[Ayaz]

No application I've ever tried has worked for me in the sense that I felt it an indispensable part of my life. In almost all instances, after a few days, I always kept forgetting to use the application. Plus, the overhead of using applications seemed to appear significant overtime.

I am now successfully down to a good fountain pen and a clear notebook. It is also part of my strategy to break my device-addiction, which is bordering on insanity. Where I used to take in my laptop to meetings and use mind maps and others for taking down notes and ideas discussed, I only simply carry my notebook -- my pen is usually in my shirt's front pocket.

I have rediscovered the love for handwriting, which I had all through my childhood and teenage years. I had a beautiful cursive handwriting and could write fast, which I gave up when I joined university in favour of a more mechanical style, and soon thereafter, gave up on writing completely. I have started writing in cursive again, and it makes for my ability to take down notes very fast in a handwriting that looks good.

The only real grievance I have is when I want my notes to be available to others. In those cases, I do wonder if it wouldn't have been better to have typed them down in the first place (I'm a fast typist). But, it is a small price I'm happily willing to pay.

[asadjb]

I had a similar problem to yours where I would eventually forget to use the application, or just not remember to check it after finishing my current task. That lead to some fun times. My solution; at least for my work todo list, was to create a Python script and use it with the $PERIODIC callback feature of ZSH to show me my task list every 15 minutes in my shell. Since I'm working in a terminal all day long anyway, this in my face approach helped me create a habit of using my todo list (TaskWarrior) for managing my work tasks.

Though I'm still in search of something that helps in the same way for my personal life; phone and personal computer.

P.S: For the interested in how I implement the periodic call back with TaskWarrior, you can find the relevant files on my Github dotfile (https://github.com/theonejb/dotfiles/tree/master/taskwarrior)

[tdkl]

> In almost all instances, after a few days, I always kept forgetting to use the application.

That's why the success is in building habits. It doesn't matter what medium/tool, but the initial habit building process must take place.

[nnnnnande]

Wouldn't it be possible that the tool might also influence the difficulty in building said habit? If different tools require you to exert varying levels of mental effort only to remember to use them, then then medium/tool might matter.