The author makes some points about the benefits of doing this, but I really think he's making things more difficult for himself. Even a basic note-taking app would provide a much larger number of features and be equally easy to use. It's quirky idea but it's really not that practical.
Sometimes its good to remember that the best method is the one that you actually use - the author clearly uses their method! You could also argue that reducing your number of dependencies to a calendar and a note file is actually quite practical. It depends on your perspective.
Nope. A note-taking application would not work for 12 years. And it certainly wouldn't work for the 20+ years I've been using a single .txt file. The longevity and ease of longevity of simple plain text is the major benefit.
But what about an application wrapper around plain text files, like Obsidian or a Markdown editor? You get some benefits while the files are also saved in plain-text format.
What benefits? My notes are now full of someone elses arbitrary mark-up I get to see with my eyes? That's just clutter. I doubt those programs have existed for more than a handful of years and I doubt they'll exist longer than that into the future.
I had exactly that line of thought for decades. My notes files go back to 1999.
That's why I'm so happy with org-mode. Seriously give it a try. It's syntax is not far from what I was using on my own - though it seems that I independently invented Mardown - just that it uses a * for headings rather than # (which I choose because of C comments). Org-mode has been around since around the turn of the century I think. And I'm happy to open the org-mode files in VIM and edit them there if need be.
It's been working for him for twelve years. I think that's pretty practical.
App require maintenance and are out of your control; right now a chunk of my personal process is a mess because some stuff depended on Evernote. Which was great for about a decade until it got a complete rewrite as an Electron app, and now it's super slow and keeps adding new "friendly" stuff that gets in between me and my notes. I haven't found a replacement that's not full of its own problems and it's impossible to downgrade to the old, perfectly functional native apps on the iThings (and eventually an OS update will break all the apps), it's incredibly frustrating. The parts of my process that depend on writing stuff down in a paper journal, meanwhile, continue to work exactly the same.
Same here, native Evernote has worked fine for me, but the Electron version adds too much latency, and the writing/reading of notes feels different in a worse way.
Apple Notes will let you import directly from an Evernote export, but it is missing some features (no note links, no quick search/jump, hard to navigate nested folders as notes are hidden by default, no export).
> The author makes some points about the benefits of doing this, but I really think he's making things more difficult for himself. Even a basic note-taking app would provide a much larger number of features and be equally easy to use.
Yeah, and probably online-only. Or, if offline-use is allowed, probably use as much memory as his system has free...
And, of course, every 2 years it would stop being supported, be sold to another company, turned into online-only and contain non-stop ads, and he'd maybe switch to a new app.
And relearn how to take notes again.
> It's quirky idea but it's really not that practical.
Seems pretty practical to me:
1. Easy and flexible searching.
2. Very quick to add notes to (Double-clicking on a .txt file takes maybe 250ms to open in Vim).
3. Versioning, if you want it (add it to your repo).
4. Online-editing if he wants that (host it on a WebDAV server).
5. Viewable (and likely editable) on every single device he owns, even his TV if its hosted somewhere.
Downsides:
1. No Ads.
2. Not forced into learning a new workflow every few years.
3. Doesn't cost anything.
(Admittedly, the downside is only a downside for those in the business of trrr to replace the text file)..
I used a plain text file for about 5-6 years before finding org-mode in 2009. Of course, I technically still use a plain text file since that's what Org uses, just with some extra features that make organizing things specific to productivity easier.
That said, I'm not sure I'd exclusively use a plain text file or even Org if I had to break my day down into as low as 15 minute chunks like this guy. I find the text-based approach to work best for longer-term planning/strategizing and just keeping yourself from forgetting stuff over the course of days. It also works better if you're already on your computer and using your text editor all day and/or SSH-ing into a box with the file. If I need to remember to make it to 4 meetings today at very specific times, something that pushes notifications and upcoming meeting warnings might accommodate that better.
I've had meeting-heavy jobs, and split off the meeting management into Outlook (or similar) with good results. Useful info that flows out of meetings can still go into your notes to be organized later though. Then I make my GTD list "task-centric", meaning that it focuses on getting discrete activities started and completed, with less focus on times/dates. That requires some level of freedom to manage your own time though, so it's not for everyone.
This was one of the few text-based philosophies that helped me settle with a "mostly" plain-text lifestyle.
It is not about the tools that gives you all the features but the freedom to be free of tools and just pick up the raw things right away anywhere, anytime, even if it requires more learning in the beginning.
After a while, the habits, the processes just become muscle memory. One may indeed use a tool on the top when one is comfortable with how the plain text is organized.
The key to this solution isn’t really the .txt file or the formatting.
It’s the ritual. Any productivity system can be made to work once it becomes a habit and therefore your default action.
I think .txt files or Org mode are attractive to devs because they feel like something we’d be doing anyway during our day. the same system will work with a paper journal or even a fresh piece of paper every morning if, and only if, it can be integrated into your natural daily workflow as an automatic habit. I personally found that paper is better for me because I get to it before unlocking my computer and being confronted with work and communications and notifications that compete with it. However, I have a lot of peers who couldn’t hang on to a paper journal or TODO list during the day if they tried, so digital formats win.
The real key is to make it a habit and learn to stick with it.
My favorite system for knowledge management is Google Docs(due to obvious advantages- online drive, WYSIWYG etc), and for metadata/task-management tasks(GTD, working things out, mind maps, todo lists, solving software problems) is a plain cheap notebook and a pen.
If you study GTD the hardest aspects of GTD are sticking to routine, and it's very easy to fall off the GTD routine. Its hard to do weekly reviews, its hard to create next tasks etc etc.
This comment was downvoted when I got here, but it's very very relevant. Thank the creator that I've never been locked out of an account, but I've seen it happen enough times to be terrified of putting critical infrastructure on a single provider.
GP should be diligent to download his spreadsheets periodically.
Most work related knowledge should go on work place infrastructure online document store, at the same time its a total waste of time to re invent a clone of stack overflow. Any general knowledge information I'd want to look up, is already available on the internet. Work information, tribal knowledge- should never go on a personal Google Drive.
At the same time my notebook information is a mix of personal things, work things and lots of other notes, scribblings, and free form information(mind maps, doodling, random writing), I need this just because creating a meta-data knowledge graph, list in the brain is just too much work, stressful and its like a offline store for your brain's functions.
Software tools don't work well for this kind of information input and putting it in either GDrive would not be good. Hence the notebook and pen.
Another big thing I've noticed is the personal productivity system is a catalyst that helps you do work, its not your main work itself. There is little incentive in storing what time you went to gym ten years back. Information/Feature pollution is a bug not a feature.
Unfortunately, Org-mode in emacs, like anything in emacs is a full time project in itself, a huge time sink that has little return on time investment. Use a tool to make your life better. Don't spend time wandering in sub goals trying to make the tool, that makes your life better. The former gives results, the latter is just a long play time sink, where you will forever make the tool better, you will never arrive at making your life better.
How else would you store images if you did it on a text file? Links to your hard drive?
Notice at some point you are just making a wiki. And of course now you have the added effort budget of maintaining the wiki on top of your regular work.
I have seen random posts on the internet where people were migrating their notes systems to org mode or markdown. If you ask me that's too much meta work to do, in order to do your main work.
The entire idea behind making a knowledge system, or a todo system is to help you do things. If you are doing whole project to set these things up, I wonder what the actual goal of this system even is.
Org mode can display images inline. They’re obviously not stored on the file itself, but I keep everything under a single directory hierarchy and it works ok for my use cases.
I migrated to org from Things some 12 years ago and since I started bare-bones (just todo entries, no special config) and grew as my needs arose, I never felt I had to invest lots of time in my setup.
Agree that some people overdo things and the tools become projects on their own though.
I was using Google Docs until one day an inspector demanded my PERSONAL Google account credentials because they were inspecting the company I worked for - for something I wasn't even involved in.
They got a court order, contacted Google, and did a Google Takeout of literally all of my data.
Now I use markdown doc on a remotely encrypted share via WinSCP.
I used to have that quote posted on my bathroom mirror - now it's just ingrained. It applies to so many parts of life, whether it's exercise, productivity, starting a business or building relationships.
Related is that motivation is fleeting and only leads to individual acts. Discipline on the other hand is what builds habits. It's what you do day and and day out that leads to success or failure.
I think the "motivation" that people consider fleeting is actually inspiration (like when you have a new project idea and stay up overnight excitedly working on it).
Discipline is important, but without motivation you will end up doubting why you are working so hard on something you don't care about. In my mind, motivation is continually reminding yourself of what outcomes you're working towards, so you don't lose sight of why you're working so hard.
For example, motivating yourself to work out by thinking of that sporting hobby you'll be able to take up or thinking about how great you'll feel when you've reached your goal weight.
I'd still say it's correctly attributed b/c it was based on Aristotle's thoughts. One way or another, his words need to be translated because he didn't speak English.
Looks like the quote was from Will Durant, based on an Aristotle saying.
>"Virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions," Aristotle said. The writer Will Durant interpreted it thusly: "We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit."
https://dailystoic.com/we-are-what-we-repeatedly-do/
I think a more accurate translation of Aristotle's quote is simple, "virtues are actions, not words." It's more about actions speaking louder than words.
There is a distinction here; actions are not by themselves virtuous. Two people can seem to have the same actions/habit but only one of them does it from the heart. Getting back to the quote from Durant; just because you ace the test or have your peers eating from your hand, does not mean you have acheived excellence.
What Aristotle talks about in Ethics is not only a habit or actions but also what drives that.
Professional artists are really interesting to listen to when they talk about their productivity routines. Since many of them work alone, they are more prone to not accomplishing anything.
The successful ones have a repeatable process for balancing creativity with the time required to produce a work of art. They tend to have a daily practice of challenging / improving their skills. They setup a dedicated studio, and work at reducing disruptions and so on.
I am a professional artist and I have to disagree with this. Once creative work becomes the thing you spend a large part of your life doing, you cannot rely on just sitting around waiting for inspiration.
Creative workers regularly discuss the ways to get ourselves to work when we feel a total lack of inspiration for something with a looming deadline, as well as ways to create conditions where some kind of creative inspiration is more likely.
There is also the fact that sometimes "inspiration" can lead to a long process, I am finally nearing the end of a multi-year process of grinding away at drawing a comic book that came from the simple idea of "what if I told a story from two sides, with the characters changing designs to ones that scream 'Good Guys' or 'Bad Guys' depending on which side we are currently following".
> I am finally nearing the end of a multi-year process of grinding away at drawing a comic book that came from the simple idea of "what if I told a story from two sides, with the characters changing designs to ones that scream 'Good Guys' or 'Bad Guys' depending on which side we are currently following".
That sounds cool.
Game of Thrones was like that. You just got a good hate on, for one of the characters, and they went and spoiled it, by telling their story.
The Boltons were bad news, though. Even the author hated them.
Agree. I made this realization when at the end of every month I needed to submit my daily work log along with my client invoices I would cobble together notes scattered in different apps, conversations, notebooks, etc. I ended up building an app that would text myself (at the same time every day) a reminder to log what I had done for the day. After a while I didn't need the reminder, I would open up my phone a few minutes before the text would come through, jot down a few things and done.
I ended up releasing the note-taking/reminder app as a subscription service [0], for reasons most obvious. Over time I wanted more from these notes...
I wanted a way to separate notes of different clients -- folders.
I wanted a way to categorize all notes related to different topics of interest -- tags.
I wanted an email to send me a summary of notes in a folder to submit my invoice or produce a weekend reading list -- email summaries.
I wanted to do all my bookkeeping in my notes, and on..
I ended up releasing the parser for the notes as an open source lib [1]. Which could add a nice layer on top of any plain-text note system running locally.
This is quite a nice platform -- I was looking into the SMS space recently as well and thought a similar UI (using SMS to get notifications around) would work.
I'm curious, do many people use the SMS note save feature? Or is many people the wrong unit of measure for an SMS service? (I've wondered if users would have a reversion to things like this as well...)
SMS has been a surprising key to success. I think because messaging is such a routine, having the note-taking ability embedded creates more surface area between the note-taker and the thing that saves the notes. The named contact that shows up in your recent messages or the share menu listing recent contacts are areas you might trigger the impulse to save something.
> However, I have a lot of peers who couldn’t hang on to a paper journal or TODO list during the day if they tried
A bit more meta is that the habit itself is primarily all I need. I journal, write things down, etc... and almost never look at them again. The habit of doing is all it takes for me to set my day on the right trajectory.
Yeah, I'm a pen and paper guy. Make a list of things to do each day and start at the top. If I don't finish the list, it's the beginning of the next day's list.
Definitely true, but sometimes the lack of sane tooling makes it harder to follow rituals. I used to use the same format as the OP in a text editor, but struggled with the daily grind of copying items around and carrying over todos from the last day. Paper is much better for this, but messy (even with scanning).
In the end I wrote a small tool to assist with starting each day with a blank journal and all remaining items from the last day. Syntax is primarily markdown. Everything stays in a single text file.
You can write them everywhere, read them everywhere, send them everywhere, effortlessly back them up and copy them. You absolutely own a text file on your computer. They're maximally cross-compatible (barring some quirks like UNIX/DOS linebreaks). Every computer and phone has a basic text processor.
Compare with a dedicated tool like Evernote - I now have to worry about the installing it, maintaining it, having my workflow broken by a new update, the developers selling my data to China, etc.
I'm quite familiar with the CommonMark syntax that I use it without really thinking, so I write down my plaintext notes that way, and if I need to "beautify" it before sending it to someone then most of the legwork is already done.
Mine is a notebook and a pen. Whatever isn't in the last 3 pages deserves to be forgotten and not done unless it reappears through another context in which case it gets re-added.
Writing with a pen also has the advantage that working remotely, people do not wonder if you're sending slack messages or emails instead of paying attention because you're typing. My notebook also doesn't need any privacy features.
A commonly stated benefit of the text file is that it's searchable and easy to backup. If you only care about the last three pages, then searching isn't a problem and if you lose it you've only lost three pages of value. That's probably not a huge problem as well.
For your last point about working remotely, I sometimes wonder if I spend a few hours working through some problem on paper, my chat avatar will go to inactive ("last seen 23 minutes ago") and people might think I've wandered off.
>>A commonly stated benefit of the text file is that it's searchable and easy to backup.
Not all data is same.
Personal Knowledge Database is not the same as metadata things like todo lists, often todo lists don't need searching, back up etc.
Also one must look at tools as things to achieve end goals, not as goals themselves. Data pollution is a thing, and having extra things isnt always good.
I do something similar but with apple notes. Still simple but I get a bit of formatting and some checkboxes, tags and decent search. I can also create reminders that link back to highlighted parts of a note.
You can also add images, scan in documents with your phone or tablet camera, you can sketch with the Apple Pencil (on an iPad), and it does OCR on images you paste in so you can take a picture of a whiteboard and the text on it will be indexed.
My big complaint is that there isn't a decent Windows client. I sometimes will use the web version, but it's maddening because some of the keystrokes for things like word left or word right (ctrl-arrow) don't work.
Same here. The best part is that I spend zero brain cycles in thinking where to file a note before I write it; pretty much every note is in a generic Notes folder.
I have one exception: any 1:1 meeting with a person gets its own note and those go in a specific folder. One note per person and a bullet list under a date, with talking points. I also use this ahead of meetings; when I suddenly think of something I need to discuss with someone, I add it to their note. Then when I meet them, it's part of my agenda.
It's also searcheable so if I need to refresh my memory about an older discussion, whether it took place and when, it's a few keywords away.
I use a simple text file, too. It has four sections: "major", "minor", "done", and a section for random thoughts. Every evening, I copy the file (with remaining unfinished tasks) and give it a new name (for example, "December 23, 2021"). This way I also have a history of everything. It has worked well so far.
I can see why a simple text file is working for many people.
Anything that requires you to wait for a program to start, a window to appear, or a webpage to load is very detrimental to the mental mode of note taking because thoughts change even on the slightest of latency. It should be as immediate as picking up a notebook from the table that has a pen attached to it.
Yeah this is important for me. My work day is organised with Jira tickets, and we all know how klunky the Jira interface can be, so I installed one of the Jira cli clients[1] and it's invaluable. I can do all my ticket management from the terminal just as if I was working with text files. Editing or commenting on a ticket opens it in vim for me.
I have a few scripts on top of the client to make things even easier like sprint to see tickets in the current sprint, jv to view a ticket, take to grab a ticket, transition to transition a ticket and slackscrum to push the tickets I've worked on today to slack for my scrum update.
Your laptop would also have Mercurial installed. You would clone from and push to the server. You could view the server content from any client using a browser.
I do not ask for any kingdom, but a good friendship is always welcome. ^_^
My productivity app is a Git repository (that happens to be a GitLab wiki git repository at $WORK as well) with my "priority queue" text file and the following bash function. The contents of the text file are similar to what Jeff Huang describes in the blog post (but MUCH less organized). Since it's in version control, I can freely delete old content that's no longer relevant for my day-to-day, and then I frequently use git log -p to search for old text in the file if it becomes relevant. The bash command also pushes and pulls automatically, so it can be used across my devices.
That rebase doesn’t lose any history, it’s just flattening the commit sequence coming from multiple computers. This is a good normal/default workflow for personal repos.
As dahart mentions in a sibling comment, the todo-list doesn't operate with branching - all edits are performed by one person according to the real-time circumstances. Any Git history divergence is a matter of technical accident and not an expression of feature branching/merging.
I have something similar, a folder full of text files that gets automatically committed to a git repo. Each file is a note or todo list item. When I want to review or search through things I do `cat *.txt | less` or similar. When I finish an item I just delete the file and commit. That keeps it tidy while also keeping an archive of old items if I need it (in practice I rarely do).
I used to try various productivity apps because I thought I needed something to help with reducing the "amount of willpower" I needed to keep a to do list.
Ultimately I realized I had been using Sublime Text for years to take temporary notes in a very unorganized manner. Since April 2021 I'm happy with the todo lists/notes I keep in Sublime.
This is pretty similar how I work also. I use iA Writer but could be any text editor obviously. However I keep this for things that are 'active'. I also use Things as it is a simple todo list but has a few nice feature and can remind me of stuff unlike a text file :)
I keep things very simple though. I never found modern "productivity apps" very helpful personally. They all require too much work to maintain like Notion, etc.
I'd like to try a better version of using the default notes app on iphone. I keep attempting over the years to keep at it but end up never reviewing the notes. I have half the battle down...I use it for a crazy amount of ideas but yea, definitely need to adopt a more consistent routine. Interesting to see what others do like this article
My productivity app is basically this txt file, but with the vanilla apple notes app + a apple shortcut script that I write that generates the template for that week. It works really well.
I create a new dated file every day and edit it on Vim.
I think this is the ideal middle point: I can easily go back and see old information, but I also don't feel that I'm "wasting" important space if I feel like writing down more things in a particular day.
I've always kept a text file or spreadsheet of things to do, priorities, etc... My biggest problem isn't keeping a list and getting organized, it's remembering to look at my list. I tend to space out for days working on a problem and forget to look at my list.
I've experienced a big productivity boost by using the desktop background of my 43" monitor as a whiteboard (blackboard actually). I have an jpg the size of my monitor that I jot things down on as text on the image. I can store meaningful small images the trigger my memory to do something. I've become so used to visually thinking about what I'm doing that I switched my text file todo list to markdown so I could store images in it.
It's surprisingly quick to keep my large jpg open in paint and jot or paste things to it and then reset it as the desktop background. I learned later this is called a "vision board"
Still, I'm so bad at spacing out that I need more than looking at my vision board monitor all day, so I use the Windows system scheduler to bring up a daily, weekly and monthly html file that reminds me to do things.
I do something similar for language learning, every new tab in Firefox shows a flashcard. If I'm in the middle of something I can ignore it but when my minds already wandering I tend to notice the word there, hopefully it helps.
I'm working on a simple flash card app for learning. People have decided to call those "wisdom cards" and I plan to have a folder of them for my app to bring up once in awhile.
The coolest thing about vision board desktop background is that I save them every two weeks or so and start another. I now have a folder of two years of my thinking in visual form that's easy to review in just a few minutes. It may be that this works for me because I'm a visual person and others need to write it down and rewrite it down often to learn it.
There's a few Firefox extensions to do it, one of which "Flashcard New Tab" I was able to write a bit of javascript to paste into the console to bulk import a word list. It's a hack but it works for me. You might be able to find more complete solutions around.
For another approach of keeping a todo-list in a .txt file one may also look at the syntax of todotxt. I use Todotxt.net on Windows for several years now with nextcloud sync and SwifttoDo on iOS and am quite happy with it.
>A text file is incredibly flexible, and at any point, I can quickly glance to see what I've done that day and what's left. When a task is completed, which is the most common default, I just leave it. [...] I use Ultraedit because I'm familiar with it
I've also been using a plain "todo.txt" for 20+ years and also use UltraEdit. So far, it's been better than alternatives such as Borland Sidekick, PalmPilot gadgets, Evernote.
I agree with all the positives the author laid out but I also recognize there are serious limitations with my reliance on "todo.txt".
- no "live" schedule of upcoming events because there's no runtime that turns the text file into active reminders and a countdown of when things are due. A lot of people have a "inner clock" in their head and don't need countdowns but my brain seems to to lack this. E.g. the author has example of "11:30am meet with student Enya" and when I write entries like that, the 11:30am time comes and goes because I got distracted.
- not editable by others. Sometimes, important people in my life remind me I need to do X,Y,Z but I often don't get around to the tedious data entry of adding it to to the text so it gets overlooked.
The issues above are solved better by a cloud or smartphone app but I'd miss the instant access speed and flexibility of the text file. That's why I'm working on some tools to create a runtime that converts my "todo.txt" into something that pings me on my smartphone and gives me a better live dashboard for activities.
Author of the posted article here. You raise fair points.
For live scheduling, I generally have my meetings clumped together so I just go to the next meeting or take a break when one is over. If it's a sporadic meeting day, there's still the calendar on my phone as a backup alarm in case I forget. So far I've missed maybe a handful of meetings over the past 14 years, so it hasn't really been an issue.
People can schedule on my calendar the regular way, but I don't like them editing or even viewing my todo/done file because I make a lot of quick personal notes that I'm not ready for others to read, like my thoughts about someone's talk or paper.
I have been doing this for about 3 or 4 years too. I wouldn't say it necessarily makes you "productive" unless you work in a very isolated fashion.
By whittling it down to the bare essentials you at least know if you are unproductive it's not because you are faffing around with the tracking of your own tasks.
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[ 1.0 ms ] story [ 249 ms ] threadThat's why I'm so happy with org-mode. Seriously give it a try. It's syntax is not far from what I was using on my own - though it seems that I independently invented Mardown - just that it uses a * for headings rather than # (which I choose because of C comments). Org-mode has been around since around the turn of the century I think. And I'm happy to open the org-mode files in VIM and edit them there if need be.
App require maintenance and are out of your control; right now a chunk of my personal process is a mess because some stuff depended on Evernote. Which was great for about a decade until it got a complete rewrite as an Electron app, and now it's super slow and keeps adding new "friendly" stuff that gets in between me and my notes. I haven't found a replacement that's not full of its own problems and it's impossible to downgrade to the old, perfectly functional native apps on the iThings (and eventually an OS update will break all the apps), it's incredibly frustrating. The parts of my process that depend on writing stuff down in a paper journal, meanwhile, continue to work exactly the same.
Apple Notes will let you import directly from an Evernote export, but it is missing some features (no note links, no quick search/jump, hard to navigate nested folders as notes are hidden by default, no export).
Yeah, and probably online-only. Or, if offline-use is allowed, probably use as much memory as his system has free...
And, of course, every 2 years it would stop being supported, be sold to another company, turned into online-only and contain non-stop ads, and he'd maybe switch to a new app.
And relearn how to take notes again.
> It's quirky idea but it's really not that practical.
Seems pretty practical to me:
1. Easy and flexible searching.
2. Very quick to add notes to (Double-clicking on a .txt file takes maybe 250ms to open in Vim).
3. Versioning, if you want it (add it to your repo).
4. Online-editing if he wants that (host it on a WebDAV server).
5. Viewable (and likely editable) on every single device he owns, even his TV if its hosted somewhere.
Downsides:
1. No Ads.
2. Not forced into learning a new workflow every few years.
3. Doesn't cost anything.
(Admittedly, the downside is only a downside for those in the business of trrr to replace the text file)..
Here is a simple system in Markdown that I've been using for some time: https://github.com/YJPL/personal-kanban.
That said, I'm not sure I'd exclusively use a plain text file or even Org if I had to break my day down into as low as 15 minute chunks like this guy. I find the text-based approach to work best for longer-term planning/strategizing and just keeping yourself from forgetting stuff over the course of days. It also works better if you're already on your computer and using your text editor all day and/or SSH-ing into a box with the file. If I need to remember to make it to 4 meetings today at very specific times, something that pushes notifications and upcoming meeting warnings might accommodate that better.
I've had meeting-heavy jobs, and split off the meeting management into Outlook (or similar) with good results. Useful info that flows out of meetings can still go into your notes to be organized later though. Then I make my GTD list "task-centric", meaning that it focuses on getting discrete activities started and completed, with less focus on times/dates. That requires some level of freedom to manage your own time though, so it's not for everyone.
It is not about the tools that gives you all the features but the freedom to be free of tools and just pick up the raw things right away anywhere, anytime, even if it requires more learning in the beginning.
After a while, the habits, the processes just become muscle memory. One may indeed use a tool on the top when one is comfortable with how the plain text is organized.
It’s the ritual. Any productivity system can be made to work once it becomes a habit and therefore your default action.
I think .txt files or Org mode are attractive to devs because they feel like something we’d be doing anyway during our day. the same system will work with a paper journal or even a fresh piece of paper every morning if, and only if, it can be integrated into your natural daily workflow as an automatic habit. I personally found that paper is better for me because I get to it before unlocking my computer and being confronted with work and communications and notifications that compete with it. However, I have a lot of peers who couldn’t hang on to a paper journal or TODO list during the day if they tried, so digital formats win.
The real key is to make it a habit and learn to stick with it.
My favorite system for knowledge management is Google Docs(due to obvious advantages- online drive, WYSIWYG etc), and for metadata/task-management tasks(GTD, working things out, mind maps, todo lists, solving software problems) is a plain cheap notebook and a pen.
If you study GTD the hardest aspects of GTD are sticking to routine, and it's very easy to fall off the GTD routine. Its hard to do weekly reviews, its hard to create next tasks etc etc.
Once you establish a cycle that works, its magic.
GP should be diligent to download his spreadsheets periodically.
At the same time my notebook information is a mix of personal things, work things and lots of other notes, scribblings, and free form information(mind maps, doodling, random writing), I need this just because creating a meta-data knowledge graph, list in the brain is just too much work, stressful and its like a offline store for your brain's functions.
Software tools don't work well for this kind of information input and putting it in either GDrive would not be good. Hence the notebook and pen.
Another big thing I've noticed is the personal productivity system is a catalyst that helps you do work, its not your main work itself. There is little incentive in storing what time you went to gym ten years back. Information/Feature pollution is a bug not a feature.
Unfortunately, Org-mode in emacs, like anything in emacs is a full time project in itself, a huge time sink that has little return on time investment. Use a tool to make your life better. Don't spend time wandering in sub goals trying to make the tool, that makes your life better. The former gives results, the latter is just a long play time sink, where you will forever make the tool better, you will never arrive at making your life better.
[0] https://cryptpad.fr/
Notice at some point you are just making a wiki. And of course now you have the added effort budget of maintaining the wiki on top of your regular work.
I have seen random posts on the internet where people were migrating their notes systems to org mode or markdown. If you ask me that's too much meta work to do, in order to do your main work.
The entire idea behind making a knowledge system, or a todo system is to help you do things. If you are doing whole project to set these things up, I wonder what the actual goal of this system even is.
I migrated to org from Things some 12 years ago and since I started bare-bones (just todo entries, no special config) and grew as my needs arose, I never felt I had to invest lots of time in my setup.
Agree that some people overdo things and the tools become projects on their own though.
Everything can break in weird ways. What you said is equivalent to, well, if the US internet infrastructure was attacked and disabled.
They got a court order, contacted Google, and did a Google Takeout of literally all of my data.
Now I use markdown doc on a remotely encrypted share via WinSCP.
Related is that motivation is fleeting and only leads to individual acts. Discipline on the other hand is what builds habits. It's what you do day and and day out that leads to success or failure.
Discipline is important, but without motivation you will end up doubting why you are working so hard on something you don't care about. In my mind, motivation is continually reminding yourself of what outcomes you're working towards, so you don't lose sight of why you're working so hard.
For example, motivating yourself to work out by thinking of that sporting hobby you'll be able to take up or thinking about how great you'll feel when you've reached your goal weight.
Lisa: Where does a man get inspiration to write a song like that?
Jeff: He gets it from the landlady once a month.
Another one that I like, and it isn’t clear who said it first, is:
>"Virtues are formed in man by his doing the actions," Aristotle said. The writer Will Durant interpreted it thusly: "We are what we repeatedly do… therefore excellence is not an act, but a habit." https://dailystoic.com/we-are-what-we-repeatedly-do/
What Aristotle talks about in Ethics is not only a habit or actions but also what drives that.
The successful ones have a repeatable process for balancing creativity with the time required to produce a work of art. They tend to have a daily practice of challenging / improving their skills. They setup a dedicated studio, and work at reducing disruptions and so on.
Creative workers regularly discuss the ways to get ourselves to work when we feel a total lack of inspiration for something with a looming deadline, as well as ways to create conditions where some kind of creative inspiration is more likely.
There is also the fact that sometimes "inspiration" can lead to a long process, I am finally nearing the end of a multi-year process of grinding away at drawing a comic book that came from the simple idea of "what if I told a story from two sides, with the characters changing designs to ones that scream 'Good Guys' or 'Bad Guys' depending on which side we are currently following".
That sounds cool.
Game of Thrones was like that. You just got a good hate on, for one of the characters, and they went and spoiled it, by telling their story.
The Boltons were bad news, though. Even the author hated them.
> I write only when inspiration strikes. Fortunately it strikes every morning at nine o’clock sharp.
I ended up releasing the note-taking/reminder app as a subscription service [0], for reasons most obvious. Over time I wanted more from these notes...
I wanted a way to separate notes of different clients -- folders. I wanted a way to categorize all notes related to different topics of interest -- tags. I wanted an email to send me a summary of notes in a folder to submit my invoice or produce a weekend reading list -- email summaries. I wanted to do all my bookkeeping in my notes, and on..
I ended up releasing the parser for the notes as an open source lib [1]. Which could add a nice layer on top of any plain-text note system running locally.
0. https://www.tatatap.com 1. https://github.com/tatatap-com/sowhat
I'm curious, do many people use the SMS note save feature? Or is many people the wrong unit of measure for an SMS service? (I've wondered if users would have a reversion to things like this as well...)
Edit: Just saw now, you've submitted this on showHN before, maybe tweak the timing for the post and the title for better results ?
A bit more meta is that the habit itself is primarily all I need. I journal, write things down, etc... and almost never look at them again. The habit of doing is all it takes for me to set my day on the right trajectory.
For some reason, I prefer pens over pencils.
In the end I wrote a small tool to assist with starting each day with a blank journal and all remaining items from the last day. Syntax is primarily markdown. Everything stays in a single text file.
https://github.com/coezbek/rodo
If you read it, TFA is more than just a folksy phrase like "make it a habit."
You can write them everywhere, read them everywhere, send them everywhere, effortlessly back them up and copy them. You absolutely own a text file on your computer. They're maximally cross-compatible (barring some quirks like UNIX/DOS linebreaks). Every computer and phone has a basic text processor.
Compare with a dedicated tool like Evernote - I now have to worry about the installing it, maintaining it, having my workflow broken by a new update, the developers selling my data to China, etc.
Writing with a pen also has the advantage that working remotely, people do not wonder if you're sending slack messages or emails instead of paying attention because you're typing. My notebook also doesn't need any privacy features.
For your last point about working remotely, I sometimes wonder if I spend a few hours working through some problem on paper, my chat avatar will go to inactive ("last seen 23 minutes ago") and people might think I've wandered off.
Not all data is same.
Personal Knowledge Database is not the same as metadata things like todo lists, often todo lists don't need searching, back up etc.
Also one must look at tools as things to achieve end goals, not as goals themselves. Data pollution is a thing, and having extra things isnt always good.
My big complaint is that there isn't a decent Windows client. I sometimes will use the web version, but it's maddening because some of the keystrokes for things like word left or word right (ctrl-arrow) don't work.
I have one exception: any 1:1 meeting with a person gets its own note and those go in a specific folder. One note per person and a bullet list under a date, with talking points. I also use this ahead of meetings; when I suddenly think of something I need to discuss with someone, I add it to their note. Then when I meet them, it's part of my agenda.
It's also searcheable so if I need to refresh my memory about an older discussion, whether it took place and when, it's a few keywords away.
Anything that requires you to wait for a program to start, a window to appear, or a webpage to load is very detrimental to the mental mode of note taking because thoughts change even on the slightest of latency. It should be as immediate as picking up a notebook from the table that has a pen attached to it.
I have a few scripts on top of the client to make things even easier like sprint to see tickets in the current sprint, jv to view a ticket, take to grab a ticket, transition to transition a ticket and slackscrum to push the tickets I've worked on today to slack for my scrum update.
[1] https://github.com/go-jira/jira
I used to find myself moving between random terminals so used curl webdav instead of DropBox.
python3 -m pip install mercurial
In addition to all the virtues of version control, Mercurial can also be run with an HTTP interface that is rather good.
Thus, you could have a main box at home with a main Mercurial repository and run the daemon in the root of the repository:
hg serve -d --config web.push_ssl=No --config "web.allow_push=*" -A hg-access.log -E hg-errors.log
Your laptop would also have Mercurial installed. You would clone from and push to the server. You could view the server content from any client using a browser.
I do not ask for any kingdom, but a good friendship is always welcome. ^_^
[1] https://www.mercurial-scm.org/
I'd like to improve on Google Docs when it comes to rapidly jotting personal notes/referring to to-dos across devices through the day.
I used to try various productivity apps because I thought I needed something to help with reducing the "amount of willpower" I needed to keep a to do list.
Ultimately I realized I had been using Sublime Text for years to take temporary notes in a very unorganized manner. Since April 2021 I'm happy with the todo lists/notes I keep in Sublime.
I keep things very simple though. I never found modern "productivity apps" very helpful personally. They all require too much work to maintain like Notion, etc.
I think this is the ideal middle point: I can easily go back and see old information, but I also don't feel that I'm "wasting" important space if I feel like writing down more things in a particular day.
I've experienced a big productivity boost by using the desktop background of my 43" monitor as a whiteboard (blackboard actually). I have an jpg the size of my monitor that I jot things down on as text on the image. I can store meaningful small images the trigger my memory to do something. I've become so used to visually thinking about what I'm doing that I switched my text file todo list to markdown so I could store images in it.
It's surprisingly quick to keep my large jpg open in paint and jot or paste things to it and then reset it as the desktop background. I learned later this is called a "vision board"
Still, I'm so bad at spacing out that I need more than looking at my vision board monitor all day, so I use the Windows system scheduler to bring up a daily, weekly and monthly html file that reminds me to do things.
The coolest thing about vision board desktop background is that I save them every two weeks or so and start another. I now have a folder of two years of my thinking in visual form that's easy to review in just a few minutes. It may be that this works for me because I'm a visual person and others need to write it down and rewrite it down often to learn it.
You need to put "Look at the list" on the list!
That sounds facetious, but for GTD it makes some sense. "Do maintenance on GTD" as one periodically-important goal.
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/p/microsoft-sticky-notes/9nb...
I've also been using a plain "todo.txt" for 20+ years and also use UltraEdit. So far, it's been better than alternatives such as Borland Sidekick, PalmPilot gadgets, Evernote.
I agree with all the positives the author laid out but I also recognize there are serious limitations with my reliance on "todo.txt".
- no "live" schedule of upcoming events because there's no runtime that turns the text file into active reminders and a countdown of when things are due. A lot of people have a "inner clock" in their head and don't need countdowns but my brain seems to to lack this. E.g. the author has example of "11:30am meet with student Enya" and when I write entries like that, the 11:30am time comes and goes because I got distracted.
- not editable by others. Sometimes, important people in my life remind me I need to do X,Y,Z but I often don't get around to the tedious data entry of adding it to to the text so it gets overlooked.
The issues above are solved better by a cloud or smartphone app but I'd miss the instant access speed and flexibility of the text file. That's why I'm working on some tools to create a runtime that converts my "todo.txt" into something that pings me on my smartphone and gives me a better live dashboard for activities.
For live scheduling, I generally have my meetings clumped together so I just go to the next meeting or take a break when one is over. If it's a sporadic meeting day, there's still the calendar on my phone as a backup alarm in case I forget. So far I've missed maybe a handful of meetings over the past 14 years, so it hasn't really been an issue.
People can schedule on my calendar the regular way, but I don't like them editing or even viewing my todo/done file because I make a lot of quick personal notes that I'm not ready for others to read, like my thoughts about someone's talk or paper.
By whittling it down to the bare essentials you at least know if you are unproductive it's not because you are faffing around with the tracking of your own tasks.