This might be a strange question, but what do you all do for work/your career/making moneys, generally speaking?
I only ask because I see lots of users mention using X software for meeting notes, or Y app for scheduling, etc.
Personally, I’m currently just a sales administrator at a local aerospace fastener distributor where I process quotes/orders and generally support our sales team. My supervisor let me know pretty recently that I’ll be moving up to sales within 6 months and (hopefully) finally launching my “big boy” career and becoming financially stable, and I’m always trying to incorporate new ways to make my workflow more efficient.
Basically, in my current role, I’d love to be able to utilize some more “niche” (for lack of a better word) tools, like Obasidian, DEVONThink, so on and so forth, to make myself more productive at my job duties. The only issue is that the tools we typically use are Teams, Outlook, and stone age enterprise software that I won’t get into.
It just got me wondering what you fine folks do for work where you are able to experiment with workflows and add or remove different tools to your system as you see fit. Do you work freelance? Do you own your own business? Is your company more flexible with software options?
Anyway, just curious, is all. Would love to hear any insight from anyone!
Interesting question. I think I will answer from two sides of this dodecahedron-style question.
I don’t know that the actual vocation matters much, it’s about style of employment (to a degree, see next paragraph). But for what it’s worth, I work in environmental sciences.
My previous employer was a locked-down Microsoft-only environment. I still used my Mac and tools like DevonThink outside the office, but it wasn’t useable in the office. This was quite irritating to me. I had no choice about calendar software (Outlook) and I wasn’t allowed to integrate it with iCal or GCal, which meant I often had to cross-reference calendar events on my work computer with my iPhone in order to book things (also very annoying). I suspect a lot of folks have similar experiences working in locked-down Microsoft environments. At that time we had no office task management system at all and staff figured out their own solutions. I used Todoist, mostly on my iPhone when in the office. But I also used a lot of paper (that was fine, it worked for me!).
But work is only one part of life (or should be!) and I used my Mac for hobbies, personal development, etc. In the office, I used OneNote for work-specific note-keeping (underrated Microsoft product!), but I made sure to send any important notes “home” to myself as well so they could go in DT. I was still using Mac software almost daily, it was just outside my working hours.
My current employer has a “choose your own tool” approach to office management. They support both Mac and Microsoft tech, and if you don’t want to have employer-supplied equipment you can run your own devices. I do the latter (even though my employer would give me a shiny Apple silicon Mac, while I’m still running Intel). Outside of specific apps I need to use for work, I have complete control over what software I’m using and why, so I’ve been able to explore far more productivity apps than would be possible otherwise and really optimise my workflow for how I like to do things. Not every employer can do this, but I do think there are costs in forcing all employees in to one system, and these are often not calculated alongside the savings of a single locked-down system. Having experienced both, as a user I’m very much in the “let your employees be” camp (as long as security needs are met, obviously).
One’s work, what we do (or have for that matter), does not define our worth.
Our worth is defined by WHO we are, not what we do. Worth is axiologically (related to value theory and teleology) intrinsic whereas work is extrinsic to our worth. What we do, arises from WHO we are as beings (ontology); our ontology is foundational.
The relationship between ontology (the essence of our being) and work (praxis) implies that our worth stems from our fundamental nature—who or what we are—not merely from what we do. Our essence is foundational to our existence, actions, and value.
Our being or existence is primary in determining our value and serves as the root of our work. While our work may describe us and reflect our purpose and calling in life, it does not define our essence or value.
For my work, I work in Compliance across a number of areas, in my current role I focus primarily on Information Security and Data Protection.
Unfortunately I have no choice other than Windows for my work laptop. Given a choice I’d love a MBA, but Windows does a job and is pretty stable these days. I don’t mind using Windows, I just prefer Mac.
This leads to using my iPad as my “notebook” for organisation and note taking.
I use Omnifocus to arrange my projects and tasks (I also use OF for the web)
Obsidian is my note taking app
All of my files live on OneDrive or SharePoint on our corporate systems
Here’s a slightly off topic question. Obsidian on OneDrive with your work computer. Secure I’d say.
Do you use themes and plugins? That seems to open the attack vector. While minimal risk, this was a major reason for me to go back to OneNote at work, even though they gave me permission to use Obsidian. I hadn’t considered the risk of themes/plugins and just didn’t want to risk it.
I’m not sure about themes (aren’t they just CSS?). But for plugins I think that’s true, and I’ve been reducing the number of community plugins I use - partly for speed, partly for security. Plugins are not reviewed by the Obsidian team after the initial review which seems like a huge opportunity for malware. On the bigger/most used plugins it would (probably?) be spotted quickly, although not necessarily without damage being done. On the smaller ones, is anyone checking the updates?
Obsidian comes as “Restricted” by default, with community plugins disabled.
I work in web app development. I only like to work with companies that give local admin privileges to employees. These days it’s easy to do that and still keep tabs on endpoint and network security.
If a company is well-meaning but too restrictive I push to give employees back more local control of their computers. Fortunately that jives well with initiatives towards servant leadership, self-management, innovation from everywhere, etc. Educating on what better tools do helps as well. You may be in a position to do this someday as sales manager.
Unfortunately for many companys, the risk of inadvertent installation of malware (e.g. Ransomware) is far too high to allow this. Restriction of local admin is basic good practice from a security perspective and for many companys a non negotiable. This isn’t about trusting employees, but far too commonly seen incidents which start through lack of this control.
I agree that it’s easier to monitor endpoints than any time in the past, but prevention is far more effective than remediation.
Macs are far more resistant to this attack vector, but it’s still a risk.
I work in government and don’t have any flexibility in the devices I use for work. We use Windows/Microsoft products for our machines and iPhones for our work phones. I can’t take personal devices into where I work anyway, but even if I could I keep my work tasks/workflow separate from my personal.
Therefore I don’t fight the system. I use Microsoft Outlook for email and task management (there are some good ways to get Outlook to perform pretty well at this). We use Teams for our collaboration both video/chat but also filesharing, etc. An individual OneDrive for my files and a shared drive for archiving. The nice thing is that these all play pretty nice on my work iPhone, too. So if I’m on the road, I have full access to my OneDrive files, Teams chats/files, work calendar, etc.
Additionally, I like that someone can call me on Teams and it rings my phone like a normal call. Pretty helpful in my hybrid work environment.
Oh, and I don’t hate Windows. I find it perfectly usable (even though my home setup is all Apple) and highly functional.
I started “managing” computers in the early 90’s and prior to Windows NT users had full admin rights to their computers. It was total chaos.
Eventually we were able to restrict admin access to the I.T. department and a couple of non-IT executives. Today organizations like the Payment Card Industry require admin access be highly restricted if you want to take credit cards.
I remember when Windows 95 and 98 were in use, they effectively had no way to limit admin access. At the login screen someone could just hit escape, the logon prompt would disappear and Windows would open for regular use.
The only two saving graces were that without a Domain or Novell logon, network resources weren’t available, and to use the internet, our users had to come and use the computer in IT which would Dial up…
I love this feature. It means that only a few people in the company have my personal mobile number. Other can reach me on Teams if they need me, and I can switch off notifications if I’m away from work.
I am retired so work is more playing around. However specific activities require the use of particular programs.
Currently taking a Korean language course online and that requires Zoom for interacting with the teacher and fellow students during classes. Using my iPhone in continuity camera mode, This course also uses Moodle and Outlook (both in their web incarntations). Am experiencing issues trying to get the Moodle iOS/iPadOS app to accept my login credentials.
Dealing with written course work is a pain as the organisation sends out PDF files. As a Green Party member I would prefer NOT to print these out but to have someway of dealing with them electronically. Sadly macOS/iPadOS get in the way when using my iPad and Apple Pencil in sidecar mode for the handwriting exercises (Korean uses a non-Latin alphabet). I have not found a suitable program or app that meets my requirements. The only consolation is that the 2-set Korean keyboard mode works as expected … most the time.
Need to find an app that will let me record practice conversations upload the files to Moodle.
Video recordings of the classes are made available via Panopto. The macOS version is a real pain to use. It is seriously broken.
Meetings with other members of the Green Party require the use of Microsoft Teams and Zoom — the latter is useful when the Teams meeting data has been messed up, which is quite often. Other programs used include WhatsApp for group chats — very active at the moment as we are fighting a local council by election today. There is also a forum program but sadly not based on Discourse; it is much much worse. Local party is using both Project Libre and GanttProject to manage long and short election campaigns.
When I am writing I use Scrivener on all my devices Mac mini, MacBookPro, iPad, and iPhone. Use of the iPad and iPhone require Dropbox all my devices have that program/app installed. I also use LaTeX with LyX but am chekcing out how to use pandoc from Srivener to create LaTeX files as I am not a fan of LyX.
Those are the main programs/apps but there are others for ad hoc projects.
Great question. I’m glad you started this thread because personally, I’ve been wondering why you look so much like Nastassja Kinski
I’m a retired faculty member from a local college. So, I don’t have a heavy workload. But I do serve on a few boards and volunteer roles. So, I’m always on the lookout for things to aid in those areas.
No more so than using other open source software developed by volunteers. The Obsidian team checks the source code before plugins are allowed into the official repo. Theoretically a plugin dev could sneak something into an update, so if you’re concerned you can stick to popular plugins that have a lot of downloads and have been around a while. Many Obsidian users are programmers with the skills and motivation to check the code of any plugins they run.
Themes are just css, so are very unlikely to pose a risk, especially if you use Minimal, which is developed by the Obsidian CEO, who also developed the default theme. Add the Minimal Theme Settings plugin (also by the CEO) and the very popular Style Settings plugin, and you can style the interface pretty much however you want without having to write any code at all.
I’m an analytics engineer for a large Agricultural retailer in the Midwest. We use Windows (although this will probably change in the next year for me), but I get to choose my own tools within that. I’m part of IT so I can install whatever. At work, I use Jira and a paper notebook for task management. Jira’s pretty heavy but using it for Kanban works really well and I can collaborate within my team with it. I suspect if I do get a Mac, I would use an app like Things 3 again for personal work task management. I’ve try to use Confluence for documentation and just hate the user experience of it. Notetaking wise, I probably had the most success when I used Notion for notes but I don’t my team would enjoy that or take the time to learn.
Probably the biggest recent change is I went all in on Arc Browser for work and personal. Not much to say other than I like it a lot. I really enjoy summoning extensions via the search bar kind of like Spotlight/Alfred.
The app I’ll discuss is Visual Studio Code. Boy, this is a great app and one that would definitely stay the same if I got a Mac. I write SQL and Python code and use tools like dbt, Snowflake, Azure, and GitHub for my day-to-day work. I’m able to basically do everything in VS Code through official extensions and the terminal integration. It also is very performant even running on WSL2. I’ve tried other IDEs like PyCharm and they are so slow.
Im a CEO at a healthcare not for profit. Ours is a typical O365 environment organisation, but I get to pull weight and run a Mac. Not that anyone else would want to.
The only limitation I have is that any cloud based software I use has to be compatible with OneDrive, so that all data is stored in a way that is compliant with our various DPIAs. Thankfully that fits with most of the stuff I want to do anyway, so its not that restrictive. Either the stuff I use will work quite happily syncing via OneDrive, or I just don’t sync it at all via the Cloud and just make traditional backups like its 2001 all over again.
I’m a pastor. I use LOGOS for Bible study, Omni Outliner and Pages for putting sermon notes together, Omni Focus for task management, Fantastical for calendar stuff (actually with the stock Calendar app and also I think BusyCal, using their different widgets for different purposes), Apple Mail for managing email, Due to keep me on track for urgent things, Drafts as an infinite stack of virtual 3x5 cards for processing thoughts, Keynote for teaching presentations, Dropbox for sharing files with an admin assistant who uses a Windows machine, and Word for documents that will have to be shared with others. MindNode gets used sometimes too for planning out teaching / preaching, or just brainstorming projects.
EDIT / UPDATE: I should add that on the iPad, GoodNotes (I’m still on the old version, just haven’t bothered to upgrade yet) is an essential, pretty much daily-use app that makes my life so much better. I use Logos and Pages to create PDFs of Bible passages that I am either studying for personal devotions, or that I will be using for preaching and teaching. I often set them in columns with English on one side and Greek (for the New Testament) on the other (my Old Testament Hebrew is pretty much beyond rusty, so just English for the OT). I import those PDFs into either seasonal or topical notebooks in GoodNotes, then mark them up, make notes, etc, on the iPad with the Apple Pencil. I keep a Logos window ready to pull out from Slide Over for searching, cross-referencing, digging into the original languages more, etc. This is just such a powerful setup. If I had had this 27 years ago in seminary, it would have turbocharged what I could have done in my Bible classes. And, instead of having think files or 3-ring binders of paper printouts that I have marked up, I have an easily searchable archive.
