I've built a similar system from scratch - also using this Dropbox daily notes file technique - except my script generates folders and sub folders for each year (YYYY) and each month within each year (YYY-MM) whenever I instantiate a file on a certain day. Makes long term management much easier than having thousands of files in one folder. Same grep principles apply (and I use hashtags within my notes to track keywords).
I also manage my notes on the go by opening the Dropbox app on my phone and editing the txt files from there. Having subfolders helps with navigation on the Dropbox app.
It's a script called "d" (for diary) that I keep in my home folder. I try minimise mouse usage, so I've got a keyboard shortcut for opening a terminal, and then in the terminal I run ./d
=== start of script ===
#!/bin/bash
y=`date +%Y`;
ym=`date +%Y-%m`;
ymd=`date +%Y-%m-%d`;
if [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y" ]; then
mkdir Dropbox/diary/$y
fi
if [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym" ]; then
mkdir Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym
fi
vim Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym/$ymd.txt
=== end script ===
I could probably refactor the hell out of this. But I'm an old beard that prefers explicit readability. For example I don't need to use YYYY-MM for the month sub-folders (I could just use MM), and similarly I don't need the full YYYY-MM-DD.txt for the day files (I could just use DD.txt) - so your preference may vary.
And yeah I use .txt files because I can edit those natively in the Dropbox app on my phone too. Don't need any special apps installed to manage my notes on the go.
In terms of the contents of the files, I've kept the searchability really simple by using hashtags, example:
=== Dropbox/diary/2020/12/04.txt ===
## #keyword1 #keyword2
Here be notes on keyword1 and keyword2.
## #keyword3
Here be notes captured later on the same day on keyword3.
These can span multiple lines if I want.
## #keyword4
Here be notes on keyword4 captured even later in the day.
===
I use the single hashtag keyword system for quick grepping (and future indexing if I want to build a searchable database out of this one day), and the double hashtag ## at the start of each note snippet so that I can parse individual snippets more easily.
notes hello world appends the text to the YYYY-MM.txt dated file
echo cool | notes same as above except you can pipe in text
notes opens the YYYY-MM.txt file in your configured $EDITOR
I use all 3 methods of input on a regular basis depending on what I want to jot down.
I also set it up to auto-create/open my daily-doc in the background when I open a new terminal session, since days that I do that are days that I most want to take notes. It serves as a very good, very minor reminder to actually write something down. And if I don't write anything, I can just delete empty files later with a trivial `find`.
I just use rednotebook on Linux and it's very good.
I have daily notes, a small calendar to navigate to dates in the past/future, a tag cloud populated with words I've written the most, and a search bar that I don't know how it works but usually finds what I'm looking for.
It's no fancy system but it's immediate, no dumb nerding and dumb wheel reinvention needed.
For a long time I had a Zapier setup that did something similar.
v1 created a templated note in evernote which I eventually enhanced to a more custom solution.
v2 used google cloud print to create a pdf from html and add to my google drive then move it into the Notability folder so I could access it and write on it from the Notability app on my ipad.
I loved this because I could also pull in weather, horoscope, daily calvin and hobbes, news headlines, top gitlab issues for my projects and add them to the html template/pdf. Frequently I'd end up physically printing it.
For the past couple of months I have been using org-roam [0] for this and I find it quite effective. Just found out that I have 87 different notes lying around:
I'm still figuring out my own ways. Right now, lots of text/markdown files. I really like "My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file"[1].
you can do this all in bash. you could set up a function that takes the text of your note as input along with your metadata and makes a timestamp. then you just index your notes however you'd like.
Org mode is something that I've always thought I should look at, but never quite have. One thing I like to do with my notes is to keep a short "todo" list at the top, listed in the order that I'm planning to work on them.
Something like:
Todo
====
- Fix Widget
- Extend Screen
- Profit
Then if I need to re-prioritise, I re-order:
Todo
====
- Profit
- Fix Widget
- Extend Screen
and mark tasks as completed:
Todo
====
+ Profit
- Fix Widget
- Extend Screen
Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.
Is there a way to manage that in Org mode (linking tasks to further notes would be great to have) while keeping items in relative priority order without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"?
Sure, you can do this via the agenda [1], which essentially aggregates your tasks in various ways. You would organize your tasks as headers as follows
* some project :tag:
** open tasks
*** TODO Fix widget
a stacktrace
[[screenshot.png]]
*** TODO Extend screen
some notes on xrandr
** tasks done
*** DONE Profit
some notes about making money
more notes about how much money was made
Then you can use the agenda to show all TODO items in that project, which preserves the order you have in the Org file.
This is trivial in org mode. There are multiple ways to do this. The simplest is:
Put your TODOs in the order you want. You can easily reorder them using Alt + Up or Alt + Down. Marking it as complete is also trivial.
The canonical way to do this is to make each TODO a headline with the TODO keyword. To mark as done, put your cursor on the headline and press Shift-Right.
Alternatively, you can use checklists and just press C-c C-c to mark an item as done:
- [ ] Fix widget
- [X] Extend Screen
- [ ] Profit
But you'll find doing it via headlines works best with the rest of org mode (e.g. you can perform queries on headlines, but not on lists).
> Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.
You can refile any headline to another section. Org mode also has the concept of archiving a headline. By default it moves it to an archive file, but I'm sure the location can be customized.
> linking tasks to further notes would be great to have
Org mode supports links - you can link to about anything - another file, another section in the same file, a line number in a file, a search string, an image, a PDF, a web site, etc.
In practice, if you use the headline version of TODO, you just keep the relevant notes under that headline. You can collapse all headlines if you just want to see the TODOs, and expand any given headline to see the details. But even if you go the checklist route you can just add a link to detailed notes.
You can learn to do all this in Org mode in under 30 minutes, if you find the right tutorial/video.
> without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"
These are entirely optional in org mode and not on by default.
If you want to be able to add a TODO in the right spot without moving your cursor to the exact location, you'll want to learn about capture templates, which is a bit more advanced.
Do you mean browsing the notes in chronological order AND in thematic order (something like an outline?) in the SAME TIME?
I'm currently doing a re-designing of my DocxManager (outliner based on Word) and you did inspire me!
I'm working on something like this (macOS/iOS), although it is not quite ready yet.
Notes can have tags and attributes so you could have attributes per note like: topic=rocketscience, semester=fall2020. Later you could say: "sort all my notes by semester and then group by topic" or if you change your mind, set up a second view for "all notes grouped by topic then by semester".
If you're interested, feel free to contact me through the site (kitestack.com/lnotes). I'd love to learn more about how you currently organize your notes.
For me, I go even simpler. I have a single file in my Dropbox folder that I’ve been using for over a decade. To open it, I just use Alfred (and before that, quicksilver). I pop new stuff at the top. Every now and again I search for something way back when.
I use paper. Digital notes are great if you need them to be available everywhere, or edit them time and time again, but paper is still significantly better for me.
I keep my recipes in Keep and on my personal website, because I often amend them. However I discovered that printed recipes are much more pleasant to use.
Likewise, I'd much rather have a dirty notebook to sketch and write on when I'm working in the garage, or anywhere that's not my desk
was about to say something similar, but using OneNote while working on Surface Book 2, taking handwritten notes with Surface Pen. Totally recommends it.
Just got mine a couple weeks back and it's great! The software could use some additional features, but thanks to the open platform, it is getting them from some dedicated users.
I can’t use pen and paper because I’m surrounded by nosy people who don’t know to respect my privacy. And if I put some kind of lock on a physical diary or something, they complain that I am hiding something.
Reasonable or not, one difficulty I have with keeping any kind of journal is that I keep thinking of the fact that it may eventually be read and exposed to the cruelest, least charitable interpretation.
Well it won't solve for every case, but you could use the Hindu tantra - vasana daha tantra. You write down your worries, fears, anger - anything troubling you that you want to express - then you burn it.
Privacy and integrity in your own thoughts and explorations is a valid concern and basic need. You have every right to say "this is mine and does not concern you".
Establish limits and set boundaries, if you have to. If that means a locked room, desk, trunk, or other means, then do that. Often the best way to establish boundaries is to assert them.
You situation sounds intrinsically toxic. I understand you're married with family --- if that's where the privacy issues are (rather than at work), you might want to consider family counseling. A lack of basic trust or respect is a bad sign.
Meantime, digital encrypted systems may be more appropriate, though personal notations and code can help with paper --- you're not the first person to have nosy neighbours.
It's just my opinion, but nothing beats paper. I have tried keeping note files on my computer, and I've tried using tablets to jot things down (I have spent so much money trying to get this option to work). Paper just works better. I found that I like to scribble and underline, and draw. I'm just not an organized thinker. Forcing things to be in a list don't work for my thoughts and even drawing on an iPad etc. seems too constricting. The precision of paper just isn't there.
That effect is heavily driven by writing things down in your own words - writing by hand essentially forces you to do it, keyboard lets you get away with transcription, which doesn't help.
I was close to pulling the trigger on one, since I also doodle a lot. Then I realised it would be yet another gadget that annoys me because it does annoying gadget things.
Paper doesn't require an account, or updates. It doesn't require repeating a task because it didn't get it. It doesn't have a community that tries to pick up where the manufacturer left off. It's also a hundredth of the price.
For most things, paper works best for me for capture, and then the additional step of transcribing / summarizing into my corpus of org files gives me a chance to structure and review.
But I have a notebook and a (fountain!) pen on my desk all day long, right next to my keyboard and mouse.
how do you find anything later? It's a simple capture method, but it doesn't work well for a use case like "oh I talked to that user one time, let me search for them in my notes"
I graduated college in 1984, so my note taking was entirely pen & paper. What's the norm in college nowadays? Is everyone banging away on laptops? That seems like it would be distracting to me.
If it is laptops, what software do people use? Simple text editor, Word...?
A nice solution for those that can get by with text-only notes.
For storing images I use Microsoft OneNote as more often than not, there is a need to document something with text and images. And search is excellent.
One way to work images in text-only notes is to bake in the path names to the image files on your local drive rather than paste an image into the note. If I'm in terminal I can copy that text with the path, hit cmd n "open" cmd v enter and view the image with the system viewer (preview in this case). If I'm looking at the text file in textedit on mac os, I can actually do this from the right click menu under services after highlighting the path name. Could be a good solution if you are tired of onenote's bloat.
I add tags as relevant if I think about it, and for projects/tasks spanning multiple days i'll create a root item.
I created a local git repo I try and keep everything checked into; I might push it up to a private github/bitbucket repo eventually, but I haven't been careful with scrubbing credentials from shell snippets so leerly on pushing anywhere remote.
The author, as well as most everyone in the comments here, have apparently never heard of org-mode. Yeah, I can understand that for some people emacs is a non-starter, but trust me, if you want to do it, I can just about guarantee it's possible in org-mode. It's just that flexible, and everyone's org-mode setup is different, customized to their needs.
I feel like Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/) should also get mentioned: storing notes in plain Markdown files, optionally synced via e.g. Dropbox. Bonus points for also having mobile apps that sync with the same backend.
I looked for many alternatives to taking notes and Joplin ended up being what I went with, it's fantastic. I wrote a small script to export my notes to a static website because I figured someone could use the knowledge, even if it's just a brain dump:
I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
That is really awesome, this kind of functionality would be a really awesome plugin to Joplin itself somehow.
> I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream? Almost like a cross of the github "X starred Y" stream and Twitter (with none of the social-y features). I favorite a lot of things from day to day and would love to know what others are favoriting/finding as well.
Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I'd love to make it possible to also share-from-joplin for single notes but that feature isn't there yet. The only way to make it happen otherwise would be synchronizing somewhere unencrypted (!) and then asking that somewhere to "publish" your notes. Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles" or any way to separate encryption keys or which notes are and aren't encrypted... it's hard to do that as well..
> this kind of functionality would be a really awesome plugin to Joplin itself somehow.
Agreed, I looked for a plugin but unfortunately found none.
> Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream?
I don't really use bookmarks, whenever I come across an interesting page I put it in https://historio.us, but they're too few to make a stream out of...
> Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
> Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles"
Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
> I don't really use bookmarks, whenever I come across an interesting page I put it in https://historio.us, but they're too few to make a stream out of...
Interesting! I'd never heard of historious, thanks for the link. I'm quite surprised that using that is easier than hitting Ctrl+D (in Firefox anyway), and doing the management there. I totally get it though.
> I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
Yep, I can see that, many who find their way to joplin are quite technologically independent and came to joplin precisely because of those reasons. I guess not many people would really want hosted WebDav when you can just hook up NextCloud/S3/OneDrive/etc.
> Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
Yeah -- tags would definitely be the way, but the problem is that I'd want someone to be able to publish an update from their phone (or at least from every platform possible), and be able to keep their encryption. Just spitballing, but imagine serving a sync/backup service that happens to also be able to spit out md-derived websites very very easily. Notion and it's ilk have features like that and people seem very excited about it. A notebook as a blogging platform also seems interesting/incredibly low friction. Could even be a podcasting platform if you attached audio to notes.
Ditto, with https://github.com/jareware/howto/, which I’ve been meaning to automatically sync from a specific notebook from my Joplin. Yours looks very polished though, maybe I should just use that!
You could, the script is a bit tailored to me right now but very slightly. It just exports a Zola site and I used the Gitbook theme, but you should be able to easily swap in any theme you want.
I would love a network of people’s knowledge base / personal notes. I have several people’s kb-sites bookmarked, which I check in from time to time - I always learn a ton! I have been using Obsidian to take notes of everything I learn - my own KB - and have been thinking of how the share the notes out publicly, while still keeping the informal, private, low-friction note taking. For those who share their notes/kb publicly, whats your strategy?
> and have been thinking of how the share the notes out publicly, while still keeping the informal, private, low-friction note taking.
That's exactly what I want to do too. Increasing the friction makes people less likely to share, so I want the community to feel very casual, so people aren't afraid to post even single-sentence brain dumps.
> For those who share their notes/kb publicly, whats your strategy?
You mean those who have already shared them? The advantage of a centralized site would be improved searchability, so you'd help more people.
Since I don't really aim to make money from this, it'd be open source, sort of like a Neocities vibe.
Would you like to email me at hi@stavros.io if you're interested (and whoever else reads this comment, please feel free). If I do end up making this I'll make it invite-only so I don't have to worry about spam (at least at first), and this would be a nice way to have a few early testers.
I keep two TiddlyWiki [0] files, one public, one private.
If I feel that a certain note can become its own piece of knowledge in a Zettlekasten fashion and can have any value for someone else, I put it in my public file and I run a script that will copy it to my hosting provider. My public site is a single file! [1].
Me too, I find Tiddlywiki perfect for this kind of use! You may have seen it, but it is recently made a php script that let you save directly to your server and create a public version where private tiddlers are removed or censored [0]. That way you only need to manage a single file. But it sounds as you have found a good way of doing it already:)
I do something similar with Drift [0], a customized distribution of TiddlyWiki [1]. I capture as many thoughts and ideas as I can using the Zettlekasten methodology [2]. If it can be distilled to a single piece of knowledge, I assess, should this be private for me? or it can be useful to anyone else? if b, then I publish add it as a Tiddler on my public TiddlyWiki file, and I run an update that will upload it to my web site [3]. If private, I keep it in my private file.
TiddlyWiki has been around for a very long time, and it keeps evolving. My personal file has over 3,000 Tiddlers and it keeps growing. It's unbelievable all you can do in a single file with just HTML and JavaScript. As long as those standards exist in 20-30 years, I can be sure my files, all tags and all relationships are still available and highly usable.
What turned me off about Joplin was how awkward it was to link to other pages. I might have missed something, but by default I think that takes creating the other page first, then manually copying its id -- way too much clicking, and breaks the focus on what you're writing.
In the end, I ended up using Obsidian (https://obsidian.md). While typing (even in an outside editor), I can just go [[random reference]] -- and that will turn into a link, even if that page doesn't exist yet. When I eventually get to creating the page, it will already have back links from all the places it is used (something else I think Joplin doesn't have).
Agreed. In Joplin internal linking is a pain and that makes it a bad Zettelkasten. However, Joplin is not meant to be that, Joplin is more of an Evernote alternative, which is made for collecting information rather then connecting it. For that Joplin is awesome.
For my Zettelkasten and writing I use Obsidian. They are fantastic in tandem.
* If I live in Markdown, I want to edit it WYSIWYG. Maybe that's wrong, but I don't want to live in .md code mode (for this reason, I miss Evernote). I author in Typora, but I don't want to keep notes in MD.
* It's sync-ing options don't map to the most used syncing tech on desktops these days. I'd have to pay for Dropbox (given my current ecosystem) just to use it to sync.
* I want folders and sub-folders. Folders and tags don't work for me.
* I wish these systems had a built-in journal mode, like Roam.
Yeah emacs has like eleventeen different folding modes. That's the problem.
Vim has folding as a basic feature of the editor binary, not some aftermarket script. So editing operations on folded regions always do what you expect.
I tend to have a notes.txt in different folders. One for each project, one for each bug investigation, etc. I'll admit I need to work on a better backup story
For the past few months I’ve been taking markdown notes which are then transformed into HTML and pushed to an s3 bucket for public viewing. Probably not the best solution within this thread but it costs approximately nothing is a great way to get access to a web-based version of your notes anywhere.
This allows you to throw extra features in the HTML like searching for files and randomly selecting a note for viewing at your leisure.
I love the idea that I have a place to publish random stuff that I don't have to spend lots of time writing, I can just drop a sentence and maybe someone else will find it useful.
The big problem is that Google will basically never give you that page in a result, no matter how relevant it may be to your query, because it prefers SEO-rich content farms like Wikihow. I was thinking that a service would at least be easier to search/remember to go to.
I create "notes" directory on my desktop at work, and each day I start a new text file named $DATE_$JIRATASKNO_$DECRIPTION.txt
Whenever I copy-paste stuff that might be useful I leave it there. Stuff like stacktraces, class:line_number when I was searching where something happens, links to webpages related to the task.
I was keeping a notepad tab open at all times anyway to keep context when I was doing something (otherwise I forget when I'm back from lunch and have to search again). So this is only making this context permanent and searcheable.
Then when I do something 3 months later and get a stacktrace I vaguely remember or other problem that I can imagine what the keyword would be - I just grep in that directory and find all the context needed, including jira task, commits, all related webpages, etc.
I also write short free-text notes there, but these are usually very short and less important than the copy-pasted stuff.
Inspired by similar plaintext to-do discussions on HN I also built my own system.
I use Sublime and I love scrolling. The second makes the system in TFTA not good for me, and given the first, I didn't mind my implementation being editor specific - but the principal is dead simple, as to not really matter.
I have a small custom function stored in Sublimes user package folder which, when called using the [cmd]+[shift]+p command palette will insert a small template in the top of the current file (my `daily.txt`).
This is just a headline with the date, and name of day of week and
Two lines called start and end (with datetime filled in in start) let's me keep loose track of my hours.
I also have a sub-heading that says to-do, with two `[ ] ...` txt checkboxes already added, another headline called did and a line that separates it from the previous day.
"To-do" is for things I plan on doing, "did" is for ad-hoc things I ended up doing. This helps me keep track of how much work I actually did, which is nice for days where everything is meetings and firefighting and I don't close issues in the tracker or PRs in git.
I can use go-to symbol to jump to a date, or just search the document for key words. Like I said, I like scrolling, and enjoy being able to just scroll down to see the previous day.
The system is like I said dead simple, easy to operate, easy for anyone to implement and customize to their liking. I've used mine for a few months and it has been great!
Ha! I recently started to do the same thing, except just a timestamp every time I run the script. If I want a blank page in the middle of the day I get one. `vn` opens a new one, `vl` opens the most recent one.
I use a combination of nextcloud deck + all its other addons. I've installed it on a rasberry pi and a simple zerotier setup so that my notes are accessible over the internet.
As a self-hosted Trello alternative, I use OpenTasks[0], created some Lists to sort my different kind of notes, and sync this between my machines with DAVx5 and Nextcloud. Not as streamlined as a trello, but hey, FOSS and self-hosted. On desktop I can view my tasks and lists with Nextcloud's web app, or Thunderbird's Lightning addon. With OpenTasks, one task can have a title, a detailed description, a checklist, start and due dates, completeness status, even priority - I usually just use the title, and often the checklist, excellent for groceries and household chores.
You could also try Wekan[1], which is awesome on desktop, but I found the mobile interface unusable.
My philosophy is that my life is not important, I'm not unique, and I'm not influenced by ads, so I might be wrong, but tech companies are literally wasting their cpu time and database space storing info about me.
So they can store all they want while I enjoy their free products.
I like to think of it as a positive bike shedding session - instead of arguing about the color of the bike shed, we all share and compliment each other on how interesting and cool our bike shed designs are.
For years, I experimented with paper, org-mode, text notes (Sublime Text, TextEdit) to manage my thoughts and life. What I ended up with was folder after folder of disorganized notes, files like daily.txt, todo.txt, log.rtf that ended up disgusting me.
I would so strongly recommended everyone reading this to check out Roam Research (https://roamresearch.com/). At it's core, it's a collection of text notes in the cloud. Just open it up and start typing your thoughts down. No folders or hierarchy. The key enabler is that is that you can link together different pages. Roam Research helps you make so much better sense of your thoughts - I use it personally to plan out goals, projects, brainstorm research, track meetings/dates, and keep a daily log of everything I go through. I can't recommend it enough - even my dad started using it everyday after I showed him.
Just try it out and starting typing a few notes. It'll start off as a simple graph for text notes / documents, but there are so many more powerful features to discover, too.
EDIT: Roam is a cloud-based service, notes are not end-to-end encrypted. It doesn't bother me, but if it bothers you, there are many open source, offline-first alternatives that the community has created (emacs-org, Foam, Obsidian, etc.). I am in no way sponsored by Roam, I don't know anybody at Roam, I don't run any of those bullshit Roam courses, and Roam is expensive as fuck, but let me tell you this: there are so many features and UI optimizations that make Roam have the best user experience. Don't compromise your time and user experience.
After exactly year of using it, I moved back to Notion, even though I have Roam for free. Thanks to Roam's hype they have backlinks now (+ it's possible now to create new page in another page/db with "[[", that will leave only link/mention to that new page), which means both structured and flat zettelkasten-style notes (done in some master notes DB) are possible, plus regular DBs and all of the other cool stuff. This is a complete solution for me, all of my notes are much better organised now. And yes, I know, Roam has much more features than backlinks, I was using all of them, queries and block references, and sidebar, and ..., but for real work I'm not missing anything else than a sidebar. Sidebar is the best part of Roam IMO, even Obsidian with their multipane can't compete with that. With Notion I can open new tab in browser or new window in desktop app and keep it side-by-side and it's ok too, not as good and fast experience as with Roam, but good enough.
Thanks for sharing your experience - I have both for free as well, and I started with Notion. The problem is that Notion never stuck with me because it's hard to create pages/links at the same speed that you think / not as flexible, and I think Notion is better suited as a knowledge base with collaborators. Strong agree on the sidebar point, I don't use queries but am a strong user of references and embeds.
Wouldn't a Zettelkasten in Notion be most natural as a page with a template button to create a new note, and the new page had a template button to create children, etc...
That way it'd end up as a branching tree the way an actual zettelkasten would and would probably be more searchable.
194 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 228 ms ] threadIt's a script called "d" (for diary) that I keep in my home folder. I try minimise mouse usage, so I've got a keyboard shortcut for opening a terminal, and then in the terminal I run ./d
=== start of script ===
#!/bin/bash
y=`date +%Y`;
ym=`date +%Y-%m`;
ymd=`date +%Y-%m-%d`;
if [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y" ]; then
fiif [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym" ]; then
fivim Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym/$ymd.txt
=== end script ===
I could probably refactor the hell out of this. But I'm an old beard that prefers explicit readability. For example I don't need to use YYYY-MM for the month sub-folders (I could just use MM), and similarly I don't need the full YYYY-MM-DD.txt for the day files (I could just use DD.txt) - so your preference may vary.
And yeah I use .txt files because I can edit those natively in the Dropbox app on my phone too. Don't need any special apps installed to manage my notes on the go.
In terms of the contents of the files, I've kept the searchability really simple by using hashtags, example:
=== Dropbox/diary/2020/12/04.txt ===
## #keyword1 #keyword2
Here be notes on keyword1 and keyword2.
## #keyword3
Here be notes captured later on the same day on keyword3.
These can span multiple lines if I want.
## #keyword4
Here be notes on keyword4 captured even later in the day.
===
I use the single hashtag keyword system for quick grepping (and future indexing if I want to build a searchable database out of this one day), and the double hashtag ## at the start of each note snippet so that I can parse individual snippets more easily.
Hope that helps! :)
mkdir -p Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym
I also open sourced a zero dependency Bash script that handles this at: https://github.com/nickjj/notes
It supports adding notes in 3 different ways:
I use all 3 methods of input on a regular basis depending on what I want to jot down.I also set it up to auto-create/open my daily-doc in the background when I open a new terminal session, since days that I do that are days that I most want to take notes. It serves as a very good, very minor reminder to actually write something down. And if I don't write anything, I can just delete empty files later with a trivial `find`.
I have daily notes, a small calendar to navigate to dates in the past/future, a tag cloud populated with words I've written the most, and a search bar that I don't know how it works but usually finds what I'm looking for.
It's no fancy system but it's immediate, no dumb nerding and dumb wheel reinvention needed.
v1 created a templated note in evernote which I eventually enhanced to a more custom solution.
v2 used google cloud print to create a pdf from html and add to my google drive then move it into the Notability folder so I could access it and write on it from the Notability app on my ipad.
I loved this because I could also pull in weather, horoscope, daily calvin and hobbes, news headlines, top gitlab issues for my projects and add them to the html template/pdf. Frequently I'd end up physically printing it.
$ ls *org | wc -l
87
[0] https://www.orgroam.com/
(Evernote if I find web content that's good.)
1. https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/
I want to browse my notes in chronological order AND in thematic order. i.e. I want to do semantic search and automatic topic grouping.
[edit: The use-case I have in mind is you are learning about a topic, and your chronological "research notebook" is also an automatic zettlekasten.]
edit: you proposed zettelkasten-like solution just when I posted
Something like:
Then if I need to re-prioritise, I re-order: and mark tasks as completed: Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.Is there a way to manage that in Org mode (linking tasks to further notes would be great to have) while keeping items in relative priority order without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"?
[1]: https://orgmode.org/manual/Agenda-Views.html
Put your TODOs in the order you want. You can easily reorder them using Alt + Up or Alt + Down. Marking it as complete is also trivial.
The canonical way to do this is to make each TODO a headline with the TODO keyword. To mark as done, put your cursor on the headline and press Shift-Right.
Alternatively, you can use checklists and just press C-c C-c to mark an item as done:
But you'll find doing it via headlines works best with the rest of org mode (e.g. you can perform queries on headlines, but not on lists).> Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.
You can refile any headline to another section. Org mode also has the concept of archiving a headline. By default it moves it to an archive file, but I'm sure the location can be customized.
> linking tasks to further notes would be great to have
Org mode supports links - you can link to about anything - another file, another section in the same file, a line number in a file, a search string, an image, a PDF, a web site, etc.
In practice, if you use the headline version of TODO, you just keep the relevant notes under that headline. You can collapse all headlines if you just want to see the TODOs, and expand any given headline to see the details. But even if you go the checklist route you can just add a link to detailed notes.
You can learn to do all this in Org mode in under 30 minutes, if you find the right tutorial/video.
> without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"
These are entirely optional in org mode and not on by default.
If you want to be able to add a TODO in the right spot without moving your cursor to the exact location, you'll want to learn about capture templates, which is a bit more advanced.
Works like a charm and is very low friction when notekeeping.
Notes can have tags and attributes so you could have attributes per note like: topic=rocketscience, semester=fall2020. Later you could say: "sort all my notes by semester and then group by topic" or if you change your mind, set up a second view for "all notes grouped by topic then by semester".
If you're interested, feel free to contact me through the site (kitestack.com/lnotes). I'd love to learn more about how you currently organize your notes.
For me, I go even simpler. I have a single file in my Dropbox folder that I’ve been using for over a decade. To open it, I just use Alfred (and before that, quicksilver). I pop new stuff at the top. Every now and again I search for something way back when.
Works really well for me.
I keep my recipes in Keep and on my personal website, because I often amend them. However I discovered that printed recipes are much more pleasant to use.
Likewise, I'd much rather have a dirty notebook to sketch and write on when I'm working in the garage, or anywhere that's not my desk
Allows you to concentrate better, the result is much more refined and as an added bonus, fountain pens are nice.
I've even seen a user run offline OCR on it, and we may soon be able to integrate with metadata to make those notes searchable. Credit to https://github.com/utopiah , post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/jj5yt2/of...
Reasonable or not, one difficulty I have with keeping any kind of journal is that I keep thinking of the fact that it may eventually be read and exposed to the cruelest, least charitable interpretation.
Establish limits and set boundaries, if you have to. If that means a locked room, desk, trunk, or other means, then do that. Often the best way to establish boundaries is to assert them.
You situation sounds intrinsically toxic. I understand you're married with family --- if that's where the privacy issues are (rather than at work), you might want to consider family counseling. A lack of basic trust or respect is a bad sign.
Meantime, digital encrypted systems may be more appropriate, though personal notations and code can help with paper --- you're not the first person to have nosy neighbours.
Of course, for work we also use shared digital docs, but what goes in there has first been through my ugly scribbles on paper.
How 'bout a pencil and paper?
I hereby salute your nitpicking :)
I have been transitioning to Remarkable 2 to see if there's some benefit to uniting the concepts. So far, though, I seem to be taking fewer notes.
Paper doesn't require an account, or updates. It doesn't require repeating a task because it didn't get it. It doesn't have a community that tries to pick up where the manufacturer left off. It's also a hundredth of the price.
I use Goodnotes[1] on my iPad for my notes in which you can do all of that. Works great for me.
But i can understand that a digital solution is not always a better solution for every situation/lifestyle...
[1] https://www.goodnotes.com/
But I have a notebook and a (fountain!) pen on my desk all day long, right next to my keyboard and mouse.
Yeah, it was distracting. I spent more time writing my own note-taking tool than I did listening in class. It went poorly.
For storing images I use Microsoft OneNote as more often than not, there is a need to document something with text and images. And search is excellent.
https://github.com/tomlockwood/dn
> The way it works is that every time I run the script, it opens the note for that day in my editor of choice
vimwiki's diary function does that for you under the hood.
I add tags as relevant if I think about it, and for projects/tasks spanning multiple days i'll create a root item.
I created a local git repo I try and keep everything checked into; I might push it up to a private github/bitbucket repo eventually, but I haven't been careful with scrubbing credentials from shell snippets so leerly on pushing anywhere remote.
The author, as well as most everyone in the comments here, have apparently never heard of org-mode. Yeah, I can understand that for some people emacs is a non-starter, but trust me, if you want to do it, I can just about guarantee it's possible in org-mode. It's just that flexible, and everyone's org-mode setup is different, customized to their needs.
https://notes.stavros.io/
I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
> I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream? Almost like a cross of the github "X starred Y" stream and Twitter (with none of the social-y features). I favorite a lot of things from day to day and would love to know what others are favoriting/finding as well.
Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I'd love to make it possible to also share-from-joplin for single notes but that feature isn't there yet. The only way to make it happen otherwise would be synchronizing somewhere unencrypted (!) and then asking that somewhere to "publish" your notes. Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles" or any way to separate encryption keys or which notes are and aren't encrypted... it's hard to do that as well..
Agreed, I looked for a plugin but unfortunately found none.
> Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream?
I don't really use bookmarks, whenever I come across an interesting page I put it in https://historio.us, but they're too few to make a stream out of...
> Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
> Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles"
Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
Interesting! I'd never heard of historious, thanks for the link. I'm quite surprised that using that is easier than hitting Ctrl+D (in Firefox anyway), and doing the management there. I totally get it though.
> I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
Yep, I can see that, many who find their way to joplin are quite technologically independent and came to joplin precisely because of those reasons. I guess not many people would really want hosted WebDav when you can just hook up NextCloud/S3/OneDrive/etc.
> Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
Yeah -- tags would definitely be the way, but the problem is that I'd want someone to be able to publish an update from their phone (or at least from every platform possible), and be able to keep their encryption. Just spitballing, but imagine serving a sync/backup service that happens to also be able to spit out md-derived websites very very easily. Notion and it's ilk have features like that and people seem very excited about it. A notebook as a blogging platform also seems interesting/incredibly low friction. Could even be a podcasting platform if you attached audio to notes.
It's easier because I just hit a different shortcut and don't need to do any management at all afterwards, I can just search the content.
> I guess not many people would really want hosted WebDav when you can just hook up NextCloud/S3/OneDrive/etc.
Many people probably would, just not me :P
> A notebook as a blogging platform also seems interesting/incredibly low friction.
Yep, hence my idea of "notes as a site" in my first comment.
Reasonable, I clicked around their demo and I think I can see the value there.
> Yep, hence my idea of "notes as a site" in my first comment.
yeah this sounded like it'd fit great with the other hosted webdav thing, thanks for talking through it a bit!
That's exactly what I want to do too. Increasing the friction makes people less likely to share, so I want the community to feel very casual, so people aren't afraid to post even single-sentence brain dumps.
> For those who share their notes/kb publicly, whats your strategy?
You mean those who have already shared them? The advantage of a centralized site would be improved searchability, so you'd help more people.
Since I don't really aim to make money from this, it'd be open source, sort of like a Neocities vibe.
Would you like to email me at hi@stavros.io if you're interested (and whoever else reads this comment, please feel free). If I do end up making this I'll make it invite-only so I don't have to worry about spam (at least at first), and this would be a nice way to have a few early testers.
If I feel that a certain note can become its own piece of knowledge in a Zettlekasten fashion and can have any value for someone else, I put it in my public file and I run a script that will copy it to my hosting provider. My public site is a single file! [1].
[0] https://tiddlywiki.com/
[1] https://ramirosalas.com/
[0] https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/GRkskZRzj_o
TiddlyWiki has been around for a very long time, and it keeps evolving. My personal file has over 3,000 Tiddlers and it keeps growing. It's unbelievable all you can do in a single file with just HTML and JavaScript. As long as those standards exist in 20-30 years, I can be sure my files, all tags and all relationships are still available and highly usable.
[0] https://akhater.github.io/drift/
[1] https://tiddlywiki.com/
[2] https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/
[3] https://ramirosalas.com
In the end, I ended up using Obsidian (https://obsidian.md). While typing (even in an outside editor), I can just go [[random reference]] -- and that will turn into a link, even if that page doesn't exist yet. When I eventually get to creating the page, it will already have back links from all the places it is used (something else I think Joplin doesn't have).
For my Zettelkasten and writing I use Obsidian. They are fantastic in tandem.
Why I won't be using it:
* If I live in Markdown, I want to edit it WYSIWYG. Maybe that's wrong, but I don't want to live in .md code mode (for this reason, I miss Evernote). I author in Typora, but I don't want to keep notes in MD.
* It's sync-ing options don't map to the most used syncing tech on desktops these days. I'd have to pay for Dropbox (given my current ecosystem) just to use it to sync.
* I want folders and sub-folders. Folders and tags don't work for me.
* I wish these systems had a built-in journal mode, like Roam.
- If you talk about google drive, you can use the file system sync and sync from there
- you can create notebooks and sub-notebooks
If you are still on the search, there is a great list: https://old.reddit.com/r/Evernote/comments/j87fb9/please_hel...
Still the best tree editor I've found. I left emacs for it!
Vim has folding as a basic feature of the editor binary, not some aftermarket script. So editing operations on folded regions always do what you expect.
This allows you to throw extra features in the HTML like searching for files and randomly selecting a note for viewing at your leisure.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25300423
I love the idea that I have a place to publish random stuff that I don't have to spend lots of time writing, I can just drop a sentence and maybe someone else will find it useful.
The big problem is that Google will basically never give you that page in a result, no matter how relevant it may be to your query, because it prefers SEO-rich content farms like Wikihow. I was thinking that a service would at least be easier to search/remember to go to.
Whenever I copy-paste stuff that might be useful I leave it there. Stuff like stacktraces, class:line_number when I was searching where something happens, links to webpages related to the task.
I was keeping a notepad tab open at all times anyway to keep context when I was doing something (otherwise I forget when I'm back from lunch and have to search again). So this is only making this context permanent and searcheable.
Then when I do something 3 months later and get a stacktrace I vaguely remember or other problem that I can imagine what the keyword would be - I just grep in that directory and find all the context needed, including jira task, commits, all related webpages, etc.
I also write short free-text notes there, but these are usually very short and less important than the copy-pasted stuff.
I use Sublime and I love scrolling. The second makes the system in TFTA not good for me, and given the first, I didn't mind my implementation being editor specific - but the principal is dead simple, as to not really matter.
I have a small custom function stored in Sublimes user package folder which, when called using the [cmd]+[shift]+p command palette will insert a small template in the top of the current file (my `daily.txt`).
This is just a headline with the date, and name of day of week and Two lines called start and end (with datetime filled in in start) let's me keep loose track of my hours.
I also have a sub-heading that says to-do, with two `[ ] ...` txt checkboxes already added, another headline called did and a line that separates it from the previous day.
"To-do" is for things I plan on doing, "did" is for ad-hoc things I ended up doing. This helps me keep track of how much work I actually did, which is nice for days where everything is meetings and firefighting and I don't close issues in the tracker or PRs in git.
I can use go-to symbol to jump to a date, or just search the document for key words. Like I said, I like scrolling, and enjoy being able to just scroll down to see the previous day.
The system is like I said dead simple, easy to operate, easy for anyone to implement and customize to their liking. I've used mine for a few months and it has been great!
Has been working for me for years now.
You could also try Wekan[1], which is awesome on desktop, but I found the mobile interface unusable.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.dmfs.tasks/
[1] https://wekan.github.io/
Does next loud have mobile apps?
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/it.niedermann.nextcloud.deck
So they can store all they want while I enjoy their free products.
I would so strongly recommended everyone reading this to check out Roam Research (https://roamresearch.com/). At it's core, it's a collection of text notes in the cloud. Just open it up and start typing your thoughts down. No folders or hierarchy. The key enabler is that is that you can link together different pages. Roam Research helps you make so much better sense of your thoughts - I use it personally to plan out goals, projects, brainstorm research, track meetings/dates, and keep a daily log of everything I go through. I can't recommend it enough - even my dad started using it everyday after I showed him.
Just try it out and starting typing a few notes. It'll start off as a simple graph for text notes / documents, but there are so many more powerful features to discover, too.
EDIT: Roam is a cloud-based service, notes are not end-to-end encrypted. It doesn't bother me, but if it bothers you, there are many open source, offline-first alternatives that the community has created (emacs-org, Foam, Obsidian, etc.). I am in no way sponsored by Roam, I don't know anybody at Roam, I don't run any of those bullshit Roam courses, and Roam is expensive as fuck, but let me tell you this: there are so many features and UI optimizations that make Roam have the best user experience. Don't compromise your time and user experience.
That way it'd end up as a branching tree the way an actual zettelkasten would and would probably be more searchable.