My Apple-Only Productivity Stack for 2026

General Philosophy

My goal for 2026 is to refine my existing systems, cutting out all fluff and friction, so I can spend less time organizing, tracking, and looking, and more time doing.

One of the largest sources of friction, both in my systems and my life, is finding things. I am addressing that in my system by defining my SSOTs: Single Sources of Truth. That means that my notes will contain all vital info, my task list will contain everything I need to do, and my calendar will contain anything that has a date and time attached. I will not lose a meeting or piece of vital information in an email or a text message or forget it after a phone call.

To accomplish my goals [both the work itself and how I manage the work], I am using stock apps that are available at no cost on all of my devices, I am using a simple system that doesn’t require a syllabus, and I am maintaining SSOT discipline.

Apps

Notes

For both 9-5 and personal use, I utilize Notes primarily for four purposes: “Scratch Notes”, “Project-Specific Notes”, “Evergreen Notes”, and “Seeds”.

“Scratch Notes” are month-long running notes of whatever is going on. Very un-structured, in-the-flow, and often using the Apple Pencil via my iPad Air.

“Project-Specific Notes” are fairly self-explanatory. I designate a “project” as anything that will take an effort over multiple days, requires coordination between multiple stakeholders, or requires research, planning, and execution phases.

“Seeds” are quick idea jots or outlines, typically of ideas for future writing. These may also be audio notes recorded while I do other things.

“Evergreen Notes” are a little different, as they can be a specific note, or they can be a tag on an existing note. Essentially, if it is marked “eg” in my tagging system, that means the note contains info that I want to pull into my Structured Data / Second Brain. [This is the only area of my workflow / digital life that doesn’t fit neatly inside the Apple ecosystem- My Structured Data resides in Notion.]

I use tags to organize my notes in several ways: [I’m using ‘^’ to indicate a hashtag, so as to not apply all these hashtags to this post!]

• Task Status:
  • ^in = Inbox
  • ^ip = In Progress
  • ^fr = Final Review
  • ^arc = Archived
• Area:
  • ^home = household tasks, often shared with my wife.
  • ^pers = specific to me
  • ^work = work- my 9-5
  • ^create = I hate “side hustle” as an idea; all of my extra curricular work is creative, so this is my tag.
• Note Type
  • ^scratch = Scratch Notes
  • ^pro = Projects
  • ^eg = Evergreen Info
  • ^seed = Seeds of ideas
• Blog / Journal Tags
  • ^blog : a blog post [in the correct folder] or idea
  • ^comp : a completed, published blog post
  • ^jrnl : a prompt or idea I want to write about internally

Not every note requires a tag from every area.

I do not include official due dates or checklists in my notes, as those pieces of information belong in Reminders and Calendar. I may jot the info down in a scratch note or project note, but Notes is not my “Single Source of Truth” for these data points.

Reminders

If I need or want to get something done, I have two choices: do it right now, or add it to Reminders.

Reminders allows several layers of organization- Lists [which can be divided into sections], folders of lists, tasks, and sub-tasks. In addition, you can create Smart Lists that use conditionals to create self-populating lists.

Lists
I keep a number of lists, and one folder of lists [for my work / 9-5 lists]; below, I have Folders bolded, Lists in regular text, and sections in Italics.

• Inbox : Where all non-specific, non-9-5 tasks start, especially when
  • Key Task
  • Today [No more than 3]
  • Financial:
  • Chores
  • Personal Tasks
  • Misc
• Household : Shared with my wife, this is a list of household tasks
• Groceries : This is an Apple-specialized list that auto-groups items based on type, IE fruits / veg, paper products, etc
• Bills To Pay : Yea.
• Media: Watch / Read / Listen lists
• Wish List : Shopping list for each person’s “wishlist”
• Work: [Folder]
  • Inbox
    • Key Task
    • Today [No more than 3]
    • Others
  • Projects
  • Waitlist

As of now, I do not use many tags in reminders; they work very similarly to how they do in the Notes App, but I maintain far fewer active tasks than notes, so they need less organization.

There are other fields built in to a Reminder:

• Due Date : There are a couple of quick options, or you can set a custom date / time. This field will put your Reminder on the calendar.
• Flag : Setting the flag on will add the task to a system-default “smart list” called “Flagged” at the top of Reminders. You don’t need to unflag a task when you complete it- hitting the checkbox will remove it from the “Flagged” list.
• Priority: Can be set to low, medium, or high. Priority is a sort option for task lists, and shows up visibly with a number of exclamation points on the task.

I’m not going to do a deep-dive here, but I want to quickly cover three foibles with Reminders that can be highly frustrating:

• First, if you want / need to drag-and-drop tasks between lists, there is a very small area between the checkbox and the task title where you can grab it to drag.
• Second, you cannot drag a Note to Reminders on a Mac to create a reminder. You can do this on the iPad.
• Third, and the worst to me, is that you cannot share Folders of lists or Smart Lists.

Before moving on, I want to focus in on the core element to my productivity in Reminders. In the Inbox list, I have a “Key Task” section and a “Today” section. The night before, or first thing in the morning, I select a “Key Task” and up to three “Today” tasks. If I get the Key Task done, I will feel good about the day. If I finish my “Today” list, I feel great about my day.

Calendar

Calendar is straight-forward and my usage for it is simple, but it is core to my productivity.

Meetings from Apple Mail automatically show up for approval. For everything else, I start with creating a Reminder for the task, and adding a Due Date to place it on the Calendar.

That is the first half.

Once everything that requires a specific day and time is in the Calendar app, I now time-block, assigning tasks to available times. The most convenient way I’ve found to do this is to drag tasks from Reminders to Calendar, and then tweak the times in Calendar. I obviously start with my Key Task and my Today tasks, and if I finish early, I can tackle something from my other lists.

iCloud / Files

This is a little bit of a tacked-on section, but I want to close the loop for you on what my core flow looks like. I’ve talked about my Single Source of Truth for notes, tasks, and time management- the last piece is files. We all receive and generate a significant number of