution which works on iOS as well.
I have a plan at the beginning of the day to do 3 things. I have a reminders list “My Three Things”. It is quite sad really when you think how productive I used to be but I dont miss it.
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I hope you are feeling better soon!
I can certainly understand that. On the other hand, retirement can open new opportunities for meaningful service to one’s community, family and friends as well as time to learn new hobbies or devote more time to current ones. If you will indulge my unsolicited input, being productive is not all about getting “things” done–it is also, and perhaps more importantly, about having time to enrich and expand relationships, service and even taking more time to revel in the beauty of God’s creation. Retirement provides new and expanded ways to be “productive.” 
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One issue I’ve encountered today: my education Ulysses subscription has run out (it automatically ends after 6 months so they can revalidate which is fair enough.)
Unfortunately, the renewal of the subscription is failing (not even getting as far as trying to pay)… which means I can’t do any work - everything is “read only”. It’s certainly a consideration… maybe Pages isn’t so bad after all…!
Pages is not bad at all. I would not write a dissertation in it (though I did in Word because I was not aware of Scrivener at the time and I was on Windows) but it is fine for everything from a one page business letter, to presentation notes, to large reports. As I noted elsewhere, there are plenty of options for getting the text out of Pages if necessary as shown above. Additionally, one is able to easily hide all of the distractions so one can focus on the text.
Your experience, though not insurmountable, is yet another reason why I avoid subscriptions when possible.
Looks like an Apple issue.
It’s a prompt to give Pages a go during the downtime. I have an excuse! I actually used Google Docs at one point which had superb cross device sync (changes instantly reflected on other devices) and was delightfully minimalist!
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Glad to hear others are also doing this. Most (not all) subscription app do not justify a subscription, since they do not add incremental features or customers don’t want more features and happy with the one time price for existing features
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Thank you for that most thoughtful reply. We too often value ourselves based on a notion of “productivity” or base much of our identity on our occupation (e.g., at a party “Hey, I’m (blah), I work in (industry). So what do you do?”) — something I fully understand and used to accept.
Your response is perhaps more… whole of person.
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The question to be answered here is: what is the purpose of productivity? What do we want to be productive for? Maybe that purpose has disappeared from your life and that’s ok.
Pursuing productivity only for the sake of ticking boxes off is pointless. I learned that the hard way with a full mid-life crisis.
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Now Apple has resolved their issues I was able to resubscribe to Ulysses. I was already suffering withdrawal. I suppose it assures me the subscription is (currently) worthwhile!
And @ausmike I’ll make one final observation so as not to side track the thread. I believe fundamentally that the answer to “what is the purpose of productivity” can be summed up as stewardship.
For what it is worth, I’ve written the following in one of the early chapters of a book I’m working on. Perhaps, it offers a helpful perspective, at least it helps me orient my life and work, but I’m biased. Here is a couple of non-contiguous excerpts from one of the early chapters.
The most important place to begin in discussing the How of our leadership is with understanding WHO we are and WHY we are. “Who am I?" and "why am I here?” are two of the most profound existential questions of our lives. How we answer those questions is central to our worldview and everything that flows from it, including our leadership.
Our understanding of who we are and our place in the world shape the values that govern and inform our behavior and decisions, the motives and goals for our work and how we respond to success and failure, criticism and to trials and triumphs. The answers we give to who we are and why we are reveal and shape our understanding of our raison d’être — the reason or justification – for our existence. Our answers shape us and our leadership.
Sadly, we are prone to absorb a cultural definition of our identity and purpose. In The Culture Code, Rapaille points out that when we ask someone what he or she does for a living, we are essentially asking who he or she is. We conflate doing with being. It is true that what we do is a part of who we are but it is only a part of who we are, not the essence of it …
We are stewards … While stewardship is a fundamental calling and responsibility for every person, it is a particular responsibility for leaders. At its core, leadership is stewardship. Leaders are responsible to steward the people, organizations and resources that God has providentially entrusted to their care, development and oversight. Leaders are responsible to steward their gifts and resources and of those they are called to lead …
In short, productivity is important not for its own sake but as a means of stewarding all entrusted to our care. That gives meaning to life regardless of one’s stage, age, or place! At root we are not what we do, we do because of who we are.
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Thanks for sharing your detailed workflow with all the mindmap/outlining apps. I have seen (and tried) Scapple earlier as a substitute to MindNode and quickly realised that it’s more free form thinking than mindmaps and more useful for perhaps creating diagrams or concept maps. In my years of trying many different mindmap apps, nothing even came close to the fine balance of structure and free form thinking as did The Brain (previously The Personal Brain). A lot of my use for it was personal and so in the long run, I could never justify it’s cost. But it does surprise me that no other mindmapping app has taken a similar approach. Obsidian does have a plugin for this called Breadcrumbs which allows a similar structure like The Brain–Parent/Child relationships, sibling relationships and related relationships, which other mindmap apps don’t. However, like all things Obsidian/Markdown, it’s quite clunky requiring more upkeep than it has returns and still doesn’t have the visual aesthetics of The Brain. I guess the lack of any other such tool justifies the high cost of that app but every year or two I often wonder if some new shiny app has finally created something similar.