Communication is Critical

Until recently, I was relying on a combination of Joplin, TickTick, and internal company tools to organize my work. Joplin allows me to self-host markdown notes and syncs my thoughts across all devices. However, since TickTick is in someone else’s cloud, I keep sensitive data away from there. Thankfully, most of what I track in TickTick - like obfuscated links and generic numbers - ain’t gonna hurt nobody if it leaks.

I often spend more time thinking about automation and efficiency than the basics like eating or exercising. It’s not unusual for me to be in the middle of a workout when my brain suddenly shifts to a new automation idea, completely klling my focus.

For today’s accomplishment, I built some Python automation that pulls current project and bug status and sends them out weekly. Rather than maintaining running notes in both Joplin and TickTick, I now track high-level tasks exclusively in TickTick. This Python script now grabs my tasks and emails them to my manager and team every Friday afternoon. Joplin is still where long-term notes are stored. It just won’t be used in parallel with task management.

Working with TickTick’s official API wasn’t easy. It’s very rough around the edges and doesn’t work out of the box. After a couple of days deep-diving into the problem, I found success using ticktick-py (along with some forked fixes not yet merged into main). I briefly considered switching back to Todoist for its better maintained API, but TickTick is just built better for my needs.

Building small automations like this keeps me excited for tech and programming. If you’re working on similar workflow automation challenges, I’d love to hear them!