Maybe it's just me, but because it's a diary, I don't feel the need to delete things. If anything, not deleting it is the point. Even if it's a disorganized mess, I would suggest keeping things around! It's really fun to look at your old writings and notes!
At one point I thought about building one in Python, but it seems like jrnl devs were thinking alike and made it happen.
@cbanek thanks for sharing this golden nugget as it will help me dump my disorganized brain somewhere for persistence and search-ability.
And I have a bash function called 'cheat', that will look for things in there based on the filename, or contents or however I happen to have it written.
As I learn new things I can append an existing file; I run 'cheat git' once per week and 'cheat tmux' every time I forget how to clone a session. Since this all invariable dumps to stdout, I can continue grepping when it suits.
I have another very dirty hack that will get me in trouble eventually - I'll share it because I find I can often improve my code by self shaming - ghetto secrets management:
echo '1,$'|vim --cmd "set key=${password}" ${filename} -es
This is the nugget around a lot of boilerplate, but this invokes vim and makes it decrypt a file and dump to stdout. From here I have my own little grammar and grepper for storing quasi-secure strings or even just secure texts. I'm positive it's going to get me into hot water but it's been extremely portable for me and I trust it on systems that I have the audacity to believe I am alone on.
I know there's a vimdecrypt plugin floating around that is almost definitely superior, but, mine works on stock linux, mac, and git bash.
Here's the step of how I usually do it.
1. Have a phone with me anywhere I go. Anytime I have an interesting thought/idea, I'll add a new item on my todoist inbox.
2. Every night, I'll process that inbox. Most of it will be to-dos, but sometimes I jot down some ideas there. If the ideas is interesting enough, I'll move it in a writing project (e.g., I think I should write why I love cats.) If an idea is not worth writing about, then I'll just re-articulate the ideas and mark it done.
3. I use dropbox paper to write. There's only two important folders: a rant and completed folder. For each item on my todoist writing project, I will create a document in the rant folder and I write about it. E.g., On todoist, I'll have the entry "I think I should write why I love cats." Later on, on dropbox paper I'll create a document with the title "Why I love cats."
4. Write. I don't finish everything though. I usually just stop writing if it gets boring.
5. If it's finished, then I'll move it in a finished folder. It contains my essays, blog entry and book notes.
I tried Notion, but it's too complicated and it gets overwhelming really fast. Another huge cons of Notion is that you can't jot ideas quickly (I can do it in seconds in todoist). I'm happy with these two services.
Edit: typo
About a year and a half ago I started a lowtech weekly diary approach. Documents folder on your computer or a GDrive/Dropbox/whatever. Folder for the year, and then folder for each week of the year. Usually create it on monday and transfer what I expect to need that week. Treat that folder as my desktop for that week and move on the next week. I now have a year and a half of such notes, am confident I can find stuff and when I open such snapshot I'm quickly able to gather all the needed contexts that were relevant then.
For to-do's which can vary in time sensitivity this might be straight away for some that need to be done that day, that day for some that need to be later that week, or weekly for those you hope to get done just eventually.
For your links, ideas, and thoughts you could probably do it weekly.
The trick is to not let it build up so much that when you get around to looking through it, you're looking at three full days worth of organising work, much of which you can't do anyway because you've long forgotten the context within which your short hand notes made sense.
Specifically for to-do's, Getting Things Done is a very (the most?) popular organisational system with a book by the same name.
Here is a much shorter summary of it:
If you’re on iOS and value great design and simplicity, I cannot recommend it strongly enough. And it’s really cheap.
Everything is in markdown and hashtagged.
I found Google Keep to be good for search features, because it extends beyond text and into images.
Basically, just write down all of the different services/folders/notebooks you use and what you use them for.
For example, in Notion I write that I use: - Notion for boards and knowledge. - Todoist for tasks - Day One for quick notes and journals - OneNote for school.
Etc...
I find listing where you store different types of information (because different tools are built for different use cases) helps keep it all organized.
I use markdown for everything and have txt files going back to 2013 that I'm slowly formatting to markdown as they were dumped from a Google Docs exodus I haven't made the time to clean up. My goal is to eventually make a database of my thoughts and look for patterns and insights while learning the tools required to do that in the most modern ways :)
Permanently trying out other stuff (basecamp, todoist, notion, etc.) but keep coming back.
I also have a self hosted Nextcloud instance, where I started to put down thoughts which won't fit in the other two (like "lessons learned this week") but eventually will be moved to Bookstack.
I was inspired by all the posts about emacs org-mode, but couldn't go all the way to emacs, because VSCode has become the center of my coding universe. I'm surprised that's not the #1 answer (yet).
It's very liberating to be completely in control of the format and organization, and it's very easy to move things around as needed using familiar tools. I don't have a lot of screenshots or non-text things to remember, so markdown is fine for me.
Customers
->Customer A
--->Projects
----->Project A
Journal
->2019
-->201912
TechNotes
->Unix
->SQL
->Infolease
But instead all they could point me to was endless reference pages on one feature or another. So, I was never able to get the hang of it, which as you say, is necessary to put it to best use. After several months, I cancelled my subscription and told them they need better docs: an overview/getting started guide, rather than a series of man pages.
Anecdotally, having a single notebook for everything has made me feel more in organized and in control of my notes as everything is there, indexed into a single notebook.
- https://bulletjournal.com/ - https://simpleprogrammer.com/bullet-journal-productivity-pro...
[1]: https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki [2]: https://johnnydecimal.com/
It feels effortless, almost fun, to me unlike any other tools I’ve used.
2. Yes, it exports to org-mode structured text.
I have one main document with general topics like Programming Startups Social science, and inside more general topics.
I don’t think this is the best way to structure it
I've had a hard time replacing it so far.
I really want a note taking app that securely stores and syncs my notes between colleagues and does code snippets/attachments well. I haven't found anything I like yet, I've tried Bear/Notion. I love OneNote, but we don't have MS licenses at my current gig.
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quiver-take-better-notes/id977...
I saw it has a 2.2 rating, compared to the 4.3 stars for the macOS app.
Every day I open a new note named #[YYMMDD] Scratch, and use it as my daily scratchpad. That makes it easy to search for notes by year, month, and day.
In my experience, simpler is better.
For my first 7-8 years as a professional, I used notebooks. I was taught in mechanical engineering school to use notebooks with bindings and write notes about everything to cover my ass in case of a legal issue. I developed a simple system:
- front front to back, write notes from meetings, brainstorms or anything
- from back to front, write todo lists.
- Actions from meetings are noted in the “front” notes with an arrow in the left hand margin but copied to the “back”. Normally I never refer to the front unless I forget why I made an action
- For actions: checkmark completed, cross out cancelled and crossout with an arrow “moved” actions
- when my actions page fills up, I simply cross the page out and “move” unfinished actions to the next page (from back to front)
- when the notebook is full I “move” actions to a new notebook and start over.
- the act of physically rewriting actions is a great tool to understand what you’ve been procrastinating on and what you can drop without much consequence
When I moved to a new industry that doesn’t put people at risk, therefore no need to cover my ass legally, I switched to the equivalent system using markdown notes and Todoist. I thought it would be great to be able to search previous notes and see statistics. After another 7-8 years I realized I never ever searched my previous notes and missed being able to thumb through notebooks. I got advice from a mentor that taking notes in a book is more professional/ less distracting in a professional setting. I also missed the exercise of manually copying/ consolidating/culling actions. I found myself mindlessly postponing Todoist actions to tomorrow or next week. However, I work in a larger team now and need to delegate actions.
So I developed a hybrid system which has worked well:
- notes in a notebook, written from front of the notebook to back
- actions have an arrow in the margin
- each day I add all actions to the most recent page of actions. This is no longer from back to front but “inline” with the rest of the notes, so I get a chronological sense of when the page is filled and actions moved to a new page. Actually, I move to a new page whenever I feel the urge to prioritize something, which goes to the top of a new page. If I have a tough day ahead of me, the first thing I do is start a new actions page and follow the order without reconsidering it. If I have a really tough day I will add “check email” as an action and put it far from the top.
- at the end of each workday, for any case where other stakeholders are involved, I type meeting minutes and duplicate actions as tickets in our system
- whenever I move actions to a new page I close tickets corresponding to my actions and follow up on others actions
- if I don’t have my notebook on me, I use notes on my phone temporarily
I don’t actually manage to keep things consistent daily but whenever I make a new action page I tend to update everything. And I find it much less mental load to update tickets based on written notes (I trust a written check mark and tend to remember why I made the check mark) than to update tickets based on emails or comments or whatever (they are usually a rabbit hole)