Andrew Kesterson

"Love God. Live Righteously. Die Well."
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# Single Pane of Glass

2026-01-06 Technology 405 words

#

On a given day, I have to manage:

- Three telephones that can ring
- Two telephones that can manage text messages
- Five separate chat programs
- (At least) Three separate computers that I actually use (not even counting servers)
- (At least) Three separate email accounts
- (At least) Five separate task trackers
- (At least) Three separate note apps (or physical notebooks with notes in them)

How do I know what to do next? Let me check my task tracker. Oh wait… which one should I check first? Okay, I’ll check that one. But… what if I’m forgetting something important in the other four task trackers? I should go check.

Hey this is an interesting news story that I’d like to forward to my wife. Let’s send it over to her quickly. Wait.. what’s the best way to send it? I found it on my laptop. She doesn’t use discord, or IRC, or steam chat, or mattermost. Her phone is an iphone, my PC is linux, so I can’t forward it from my laptop using iMessage. I could use google messenger, paired with my second android phone, to send it via google messages, but then she’s getting a text from my work number, which is confusing. I could email it, but that will take forever. I guess I’ll just send it over facebook messenger, and let Zuck see the meme.

Oh hey here’s a good idea I should write down for later. later arrives … Now where did I put that idea? I need to work on it some more. Did I put it in my Synology notes? In the notebook I keep in my breast pocket? In onenote? In my emacs org-mode that I am kinda half-assed using? In that random text file on my laptop that I forgot to sync somewhere else so I can reach it when I’m here at the coffee shop on my Android tablet? Well …. I guess that idea wasn’t that important anyway. I’m sure I’ll find it later.

The fragmentation of the digital landscape, particularly my digital landscape, is absolutely out of control. My kingdom for a single tool for each of my central needs:

- Communication
- Planning
- Note taking

I am officially on a quest to identify the proper single pane of glass for all of these items and to mercilessly eliminate the others from my life.

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