[HN Gopher] My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2022)
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My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2022)
Author : yarapavan
Score : 270 points
Date : 2024-02-19 18:14 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (jeffhuang.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (jeffhuang.com)
| gumby wrote:
| > Every night before I go to bed, I take all the items on my
| calendar for the next day and append it to the end of the text
| file as a daily todo list, so I know exactly what I'm doing when
| I wake up. T
|
| This is a key win. Most of the rest he describes is support (also
| cruicial). But setting up your day the night before is amazingly
| powerful. Many of the things I plan for the day I actually
| schedule into my calendar (12:30-13:00 read and respond to those
| three unanswered messages from Jane).
| blowski wrote:
| This is the challenge of the modern manager, especially in
| remote jobs. You turn on the computer with a plan, and then 345
| Slack messages and 10 Zoom meetings later, you consider working
| on it. As an EM, I really miss that state of flow and
| productivity.
|
| I'm whinging because I see other managers that have nailed this
| so much better than me and I don't know what I'm doing wrong.
| ambicapter wrote:
| Can you get started on the things you need to do before
| attending to those Slack messages?
| gumby wrote:
| I address it with asynchrony:
|
| I look at my mail when I get up and normally at three other
| fixed times.
|
| Sometimes there's something complicated going on via mail and
| I have to be more responsive. Today I'm trying to debug
| something with a prospective partner who is in Japan
| (normally in NYC) so I check for messages from them between
| tasks. But otherwise it's systolic.
|
| I also run a lot of automation over my mail most of which
| causes me not to see as much.
|
| For slack, we have a culture that it's either transient
| (doesn't matter what someone wrote yesterday) or, depending
| on channel, archival ("here's the documents from partner P")
| which means you search for it but don't otherwise follow in
| real time. We're relatively hardcore about channels so that
| you can ignore ones that aren't germane to you. So I skim
| them in the same times I check mail.
|
| Zoom meetings...I have the luxury of mostly only attending
| meetings with agenda and objectives published ahead of time.
| We try to do as much as possible asynchronously though we
| have one outside partner who doesn't do any homework and
| tries to use meetings to get work done rather than just use
| them for things that can't be handled asynchronously.
|
| And also: certain topics are only handled on certain days,
| e.g. patent (bletch) related stuff I only work on tuesdays
| and fridays. Otherwise it will just sit in my inbox or
| wherever.
| snarfy wrote:
| I noticed your format is pretty close to markdown, which is
| itself just ascii. Might as well go all the way.
| BasilPH wrote:
| I'm doing something similar with Obsidian daily notes[^1]. I also
| have a weekly note that I use to plan the next week.
|
| Similar to how the author talks about scheduling their next day
| the evening before, I've started planning the big tasks for next
| on Friday afternoon, as this gives me momentum on Monday morning.
|
| Related: I've found the 3/3/3 technique from Oliver Burkeman[^2]
| and the concept of open and closed lists to be a great complement
| for this type of organization. It hits the sweet-spot of
| flexibility and consistency for me.
|
| [^1]: https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Daily+notes
|
| [^2]: https://ckarchive.com/b/e5uph7hx43mn
| andygeorge wrote:
| +1 for Obsidian, it's invaluable for my day-to-day AND long-
| term stuff
| zeta0134 wrote:
| Happy Obsidian user here. I love that the "vault" concept it
| uses is literally just a folder of markdown files, meaning I'm
| still in full control of my data. I don't use their proprietary
| sync service, I just drop it into a regular folder and let
| syncthing take care of cloning it to every device I own and a
| few extras for backup.
|
| Obsidian itself has got to be the nicest markdown editor I have
| ever used, hands down. It gets so many of the little details
| absolutely right, down to tiny things like a quick shortcut to
| turn a list item into a checkbox (Ctrl+L) and then into a
| checked box (Ctrl+L again), without needing to even think about
| the underlying syntax. But you totally can, if you need that
| control. It's great.
| vunderba wrote:
| Vaults are great. I compartmentalize all notes surrounding
| each consulting job as a self-contained folder/vault - that
| way I only have to search relevant information but still have
| access to it at a later time if I want to open that vault
| again.
| blackhaj7 wrote:
| I use Obsidian but it is unbearably slow upon when opening the
| app for me, to the point where I want to move away.
|
| It's also dare-I-say-it too customizable for me. I just want it
| to look nice and do standard notes stuff without having to
| spend hours tinkering.
|
| The only thing keeping me is that it is just markdown. I don't
| like the idea of being locked in with the proprietary formats
| of other apps
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| Curious, I have starting using Obsidian recently and one of
| the things that I love about it is that it's lightning fast
| on my systems, including startup time. Much snappier than
| other note-taking programs I've used, and than 95% of the
| programs altogether (only the likes of Notepad are faster).
|
| Maybe it's because I don't have many notes yet and it becomes
| a behemoth if the vault gets too big?
| machomaster wrote:
| Usually the slowness of Obsidian is caused by plugins.
|
| Try to have 50+ plugins and you will feel the slowness even
| in a small vault.
| realfeel78 wrote:
| What hardware/OS are you using? I have a shitload of
| plugins but it's lightning fast for me on Mac.
| realfeel78 wrote:
| Slow on what hardware/OS? It's instantaneous for me on Mac,
| but can be painfully clunky on iPhone.
| 331c8c71 wrote:
| I plan exclusively on paper despite using Obsidian quite
| extensively for taking notes. I also do weekly and daily
| planning.
|
| Initially I tried to plan on Obsidian as well but it didn't
| work for me. Writing on paper is slow and not only it calms me
| down but also directly incentivizes me to state my tasks and
| goals concisely. Similarly, the limited space on a planning
| page helps me to be realistic in terms of things I set to
| accomplish.
| realfeel78 wrote:
| Paper often wins for a lot of things.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Taking hard-copy printouts of code to study it for bugs,
| design or code review is one area some people I know use it
| for.
|
| Edit: I guess even for non-code text files, though I
| haven't used it for that purpose myself, yet. Bet many
| authors do.
| tarr11 wrote:
| OP uses their calendar as a supplement for their the todo file.
| There is a lot of functionality implied in that decision:
|
| - calendars have mobile apps which enable quick and precise entry
|
| - calendars understand time spans
|
| - calendars have many options to display events
|
| - calendars have cloud syncing
|
| - calendars are backed by a queryable data store
|
| Not saying using a text file is good or bad, but I think a more
| accurate title would be "my productivity app is a never ending
| txt file and a calendar app"
| joemi wrote:
| Indeed. The calendar app really is doing the heavy lifting in
| their case, not the txt file.
|
| I can kind of understand the author not really registering just
| how much the calendar app does for their organization, since
| calendar apps are so ubiquitous.
| ukuina wrote:
| [2022]
| kredd wrote:
| I actually sent this to my friend as he always thought I'm crazy
| for doing this. Mine one is a bit simpler though, just a big .txt
| file with TODO and DONE sections. Some of TODOs just have dates
| next to them if they're urgent, otherwise it's just it's just a
| simple list.
|
| That being said, I do use my calendar-equivalent app on my phone
| for very time-sensitive stuff, just in case.
| nickthegreek wrote:
| Previous: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a
| single .txt file (2020) (December 23, 2021 -- 523 points, 202
| comments)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661167
| jcoletti wrote:
| Interesting. I've been using Things (similar to Apple Reminders)
| for 10+ years, which I thought was really minimal, but a .txt is
| about as barebones as you can get. Makes me want to give it a
| whirl. Curious about the use of Remote Desktop with a mobile
| device. Being an iPhone user, I'd prefer putting it in iCloud
| Drive or something more easily accessible natively.
| jckahn wrote:
| This really is the way. Just one long append-only dump of all
| pertinent information. It's the perfect complement to what's in
| my head because I know where everything is!
| TOGoS wrote:
| I use a format[1] that's _slightly_ more structured, in that
| files are divided into explicit entries with headers to indicate
| whatever metadata I want, and I also use this same format for
| storing other information (metadata about my music[2], workshop
| projects, orders, whatever).
|
| Other than that, same, bro.
|
| [1] https://github.com/TOGoS/TEF
|
| [2] https://www.nuke24.net/music/music.txt
| ivalm wrote:
| This is how I run all my one-on-ones, just an append only list
| where every meeting just gets appended on top of another with a
| date. If there are kaban tasks/external documents/etc that are
| relevant they still get linked into this page. It very amazing to
| see what we're working on now, a week ago, a month ago, etc. And
| as a collaborative free-form document it gives both the manager
| and their report the ability to craft a story of what's happening
| (and check in on progress in a way that dashboards fail to
| represent correctly!).
| devmor wrote:
| I just use a weekly planner. I have a nice one without pre-
| printed dates made by Moleskein.
|
| I find the act of writing things down with a pen helps me
| remember them better as well.
| walteweiss wrote:
| Make it .org file and you're in a different league instantly.
| kingkongjaffa wrote:
| I've maintained a single log.org file for 5 years now and it's
| been great!
| due-rr wrote:
| I love the idea. Do you think he uses Remote Desktop from his
| phone? Or does he only use a desktop or a laptop.
| intrasight wrote:
| I've been doing this long enough now (decades) that some of my
| .txt files (I have one per client/project) are in the size range
| of 20mb.
| ta1243 wrote:
| That's about 2.5-3 million words, 5 times the length of Lord of
| the rings.
| kjkjadksj wrote:
| I wonder what astronomical figure they've billed the client
| just to spend that much time on the notetaking part of this
| project
| intrasight wrote:
| What astronomical figure does a law firm bill for all their
| words.
| intrasight wrote:
| Lots of code and data ends up in my .txt files. Also I just
| checked actual stats. Only three client/project files are
| over 10MB. Most are in the 2-4MB range.
| superkuh wrote:
| Same. Ever since I had my proprietary rich text note taking
| application/database corrupt and become inaccessible in the early
| 2000s I've used a single notes.txt file with filepaths for noting
| images and other rich media. It is super simple to search within;
| everything is in one place. And it'll never become corrupted or
| inaccessible.
| Ecoste wrote:
| Now do an article on how to get the discipline to keep this
| going.
| dudinax wrote:
| As an undisciplined person who nevertheless does something
| similar, elimination of the fear of forgetting something is
| enough motivation.
| ramses0 wrote:
| I've had pretty decent luck with `todo.txt` style tracking, but
| also tend to run into issues with tasks or notes "going stale" so
| came up with this system. `today` basically opens
| `~/Desktop/$YYYY_MM_DD-todo.txt`, but it'll start you off with a
| copy of the most recent (previous) file.
|
| This lets me have "durable" files (I can grep for pretty much
| anything and get a date-specific hit for it, similar to doing a
| `git log -S`), and also lets me declare "task-bankruptcy" without
| any worry (I can always "rewind" to any particular point in
| time).
|
| The addition of `report` (aka: `diff $YESTERDAY $TODAY`) is
| helpful to see what I've added/removed. Yeah, there's better ways
| to do things, but the degenerate simplicity of `open
| ~/Desktop/todo.txt` is fantastic. Having the equivalent of `open
| ~/Desktop/$TODAY.txt` (with no ceremony) has been very valuable
| to me! $ cat ~/bin/today #!/bin/bash
| TODO_HOME="$HOME/Desktop" TODAY="$( date "+%Y-%m-%d" )"
| TODAY_FILE="$TODO_HOME/todo-$TODAY-todo.txt"
| PREVIOUS_FILE="$( ~/bin/previous )" if [[ ! -f
| "$TODAY_FILE" ]]; then cp "$PREVIOUS_FILE" "$TODAY_FILE"
| fi report "$TODAY_FILE" printf "Press Enter to
| Continue, Ctrl-C to exit." && read -r PROMPT open
| "$TODAY_FILE" echo "$TODAY" $ cat
| ~/bin/previous #!/bin/bash
| TODO_HOME="$HOME/Desktop/" TODAYS_DATE="$( date
| "+%Y-%m-%d" )" MOST_RECENT="$( ls
| "$TODO_HOME"/todo-*-todo.txt | sed 's/^.*todo-//g' | sed
| 's/-todo.txt//g' ; echo "$TODAYS_DATE" | sort )"
| PREVIOUS="$( echo "$MOST_RECENT" | awk -- "BEGIN { YET=0 }
| /^$TODAYS_DATE/ { YET=1 } { if ( !YET ) PREV=\$0 } END { print(
| PREV ) }" )" PREVIOUS_FILE="$( echo
| "$TODO_HOME/todo-$PREVIOUS-todo.txt" )" echo "$( realpath
| "$PREVIOUS_FILE" )" $ cat ~/bin/report
| #!/bin/bash TODO_HOME="$HOME/Desktop"
| TODAY_FILE="$TODO_HOME/todo-$( date "+%Y-%m-%d" )-todo.txt"
| PREVIOUS_FILE="$( ~/bin/previous )" echo
| "${PREVIOUS_FILE}...${TODAY_FILE}" diff -U0
| "$PREVIOUS_FILE" "$TODAY_FILE" | grep -v ^@@
| FredPret wrote:
| This is brilliant - thanks for the great idea
| nickjj wrote:
| I've been doing something similar for 20+ years at:
| https://github.com/nickjj/notes - Running
| `notes` will open this month's notes for YYYY_MM.txt in your
| default $EDITOR - Running `notes hello world` will
| append `hello world` to YYYY_MM.txt - Running `$stdout
| | notes` will append another program's output to YYYY_MM.txt
| (useful for piping your clipboard)
|
| I find this offers the least amount of resistance for quickly
| adding notes. Every method of input is 2 seconds away on the
| terminal and grep makes things searchable enough where I can
| still pull things out from files 5-10 years ago without issues.
|
| I tried YYYY_MM_DD.txt for a while but I found it to be too
| fragmented. Oftentimes I want to look at a few day's worth of
| notes at a glance.
| emadda wrote:
| You might want to try iso week numbers. Every week starts on
| Monday and is always 7 days.
|
| Gives you quite a granular time reference but not too fine
| like days.
| eschneider wrote:
| Yeah, I use a similar text file journaling system to this and
| have for years. Let's me know what I need to work on every day,
| let's me know exactly where I left of debugging, etc, makes
| status reports a snap, and makes figuring out what I did all year
| at review time simple.
|
| Would recommend.
| Gbox4 wrote:
| I've been using what is essentially a single sticky note (Raycast
| floating notes feature) for a year now and it works great. I put
| todos, meeting notes, ideas, and everything else in there with
| zero organization. When I want to remember stuff I read it. When
| I finish stuff I delete it. Has worked for me better than Notion,
| Obsidian, Reminders, Tick Tick, etc.
|
| I've found that for productivity tools, there is an inverse
| correlation between time it takes to setup and how effective it
| is.
| realfeel78 wrote:
| You get it.
| al_borland wrote:
| >I finish stuff I delete it.
|
| I run into the issue where I'm told to start new things all the
| time, then things don't get finished, because of other new
| things that "need" to start. And no one ever seems to care than
| nothing actually gets done... but someday they might. So the
| list of what I need to look through keeps growing with nothing
| to keep it in check.
| zwieback wrote:
| Takeaway: if you're already highly organized and disciplined a
| simple tool is all you need
| whartung wrote:
| I don't see any tool working if you're not disciplined.
| Organization is just a facet of that.
| wyre wrote:
| I'm not highly organized or disciplined and simple tools still
| work better, but a single txt file is too simple. I've had good
| luck using Things 3 as an easy and flexible to-do list for
| tasks I will forget and I've been using Obsidian as a tool for
| everything else.
|
| My takeaway is that the effectiveness of organizational tools
| scales with discipline and the simplicity of the tool removes
| organizational friction.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I see the causation in the other direction:
|
| a simple tool is more likely to help you get organized and stay
| disciplined, due to the low activation energy to get started
| and keep using it.
|
| Otherwise, there is a great temptation to futz around with your
| organization tools instead of making plans and getting things
| done.
| AceJohnny2 wrote:
| Obligatory reference to Emacs Org-Mode [1].
|
| Author's approach is basically Org-Mode with fewer helpers.
|
| Org-mode's power is that, at core, it's just a text file, with
| gradual augmentation.
|
| Then again, Org-Mode is a tool you must install, accessible
| through a limited list of clients (Emacs originally, but also
| VSCode), and the power of OP's approach is that _it requires no
| external tools_.
|
| [1] https://orgmode.org
| Zambyte wrote:
| I found the hierarchy imposed by Org was more friction for me
| than it was worth. Adding Org Roam into the mix and making many
| bite sized files in a directory, and hyperlinking them together
| has proven to be incredibly useful to me. Notes fall out of my
| brain and are instantly discoverable. I often find useful notes
| that I completely forgot that I wrote.
| Lyngbakr wrote:
| A nice thing about Org-Mode is that you can keep an active todo
| list in one file for daily tasks and then at the end of the day
| send all done items to an archive file (C-c C-x C-a). That way,
| you still have all your tasks in a searchable format if you
| ever need to go back to them, but the active file -- which you
| open each day -- is small and snappy.
| erik_seaberg wrote:
| There's also org-journal, where a global keybind (I use the
| recommended C-c C-j) adds an empty timestamped item to a
| dated file.
| ivanjermakov wrote:
| I ended up using plain text files because it's the most efficient
| editing experience with my editor.
|
| Although I have multiple files for different things: work
| reminders, abstract ideas, bookmarks, etc.
|
| For time sensitive events I use stock calendar app on my phone
| because it's the only thing I need notifications for (except
| email).
| bloopernova wrote:
| Mine is: Orgzly Reloaded syncing to a webdav share, which is
| mounted at ~/Org so it can be opened by Emacs.
|
| For shared shopping lists, my wife and I use the OurGroceries
| Android app and website. It's simple and just works.
| rocky1138 wrote:
| I do this as well, except I tend to stick to markdown for
| formatting. This file is routinely committed to git.
| jameschensmith wrote:
| > So my daily routine looks like
|
| > [...]
|
| > 5. copy the next day's calendar items to the bottom of the text
| file
|
| Interesting. For a file with 51,690 lines at the time this post
| was created, I'm curious why the file is not ordered with the
| most recent day at the top of the file.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| All that text is heavy to push out of the way when you insert a
| new line break.
|
| Also, the feeling of accomplishment as the job's entire history
| whizzes by when you press ctrl+end each morning.
| abulman wrote:
| I'm also using Obsidian daily notes, with all un-actioned items
| shown on a page with a dataview API[^1]:
| ```dataview TASK FROM "VaultName/Journal" WHERE
| !completed ```
|
| Since at least 2012 I've also been using a text file format from
| http://todotxt.org/ and more recently I wrote a program that
| takes a crontab-like list[^2] to pre-generate entries on a daily,
| by-day-name (every Sunday for example), and I also pull in a list
| of holidays from gov.uk, so they are also populated.
|
| [^1]: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview
|
| [^2]: https://github.com/alister/alister-
| tools/blob/main/.todo.cro...
| cptaj wrote:
| I use notepad++ with 2 columns of files and around 40 tabs open.
| js2 wrote:
| Everything old is new again:
|
| John Carmack's .plan1:
|
| https://garbagecollected.org/2017/10/24/the-carmack-plan/
|
| Archive:
|
| https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive
|
| 1 https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc742
| rabbitofdeath wrote:
| I also use a simple text file, but for sake of context switching
| - I have one file for one topic - account x has a file, account y
| has a file, topic z has a file and everything related to it goes
| in. This is all now curated in my Obsidian vault that is synced
| via the fantastic Git plugin.
| ravishi wrote:
| I use a similar system, but I duplicate and rename the file at
| the start of each day. Then I remove stuff that got done the
| previous day. Or stuff that is old and not relevant anymore.
|
| The system has evolved over the years. The greatest thing about
| it is how flexible it is. When faced with new requirements (new
| projects, job change, etc) I can just start taking notes in a
| different way and see if it sticks.
|
| I also commit it to git every 30 minutes using a cron script. Its
| awesome.
| jimbokun wrote:
| I've landed on a similar process, but one file per sprint
| instead of one file per day.
|
| I take the last sprint's file, save a copy for the new sprint,
| summarize what got done to report in sprint meeting, then add
| the tasks for the new sprint to present at the meeting as well.
|
| Still have JIRA tickets to track tasks in a more formal way.
| But the text file is far more flexible and easier to quickly
| edit and view everything at a glance, as well as including
| things that don't fit cleanly in a ticket.
| drewzero1 wrote:
| I don't usually take the time to write out a daily to-do list,
| but I do keep one for long-term projects that I tend to lose
| track of. Each line is a task and at the beginning of the line
| is the date it was initiated/requested. It's semi-structured
| but doesn't take any longer than typing out a note.
|
| At the beginning of the month I duplicate the file and rename
| it for the new month, then I clean out just like you do.
|
| I've tried apps, I've tried tracking systems, and this seems to
| work best for me for now. I can keep it open all the time in a
| tab of my text editor which I would have open anyway and it
| backs up with the rest of my files.
| JordiGarcL wrote:
| Doing the exact same thing using Obsidian and the obsidian-git
| plugin, which allows for automatic git push at a given
| interval. Works very well and it's very convenient to use.
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| What are the benefits of keeping it in git? Are the commit
| messages useful?
|
| Not trying to knock the idea, I just can't imagine branching or
| reverting or being curious about the history of a to-do list.
| Maybe it could be cool for statistics over time.
|
| But I'm really curious to hear how you're using it!
| xanathar wrote:
| I have a similar setup as far as git is concerned - I use it
| to push a backup of my Joplin notes (note that I don't sync
| multiple Joplins, just backup the current one).
|
| Pros: pushes only the differences, keeps history, can be
| rolled back, works offline (push fails but commit works),
| offers a time log of changes.
|
| Commit messages are not needed really - the timestamp is
| enough and rolling back is only for exceptional events (e.g.
| accidentally deleting important stuff, etc.).
| medstrom wrote:
| It can also save you when you try a different sync
| solution, and you see in git status that it messed up the
| sync.
| web3-is-a-scam wrote:
| My productivity app is just todo.txt in one drive using
| _specificaly_ notepad.exe.
|
| You put .LOG at the top of the new file with a return. Save and
| close the file.
|
| Every time you reopen the file, the timestamp is append to the
| file. Add your notes, save, exit notepad. Open it again when you
| need to update, rinse and repeat.
|
| Nothing I've ever tried has been more effective than just keeping
| this endless file.
| royjacobs wrote:
| Oh wow, I didn't realize notepad had that feature. Awesome!
| abhinavk wrote:
| I cannot confirm right now but Notepad was rewritten for
| Win11. It might have lost that feature.
| gl-prod wrote:
| It still working, I just tested on Windows 11 and Notepad.
| Kokouane wrote:
| Just tested. Both the F5 and .LOG technique work on Windows
| 11 notepad.exe
| machomaster wrote:
| You can always use Autokey/autohotkey to get this
| functionality in any software you may want.
| fuzztester wrote:
| Metapad is a nice replacement for Notepad, with a few extra
| useful features, but don't know if it has the feature you
| refer to. Likely not, because work in it stopped a while ago.
| But it is still available. I had used it for some years.
| Still may in future.
|
| https://liquidninja.com/metapad/
| allanrbo wrote:
| You can also insert a timestamp in notepad.exe simply by
| pressing F5. (At least it used to be like this - haven't tried
| on newest versions of Windows).
| akira2501 wrote:
| Old man checking in. I use the TOPS Steno Pad and PaperMate Gel
| Ink pens. Light weight, damage resistant, and no power required.
|
| Still works a treat. There's something about writing information
| down on paper that makes it store in my memory differently. I
| read volumes of digital text on my monitor every day, but I write
| very little into the steno book, so almost everything I write
| gets stored very deeply in my memory and is very easy to recall
| even when I don't have the original.
| MathMonkeyMan wrote:
| I sketch all of my ideas on yellow legal pads for the same
| reason. It's my playground. Mostly diagrams and code snippets.
| Playing around with the names of things.
|
| For my "TODO/notes," though, I still use a plain text file in
| gedit. No timestamps, no nothing. When I want to remember how
| to build Envoy with bazelisk, I search for "bazelisk" and see
| the most recent, oldest, and all intermediate attempts with my
| notes (e.g. "runs out of memory, but if you're not building the
| tests, you can get away with 6 cores"). I've gotten into the
| habit of "tagging" potentially useful information with words
| that I might search for later.
|
| Need to save an error message for possible later reference?
| notes.txt. Meeting notes? notes.txt. TODO? notes.txt. Rough
| draft of slack message? notes.txt. You get the idea.
| dandy23 wrote:
| I used to track every project in its own text file. Every task
| and a description was in this file. It was great, but got a bit
| messy. So now I use EasyOrg [1] where I also track each project's
| todos in its own text file, but now with time scheduling, search
| by time, links to other tasks in the file etc.
|
| [1] https://easyorgmode.com
| chrsw wrote:
| I thought I was the only one that did this
| wim wrote:
| It's something I also tried to do for a while, just by using
| VSCode and a bunch of text files. I really like the lightweight-
| ness of just being able to edit as if it's text, but wanted to
| have for tasks what VSCode has for code: command palettes,
| "syntax highlighting", jump to "references" (like dates) and an
| editor which understands structure (like an outliner, but without
| all the awkward text selection issues).
|
| Anyway all of that led us to try and build a dedicated "IDE", but
| for tasks/notes and multiplayer support [1]. Hopefully it's going
| to be useful for others working from their todo.txt/thoughts.txt!
|
| [1] https://thymer.com
| j45 wrote:
| Lists in text files work great. So unbelievably great.
|
| I go back to them often, and some things can outgrow them
| completely when you want to:
|
| - Reduce the work between my list and collaborating with others
| (a shared list) - First class convenient experience on all my
| devices is useful - Notes synced automatically can go a long way.
| - When projects grow, and there's more details to manage, along
| with updates, than not.
|
| Has anyone used the text file appoach that can be compatible with
| LogSeq/Obsidian?
|
| I'm not sure why, but this time using mainly LogSeq has clicked.
| I do run it inside of an Obsidian Vault just in case... but
| haven't used Obsidian much. I really like the feel of per line
| item like a text file that logseq provides. There are tradeoffs
| too though.
|
| I think I might be enjoying it because it's plaintext, with a
| little bit more metadata, when/if I want it.
|
| The hashtags I invent that only I know are almost an unfair
| advantage for pulling up all the meetings with a person, or a
| topic, etc.
| yard2010 wrote:
| > 4pm Rihanna talk (368 CIT) 5pm 1:1 with Beyonce #phdadvisee
|
| Sounds like a nice day.
| mightybyte wrote:
| I also use plain text files for a lot of my personal
| organization. My system isn't quite like what OP describes, but
| it has some things in common. Some of my files are also
| structured by date as a never-ending journal. This isn't for a
| todo list, it's for a journal of things I encounter that I'd like
| to be able to find again and that I don't want to accumulate as
| clutter elsewhere...i.e. in browser tabs, etc. Sometimes it's a
| web link, or maybe something I learned somewhere, something
| someone told me, etc. I include notes whatever words / strings I
| think I might use if I want to find this particular thing later.
| I use org mode and make each date be a top-level bullet so I can
| nicely leverage powerful text search tools like ripgrep, regular
| expressions, etc.
|
| I don't find it useful to force everything into a single file.
| Instead, I'll organize these text files somewhere inside a
| directory structure that I can recursively grep. Unlike the OP I
| do use mutable TODO lists to track high level lists of things
| that I want to continue to spend mental energy on, but I do like
| the chronological list of done things and I might think about
| adding something like that or maybe augmenting the chronological
| notes file I already have.
|
| I do depart from the world of plain text for keeping track of
| larger amounts of information such as good papers I encounter,
| complete blog posts that I might want to refer back to, etc. For
| this I use the fantastic DEVONthink tool. It's got a large array
| of powerful features including automatic OCR and indexing of
| images and an excellent search feature, but the one that I use
| the most is its ability to make a "web archive" from a link. This
| downloads all of a web page's resources and stores them in the
| database locally, making it really easy to refer back to things
| that I've seen before regardless of whether I have internet
| access or not, whether the website is still around, etc.
| xandrius wrote:
| Joplin + Dropbox + Markdown = free form, full control over data,
| checkboxes (if needed), mobile/desktop support - top
| hu3 wrote:
| I use https://joplinapp.org because it allows for pasting images
| and files.
|
| Supports markdown.
|
| Has easy sync and also mobile and desktop apps.
|
| Free and open source.
| vunderba wrote:
| Joplin is good but I absolutely hate the way that they
| structure your notes.
|
| I have thousands of notes in a folder
| ~/my_notes ~/my_notes/work ~/my_notes/music
|
| etc
|
| Joplin takes them and stores the notes internally as a SQLite
| table with UUID named markdown files. It makes it very
| difficult to use bash tools, finding them, other IDEs, etc to
| work with your files after Joplin has ingested them. Compare
| this to apps like Obsidian and Logseq (also open source) which
| don't mess with your markdown file organization.
| nonethewiser wrote:
| This matches my experience. Its all about ingestion speed.
| Ingestion of the thoughts in my head, that is. Most note taking
| systems require you to structure it. That's basically the whole
| point. I find that this just gets in the way. I just need a sort
| of working-memory dump.
|
| I have a note directory with a root level markdown file which I
| use for general stuff which i dont use much. I also have folders
| for each task # with a similar sort of markdown file. And
| sometimes (rarely) other useful assets.
| anonacct37 wrote:
| Going on 5+ years using a single giant org file. It's the only
| system I've ever been able to stick with for more than a couple
| days.
|
| I think of it as my labbook.
| AndyPa32 wrote:
| Almost the same here. But I have two files, one as archive for
| completed stuff.
| dankco wrote:
| I love the idea of using plain text files for note taking and
| task tracking. As others have commented on specific tools and
| workflows that make this easy for them to stick with, I thought
| I'd add mine. I use textnote [0], which is a tool I built for
| exactly this workflow but is hopefully flexible enough to
| accommodate many of the similar processes mentioned here. It
| simply opens a plain text file in your terminal and provides
| lightweight tooling for tracking by date and rolling up previous
| notes into archives if desired.
|
| Thanks for opening another great discussion of plain text note
| taking as a productivity tool!
|
| [0] https://github.com/dkaslovsky/textnote
| pchm wrote:
| I have a TODO.txt and it's the only productivity system that I've
| ever been able to stick with. Just a list of stuff I need to do,
| what's done gets moved down or deleted. Maybe there's value in
| having an archive (a DONE.txt?) but I've found that after a while
| most notes/items lose the context and often it's hard to decipher
| what they were about.
|
| One thing I haven't figured out yet: I'd love to be able to keep
| this file open at all time, have it pop up with a hotkey.
| Currently it's just a TextMate window that I often close by
| accident.
| dbacar wrote:
| Overkill. Just use Obsidian and never look back.
| athorax wrote:
| How is a single text file overkill vs. using a whole
| application to structure your notes and format with markdown?
| joemi wrote:
| It's not a single text file, though. They're using a single
| text file AND a calendar app. (That said, I still think it's
| simpler than using Obsidian.)
| d--b wrote:
| I don't know how to articulate it, but I could never do anything
| like this.
|
| The ability to organize one's life like this is so foreign to me,
| it's almost like he's describing what it's like to be an octopus.
|
| I think it may be my emotional state that I can't manage. There
| is absolutely no way, I could decide what I'd be doing the next
| day every night. The thing is my state of mind would prevent me
| from doing half the tasks in the list. So shit would just pile up
| in that text file, making me every day more nervous about things.
|
| For what it's worth, I think I am more "normal" than the person
| who wrote that piece. So that's a consolation...
| 6c696e7578 wrote:
| I've a notes.txt file that follows me around in most jobs I do.
| It's more a journal than a planner. Sometimes I put TODO in,
| sometimes what to do when a change needs to be implemented so I
| don't forget. That works quite well as I can return to that
| later, or see what I was doing some months ago. It's in vim,
| which works well too for me as I'm already familiar with how to
| edit.
|
| One of the popular getting things done methods was to keep your
| stuff in one place, at least this article keeps inline with
| that idea.
|
| If it works, keep doing it.
| Al-Khwarizmi wrote:
| If it's a consolation, I feel the same as you.
|
| I clicked because what I have is a gigantic TODO .txt file that
| grows and grows and grows. I typically only look at the bottom
| (newest) part, typically at what fits on screen. The rest is
| full of things I should have done at some point and never
| actually did.
| rubslopes wrote:
| If I could make a suggestion, try dividing your list into
| two: a to-do list and a "someday, maybe" list. That's a
| concept from GTD that helps a lot with peace of mind.
| supportengineer wrote:
| I enter my to-do items into Google Calendar. If I can't
| finish them today I move them to tomorrow or another future
| date. Once they are done they stop moving.
| al_borland wrote:
| I've been in this place more times than I care to count. I
| find taking some time to go through it to ask if these things
| still need to be done can help a lot.
|
| In many cases, what was once thought to be important is no
| longer important or even needed/wanted; delete these things.
| In other cases it's more of a nice-to-have, not something
| that is really needed. For these, if it's for you or someone
| you like, a someday/maybe list (as another comment suggested)
| is good, otherwise drop it.
|
| Once the list is shorter and current, I find it easier to get
| things done. When the list gets too long that I can't bring
| myself to read it anymore, this is generally what I do.
|
| I've also found it helpful to have a kind of "backlog" list,
| and then something just for what I'm going to do today. That
| today list needs to be short. 3 things is the max for me;
| some days it's just one. If I happen to finish it all, I can
| look at the backlog to add something. Being realistic about
| what can be done in a day is really important. Getting all
| that other stuff out of my view helps me to stop thinking
| about all the stuff I'm not doing, as it's not helpful to
| dwell on it.
| vonjuice wrote:
| ime it's a journey of knowing yourself. If you adopt this
| person's workflow it won't work for you, but if you try
| something similar, start small and gradually add more
| organization, you might end up with something that works
| jjjjj55555 wrote:
| Does that mean that you don't get stuff done? Or does it mean
| that you just decide what to do moment by moment? If it's the
| latter, then why does having it written out add any more stess?
|
| For me, NOT having stuff planned out is what's stressful and
| the difference in productivity is noticeable when I have some
| sort of to-do list/schedule vs. when I just wing it.
| s_m_t wrote:
| The trick is that you don't actually have to do all the tasks
| you write down. It is still nice to have a record of what
| you've planned so if you ever decide to jump back on any task
| you have a history of what you have done and any context
| associated with it on hand.
|
| A lot of my todos are something like "I found this article
| interesting but I don't have the current skills to really
| understand everything in it" or "I want to add this feature to
| X but I think I will wait until the new version comes out
| because it will be easier then" or "I want to remember this
| when I finally decide to do Y".
| al_borland wrote:
| This is what my read-later list is like. I always keep adding
| to it, but I don't really have any part of my life carved out
| to read any of it. It's full of good intentions to learn
| about things or start new hobbies. I migrated it a while ago
| and was really disappointed to find a lot of dead links. It
| makes me wonder what I missed out on.
| et-al wrote:
| I think the author is trying highlight that one doesn't
| necessarily fancy tools. The productivity space has so many
| options that it's easy for one to get overwhelmed with settling
| on the "best" option.
|
| My partner relies on a Leuchtturm weekly planner; my father
| bought into the whole Stephen Covey system; a coworker has a
| stack of Post-its, and I use a hodgepodge of Google Calendar
| (far off single events), Apple Notes (weekly tasks for work) +
| Reminders (medium-term todos).
|
| The whole point is not to rely on one's (aging) memory to keep
| track of stuff. As long as tasks aren't falling between the
| cracks, keep doing what you're doing.
| materielle wrote:
| I agree with the parent comment, but I would phrase it as:
|
| This article feels so foreign to me because I'm not trying to
| be productive. I don't have a productively system, because
| I'm not.
|
| I complete my works tasks. Those usually have lists.
|
| After work and on the weekends, I spend time with friends and
| family, and do hobbies as I enjoy them.
|
| Beyond that, I don't try to remember things. I let stuff slip
| through the cracks (ok, I have a planner for birthdays). I
| don't try to get things done.
|
| For what it's worth, if you looked at my life on the outside,
| you'd probably think I was "productive". I can speak multiple
| languages, I make music, I play sports, and I have various
| programming projects going.
|
| But I don't do any of those things because they are
| productive. Every day after work, I spend an hour or two
| doing whatever I enjoy in a completely non-systemic manner.
| And I find that over a multi-year time span you actually can
| accomplish a great deal with this "non-system"
| stormdennis wrote:
| My sister is far far richer and more successful than I am. She
| once told me that every night the last thing she'd do was to
| make a mental list of things to do tomorrow. That was it.
| Nothing written down.
| karolist wrote:
| I feel there's more to the story. One thing is being
| organized, another is being able to execute consistently, and
| being organized is not a precursor to that. I am extremely
| smart, and productive, sometimes. Most of the times my mind
| jumps to random areas of interest, life happens, fight with
| wife/GF, parent illness, alcohol binges and I'm back to a
| baseline with almost no output. As if I'm sabotaging myself.
| Consistency is key, how you achieve it is second.
| troupe wrote:
| I find it helpful to give myself permission decide NOT to do
| something. The to-do list is a bunch of things that I thought
| were important when I wrote them down. If the next day I only
| do half of them, but feel those were the important ones, then I
| have success. If I decide that half of them aren't worth doing,
| the doing those would be failure.
|
| The goal of the list isn't to beat you up, but just a tool to
| make sure that at the end of the day you did the things that
| were important to you and YOU get to decide what that means.
| al_borland wrote:
| Tony Robbins has a todo/project planning system called RPM.
| The training for it is hours and hours long, and the
| maintenance of it is also crazy. I wouldn't recommend anyone
| use it verbatim, it's just too much. That being said...
|
| It did bring up the concept you mention. It basically had a
| person set their goal, then write down everything they could
| do to get there. From there you pick the ones that will get
| you the most bang for the buck. And when you hit your goal,
| you're done. If that means it only took 5 tasks out of 47
| possible, great. Goal achieved, trash the rest of the tasks
| and move on.
| emadda wrote:
| I think it may be the kind of work that you do too. It seems
| his work is well suited to his system. He can manage his own
| tasks, and the actual complexity of the work is stored in other
| systems and and documents (like research papers).
| mrshu wrote:
| Probably needs a "(2022)" in the title.
| twothreeone wrote:
| I've been using chat apps "send to self" for this exact same
| workflow.. at work I just use Slack as it supports threads and
| basic formatting (e.g. render code blocks separately and
| clickable links). So every day has a few threads on different
| things I'm working on and I can just add notes on them as I go
| throughout the day. For my own projects I use a messenger app,
| which is not as nice because most messengers do not support
| threads. I was actually considering switching to an external text
| file for versioning purposes.. and being able to render code
| blocks would be nice, org mode looks like overkill though.
| ErikAugust wrote:
| I made a Node CLI that captures everything in a flat JSON file:
|
| https://github.com/ErikAugust/todo/blob/main/applications/cl...
| twodave wrote:
| I tend to format my plaintext notes as markdown to add a _small_
| amount of organization. I also have some light folder /file
| organization to break things into categories/topics/days,
| depending on what it is. That gives me a nice clean slate to work
| from each day, but lets me pick up where I left off on more long-
| term stuff. Finally, I push it all to a private Github repo so I
| can get to my notes easily from wherever I am.
|
| Overall this system works for me for several reasons. First, I
| hate pretty much every note taking app out there. Second, I like
| having control over my files. Most importantly, though, I don't
| actually _need_ to write notes all that often, and this way of
| doing things is convenient. When my brain is so crowded I need to
| overflow some thoughts or tasks for the day /week somewhere, this
| system is there. When I'm managing it all in my head just fine, I
| don't have to worry about keeping notes up to date, and I can
| count on my own system not to send me a push notification bugging
| me about it.
| cyanydeez wrote:
| I'm guessing you're younger than 40.
|
| At some point, either your jobs novelty will wear off or your
| memory will just degrade.
|
| what happened to me is the lack of novelty in day to day and
| long term plans created a lot of unreliable data. having done a
| task multiple times, recalling the latest event details became
| a mixed bag of questionable facts.
|
| I still have the same capacity but now because I had such a
| great capacity it's redundancy causes issues.
|
| just take note.
| kbos87 wrote:
| This hits hard. As I've gotten older I've accumulated a lot
| more complexity in my life. Finances that I need to take
| seriously, properties, family stuff, a decade+ of depth in my
| career... it takes a lot to keep track of everything, and to
| make it legible when you come back to it a year or 5 years
| later.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Agree with your take.
|
| I am currently enduring a home builder who seems to think he
| doesn't need to take notes. He has made so many errors and
| has had to do so much rework that he's run out of time to fix
| legitimate problems.
|
| His belief in his ability to retain information way exceeds
| his ability.
|
| Understanding and accepting my own constraints and
| limitations helped me to become far better at what I do.
| People who don't take notes make me very anxious. (This
| includes waiters).
| psychlops wrote:
| Even if your builder took notes, he would still have errors
| and omissions. In my experience with builders (and many
| other areas), it is my job to make sure they do their job.
| Notes or no notes. Same with waiters.
| doctor_eval wrote:
| Not sure how you ensure waiters do their jobs. Do you
| follow them to the kitchen?!
| keybored wrote:
| You make notes, organize them a little, make sure to back
| them up/synch. them but you don't make notes for everything?
| How bizarre. Now let me berate you for being (apparently)
| young.
| charlie0 wrote:
| Sounds like Obsidian would make a great candidate for you on a
| note taking app.
| dopu wrote:
| I've arrived at something similar after going through a lot of
| different solutions: Evernote, Quiver notes, Apple Notes, Logseq,
| Tana: now I just keep everything in one big Journal.md file in
| Obsidian. I added a datestamp shortcut that inserts the date as a
| title in "2024 February 19 (Mon)" format, and get to writing. I
| use subheadings sometimes if I'm writing a lot on a particular
| day and it gets messy, but most days it's just a hodge podge of
| everything, and that's fine.
|
| It works. A big issue with computer notetaking software, I've
| realized, is that I was spending too much time trying to figure
| out where to put things: what note should this be connected to,
| which folder should this be in, etc. Dumping everything into a
| single document, under today's date, gets rid of that. The other
| issue this solved was that I never looked back at what I'd
| written previously: opening a bunch of files was too tedious to
| ever do unless I was explicitly looking for something. With this,
| I can just scroll down and see what I was doing last week,
| immediately.
| inferense wrote:
| there's a much better way providing simplicity with full data
| ownership and real tasks out of the box in daily documents
| https://acreom.com
| hanezz wrote:
| Simple txt file is the best indeed. For easily creating a new
| file (from a template) everyday in VSCode, can recommend the
| vscode-journal extension.
| bachmeier wrote:
| I tried doing it this way. While it sounds nice, and apparently
| works for some people, my biggest problem was stuff getting
| buried hundreds of lines into the file. I couldn't trust it to
| remind me of anything beyond the few items at the top of the
| file. Another problem was having everything as a big blob of text
| mixed together, unless you take on some overhead when entering
| things (put them in the right place) or during the day (moving
| things around).
|
| If this appeals to you, I'd recommend using a big html file with
| Javascript to query the things you want to see, using class names
| as tags. A good text editor will have snippet support, and you
| can just dump any new items at the top of the file as they come
| in. If you want to get fancy, you can write in markdown and
| convert to html on the fly.
| iaw wrote:
| VSCode and Markdown go a long way for me because it allows for
| index linking and some other nifty tricks. The main challenge is
| making sure the md files are organized.
| machomaster wrote:
| If one uses .txt files, then one might as well use .md. And in
| the way, one might as well use something like Obsidian.
|
| So information is still textual, but there are a great lot of
| additional niceties one can now have.
| hk__2 wrote:
| I mostly do this, but with a physical notebook. I wouldn't be
| able to work with a .txt file because it's too limiting: you
| can't draw anything, you can't easily make arrows between stuff,
| you don't have the nice mental reward when you strike some item
| off your list.
|
| This is for the day-to-day organization. For the rest, I dump all
| my knowledge in a wiki (MediaWiki), and I use iOS/macOS'
| Reminders app to remember things to do far in the future (like
| "cancel XYZ subscription" in 6 months) or at very specific times.
| testcase_delta wrote:
| I have an iPad and use notability for this. I have a 350 page
| note that's filled with to-dos, doodles, screenshots of quotes,
| etc. I love being able to just scroll up endlessly to see what
| I was thinking about or working on, all in chronological order.
| pwillia7 wrote:
| I ended up at the same point after a lot of trying and failing
| but wanted a _few_ extra features than notepad offers. It's also
| important to me to be able to take notes in a browser.
|
| I do use logseq/obsidian in my better moments, but having another
| faster system is so helpful for a number of reasons.
|
| I have been building my own text bookmarklet[0] that I use for
| this.
|
| [0]: https://github.com/pwillia7/Text_Bookmarklet
| bobbylarrybobby wrote:
| I'm curious what the reasons for another faster system are?
| Obsidian is pretty fast for me; I can't imagine it being much
| faster.
| disillusioned wrote:
| There's a virtue in being able to take this and plug it into a
| large-enough-context-windowed ChatGPT to be able to
| search/converse with.
|
| Makes me think that the real play is to use ChatGPT for, say, an
| ongoing todo list/dialog/personal notes system for that purpose.
| Or wire up a custom GPT to reference notes stored elsewhere.
|
| Either way, the idea that you can interrogate, intelligently, a
| list of your own ramblings, is pretty damn cool.
| denvaar wrote:
| I am drawn to the idea of keeping todo lists, but it seems like
| whenever I start to do it, I begin to feel stressed out or
| overwhelmed. Not so much by the contents of the list, but by
| maintaining a list in and of itself. Kind of like an obsessive
| type of problem. Does anyone else feel this way?
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| That's not unique, and also, it's often the trap of any
| productivity tool; doing things in the tool becomes a
| productivity goal and gets you the feeling of productivity in
| itself, instead of the tasks it's supposed to help you
| organise.
| Gigachad wrote:
| I only do them when there is a big gap between finding out
| about the task and doing it. Mostly I do them on the end of the
| day friday so when I get back on Monday and have completely
| forgot what I was working on, I can see a few checklist items
| for what I was in the middle of.
|
| Creating a 20 point check list is just pointless. Unless maybe
| it's a list of things you need to verify before pushing
| something forward and you absolutely can not forget any of
| them.
| evnc wrote:
| Reminds me of Heynote, posted to HN recently[0].
|
| In general I think this approach of "super easy capture into an
| append-only log" is great, especially if it can be paired with
| features to enable editing/re-discovery/search/synthesizing old
| ideas together, which exist in a _separate_ view /mode from the
| "just get something down as fast as possible" mode. Working on
| something like this, but just in nights/weekends free time with
| other obligations, so it's been slow going.
|
| [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38733968
| renewiltord wrote:
| Same. I saw a very productive friend just build a list like this:
| - Thing to do - Subtask before that can be done
| - Another level deeper - Another task
|
| And he just deleted things from the list when done. I adopted it
| and quite like it. I've tried keeping it in git, using some tool,
| etc. but in the end the Notes app on Mac with the same format
| helped because I dislike the strike-through stuff. It just
| occupies cognitive space. Just deleting feels better.
|
| Notes.app is nice as well because if I have it on a hot corner I
| can access it easily.
| wouldbecouldbe wrote:
| To be honest, that's why apple notes really is great. I have the
| same, but apple notes manages to save my mess on all my devices
| without ever overwriting my own changes.
| plg wrote:
| I have been using Apple Notes which is great because I can
| read/write in the moment on a Mac, on iPad, on iPhone, and
| everything is (almost always) synced and stored in the cloud. I
| have been doing one note per day.
|
| On the other hand, PTF (Pity The Fool) who tries to export these
| notes. I know some people have written exporters but of course,
| whenever Apple decides to change format, PTF.
|
| I would like to change to a more portable format, e.g. markdown,
| but I am looking for a solution that syncs nicely across devices.
| Maybe iaWriter. Maybe just sublime text or even emacs and just
| put everything in a dropbox folder.
| overvale wrote:
| Text files in iCloud (or whatever whatever) works great.
| There's a bunch of good iOS text editors. I like Runestone.
| al_borland wrote:
| I've gone back and forth between Apple Notes and more portable
| solutions many times now. It has been awful, but I decided to
| stick with Apple Notes. If/when it goes away, I will need to
| suffer one more time. If I keep trying to app hop looking for
| the perfect tool, I'll suffer every 3-6 months for the rest of
| my life and never find peace.
|
| I like that Apple Notes gives me the option to write, easily
| add images, make tables, etc. While 98% of my notes are just
| text, and some of these things can be done in markdown, it is
| higher friction in markdown. So I'm choosing the lower daily
| friction and extra features, knowing that I'll probably
| experience one high friction migration day in the future, but
| that day could be 10 years from now.
|
| The biggest issue moving notes out of Apple Notes was the extra
| new lines and spaces all over the place. I have to assume if
| the app is going to shutdown that some nice developer will make
| a little tool to take care of this. If not, meh... I'll use it
| as an opportunity to clean up some clutter.
| dudul wrote:
| > My daily workload is completely under my control the night
| before
|
| This being the key for such a system to work.
|
| Preparing a todo list the day before would be mostly pointless
| for people who have to deal with interrupts and such.
| jcul wrote:
| I've tried various note taking / organising strategies in the
| past and nothing compares to pen and paper for me.
|
| I used to go through a lot of notepads as "scratch" work and
| would also lose things that I would like to look back on. So for
| the past few months I've been using a rocketbook. I have a
| special format for weekly todo / done tasks, a kind of daily log
| format, pages for meeting notes, and then scratch pages for rough
| notes etc.
|
| I usually upload the weekly / daily / meeting stuff or research
| stuff I may want to keep. Rocketbook ocrs the page and uses
| anything with ##s as a title so I can find stuff quickly. I have
| set up different Dropbox folders for different categories of
| notes.
|
| It's been working quite well for me.
|
| Some things like documention, or draft documentation etc. I do
| store in markdown text files, and sync between my devices with
| syncthing. On my phone I used termux and vim for editing them,
| which works surprisingly well.
| crtified wrote:
| My todo.txt is more of a digital whiteboard, a temporary summary.
| Once the day or task is done, the text is wiped. (That's not to
| say I don't document things - only that I don't use my todo.txt
| as long-term record-keeping)
|
| The concept (along with sentiments such as
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39434558, where the mundane
| inefficiency of having to access the todo.txt window every time
| is the annoyance) makes me think that a wall-mounted screen
| dedicated to displaying the list may be an improvement for some
| people. Alternatively a multi-monitor setup where one (perhaps
| smaller) screen is permanently dedicated to the list.
|
| After all, back in the old days when people did literally do all
| this with physical black/whiteboards and similar, you didn't have
| to "pull up the whiteboard" every time you wanted to look at it -
| you just turned your head a little, or shifted your gaze. In that
| particular sense, having to open or pull up a file every time is
| a regression, an added inefficiency.
| seoulbigchris wrote:
| How did the meeting with Madonna go?
| riston wrote:
| I am using a similar structure a single text file usually split
| by each day, which also gives a good start to writing my standup
| notes.
|
| I tried to avoid bringing in some strange formatting rules etc,
| quite free form. With a single file, it's effortless to go back
| and find out maybe why something was done in that way or why it
| wasn't done at all.
|
| Looks kind of like a work diary to me, I have seen people trying
| to do a similar thing by bringing too much structure/org modes
| etc and making it so complicated that they forgot at first why
| they are doing it.
|
| KISS
| mark336 wrote:
| I use my own messageboard:
| https://willashani.com/gigabots/threads Feel free to post! And I
| use Apple Notes. I like the messageboard because you can see the
| relationships in a tree-based structure. I store techy things in
| the messageboard above. I store non-techy things in Notes or when
| I am in a hurry and its not high priority.
| swah wrote:
| Nothing really works for me long run - my todo files get a bunch
| of random notes with the actual tasks, and I don't want to go
| back to them..
| Glench wrote:
| About a month ago I made a chrome extension that adds a "sometime
| this week" todo list at the bottom of google calendar (a feature
| I copied from Hey calendar). Any items that don't get done roll
| over to the next week and I can go back to previous weeks to see
| what I got done. Super helpful to help plan out my week that way
| and integrated directly into my calendar.
| yorman2251 wrote:
| Flffmff
| goodburb wrote:
| For those that don't want to manage backups, sync and versioning,
| UpNote[1] has a scheduled offline backup and restore in Markdown
| format.
|
| Supports Android stylus/Apple Pencil drawing as bonus.
|
| Joplin comes second but is difficult to setup, lacks versioning,
| trash bin, auto-backup, and slow react native mobile app that
| doesn't sync in the background.
|
| Obsidian Sync is close but expensive and the app doesn't offer
| local auto-backup/versioning.
|
| [1]https://getupnote.com/
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