This post is long, summary: Get a cheap second phone, keep dynalist running in the foreground 100% of the time and have (almost nothing else) on this phone. Keep this phone with you at all times to have instant, zero-load-time access to your entire dynalist account.
Recently I have been playing around with maintaining two phones: one dedicated entirely to dynalist, and one for everything else. While this might seem wacky, I think it is better to think of the second âphoneâ as a pda, or as the equivalent of a paper diary.
This is probably only necessary for those who really manage their day to day life (including errands, to dos, personal project management etc) in dynalist and who need a mobile, responsive platform for rapid input of to dos (e.g. spouse asks âCan you do X, Y, Z later dear?â, ideas, etc and rapid output of what needs doing right now etc ⌠If you are interested in running your life (and maintaining a manual calendar) in side dynalist, see this post of mine:
http://talk.dynalist.io/t/another-post-on-maintaining-a-manual-calendar-in-dynalist/830
Unfortunately for these purposes Dynalist on mobile, and workflowy before it are not up to the task. While they are fine (great even) for deep work, the load time (even if only 5-10 seconds) is far too long for a snappy to-do recording. This will of course get better when they introduce email-to-dynalist, but anyone who runs their life in dynalist will still I believe find huge benefit in having full, instant access to your dynalist account without load times.
Through playing with this process there are several hitches that I have had to overcome and find solutions to. Without these solutions, the dynalist phone can be more annoying than helpful, but with them, it really is wonderful thing. Everything I talk about from hereon is android focused, but I am sure similar things can be found for apple devices.
Problem 1. No internet on dynalist phone.
The lack of internet on the second phone can cause major issues with your dynalist phone being out of sync with dynalist on your laptop etc ⌠in my opinion you need internet on the second phone constantly if possible. You could get a cheap second sim (you would hardly need any data and can get this for roughly ÂŁ4 per month) to put in your dynalist phone, but thereâs no need to waste this money. Instead I have taken the approach of automating my first phone to provide a wifi hotspot for my dynalist phone every time I leave home or work. For this I use the excellent and free âLlamaâ app which is able to learn your home, work etc based on your location and, whenever you leave these, turn the wifi off on your main phone and turn hotspot on (and the reverse when you return to these places) - the dynalist phone instantly and automatically connects to phone 1 and never loses internet. I have been using this for a couple of weeks and it works like a dream. This also barely drains battery on the first phone at all and hardly costs any data either.
Problem 2. The mobile dynalist app is too slow anyway At least for me the actual android dynalist app is unusably slow at the momnt - if this is the case for you I recommend using the chrome browser, which is the fastest for dynalist I have come across on mobile. To get a pseudo-app version, navigate to your dynalist page on chrome (on your dynalist phone) and go into the menu then click âAdd to homescreenâ. This creates a full-screen version of chrome dynalist without the chrome-browser search bar, giving you more screen space ⌠this of course doesnât store your data offline, but as long as you keep dynalist in ram all the time (this just means not opening other apps, which is actually easy) it will never have to reload / lose data (any way if you follow the solution above it will be constantly syncing to the cloud).
Problem 3. Carrying two phones around is annoying and I keep leaving my dynalist phone on the side and losing it. Agreed! This can be made substantially less annoying with a dual-phone case like this one, which you can get in various sizes for different screen sizes:
I have been using this for a couple of weeks and after developing the habit of always replacing my phones into this pouch this problem has entirely disappeared - my dynalist phone is always within reach.
Problem 4. It is still much slower to make to do items on my dynalist phone than with e.g. todoist There are a few tricks to speed things up on mobile dynalist. Firstly, get the swype keyboard app. I prefer this to swiftkey as you can create your own âwordsâ very easily, which can include tags like @Today. Secondly, to make a to do item (or quick note, or whatever) just write it literally wherever you find yourself when you open up dynalist and then move it (i.e. donât navigate to where you want to go to write the note) - store your most used move locations like @Inbox in swype or your preferred keyboard for rapid sending.
Ok, now we have an always-to-hand, zero load time, rapid entry device for getting things into dynalist. Here are a few more tips to make the most of it. Firstly, design your bookmarks and âhome pageâ in dynalist to work best for mobile - it is on mobile, when out and about that you are going to need speed the most, so the shortcuts you use most ON MOBILE should be at the top of your bookmarks bar - for me these are @Today, @Inbox, @Tomorrow, @Ideas, @Shopping etc âŚ
Now, reminders:
I regularly make reminders for myself to do something (e.g. put a wash on, or whatever) throughout the day. With this approach I believe you can entirely dispense of a reminder app like todoist. Firstly make sure your dynalist phone has google calendar and has calendar syncing. Also make sure you have a calendar app with pop ups which allow you to snooze or dismiss items (business calendar 2 is a favourite of mine). Now, active google calendar syncing and when you want to remind yourself of something, do it directly in dynalist with date / time stamps. These wonât appear instantly (or if you are offline), but you can be certain they will appear on your google calendar within 5 minutes if you have even fleeting internet access, which is perfectly fine for my needs.
Next, get the wonderful âCalendar Notifyâ app. This provides a highly-customisable ongoing notification in android showing your google calendar appointments for that day (it can be however many days you want of course). Wherever you are in dynalist, pulling down the notifications menu will now show you this calendar with everything you have stamped in dynalist for today. In GTD fashion I now stamp everything that HAS to be done that day (Allenâs âhard landscapeâ) - when used in this way, this pull down notification provides an invaluable snapshot of the hard landscape of your day ⌠there is a setting in this calendar app to âhideâ (effectively dismiss) events, so you can âcheck offâ things which are done.
(PS. With this approach I recommend making recurring reminders (and birthdays etc) on your google calendar which can also be made to show up on the âCalendar Notifyâ âTodayâ pane so you never miss a thing)
(PPS. Another great android app is âQuick eventâ which brings up a Google calendar âEvent creationâ dialogue box overlay (So doesnât swap out the dynalist app) - it has really good natural language processing so is really fast - these are added to your calendar offline and will appear on the Calendar notify pane instantly / offline - so you could have a second âreminderâ calendar (with red colour, for example) if you wanted)
(PPPS. ANOTHER great app is ânotification shortcutsâ which allows you to put a bunch of shortcuts right on your notification pane (Such as the quick event shortcut for example)) so that again you never need to leave dynalist.
If you are in a rush and want to make a reminder I recommend just doing it wherever you are in dynalist. If you have the time, send it to @Today or @Inbox (or whatever you use) so you can clean them up later ⌠but really a few miscellaneous reminders hanging around isnât a big deal - when you come across them later you can just delete them then.
This âTodayâ notification pane really was a game changer for me - it is effectively a glimpse at your day, wherever you currently are in dynalist - and it doesnât need you to leave the dynalist app, so it will never reload, and takes far less RAM than a floating widget (which I also tried and gave up on).
Conclusion
So this really covers it I suppose. Get a cheap second phone, load up full-screen chrome dynalist, keep it front and central at all times (I recommend having no lock screen on this phone also to speed things up further, but thatâs up to you of course). Keep this phone with you at all times to have instant, zero-load-time access to your entire dynalist account. Enjoy!
