I have been using PlainTasks [0] plugin with Sublime Text for many years now at work to do something similar. It is sort of a mix between GTD [1] and journalling.
I create a new file monthly (since that is the "sprint" duration at work) and for each project I am working on, I create a project heading and a list of tasks below each. The plugin doesn't enforce any schema and is just a plain text file so I can iterate on the task list, record thoughts as free form notes anywhere (just below the project heading or below a particular task or just in the file anywhere.
If the notes grow too large for a particular project (they don't usually for me), I pull them in a separate file dedicated to that project.
I iterate on the task list as things become more clear. For eg. I might start as "Find out how to deploy new certificates on our cluster nodes". Once I have done some research or talked to my colleagues, I might mark this a done or delete it and replace it with a list of steps required to deploy the certificates.
I also mark things I am going to do today with "@today" every day in the morning. If something planned comes up urgently, it gets it own task with "@critical" tag. The plugin highlights these tags for me.
There are some more features but I only use creating and marking tasks as done with the 2 tags. The plugin is also semi-abandoned which is a big +1 for me as I don't have to worry about flow breaking changes or sudden sponsorship messages or constant updates.
I don't use sublime for anything else but tracking tasks and notes so it gives me a sort of dedicated workspace for collecting my tasks. Recall is just a plain text search away. I have been using this for many years and has been extremely effective for me. Whenever I feel lost of overwhelmed, I just look this file, find the @today tags and suddenly I am back in my flow.
Most of the other tools I have tried (Jira, Asana, Trello, Github/Gitlab issues, Azure DevOps, company internal project management tooling etc.) are too opinionated, not flexible enough, sends unnecessary notifications to me or everyone on the team and are a chore to maintain (busywork).
I create a new file monthly (since that is the "sprint" duration at work) and for each project I am working on, I create a project heading and a list of tasks below each. The plugin doesn't enforce any schema and is just a plain text file so I can iterate on the task list, record thoughts as free form notes anywhere (just below the project heading or below a particular task or just in the file anywhere.
If the notes grow too large for a particular project (they don't usually for me), I pull them in a separate file dedicated to that project.
I iterate on the task list as things become more clear. For eg. I might start as "Find out how to deploy new certificates on our cluster nodes". Once I have done some research or talked to my colleagues, I might mark this a done or delete it and replace it with a list of steps required to deploy the certificates.
I also mark things I am going to do today with "@today" every day in the morning. If something planned comes up urgently, it gets it own task with "@critical" tag. The plugin highlights these tags for me.
There are some more features but I only use creating and marking tasks as done with the 2 tags. The plugin is also semi-abandoned which is a big +1 for me as I don't have to worry about flow breaking changes or sudden sponsorship messages or constant updates.
I don't use sublime for anything else but tracking tasks and notes so it gives me a sort of dedicated workspace for collecting my tasks. Recall is just a plain text search away. I have been using this for many years and has been extremely effective for me. Whenever I feel lost of overwhelmed, I just look this file, find the @today tags and suddenly I am back in my flow.
Most of the other tools I have tried (Jira, Asana, Trello, Github/Gitlab issues, Azure DevOps, company internal project management tooling etc.) are too opinionated, not flexible enough, sends unnecessary notifications to me or everyone on the team and are a chore to maintain (busywork).
[0] https://github.com/aziz/PlainTasks [1] https://gettingthingsdone.com/what-is-gtd/