Ask HN: How do you maintain your daily log?

0. Unfortunately, I cannot find the link anymore. I think it was one of those "what I learned during my 50 years as a senior software engineer". The author possibly mentioned using Kate-editor. It was a really good article.

1. Espanso (free): https://espanso.org

2. Amazing Marvin (paid): https://amazingmarvin.com

3. Obsidian (free/subscription for sync): https://obsidian.md

4. Logseq (free): https://logseq.com

5. EasyOrg (paid): https://easyorgmode.com/

6. todo.txt format: https://github.com/todotxt/todo.txt

7. pter: https://github.com/vonshednob/pter

    # cat /etc/profile.d/notes.sh

    function notes()
    {
    if [ ! -z "$1" ]; then
     mkdir --mode=00750 -p ~/.notes
     Now=$(date '+%Y%m%d.%H%M.%S')
     echo -en "\n$Now\t$@\n\n" >> ~/.notes/notes.txt
    else
     echo "${Now}"
     cat ~/.notes/notes.txt 2>/dev/null
     fi
    }

Usage: notes some text -or- notes "some text that needs to be quoted in a shell;/;-)" then "notes" by itself to read all the notes. I suppose a function to null out the notes.txt file would be handy and maybe a function to commit the notes to a repo.

Works great, makes sure I don’t forget what I’ve been doing or should be doing and means the entire team can see what I’m working on and what I’m thinking about.

I don’t really get all the obsession with structure, style and having a specific application for notes. For me this is mostly a way to keep organised with a brain that’s prone to lose things without regular reprompting.

# date

---

## End of day

- (what to look at tomorrow)

---

time

- note

time

- note

- note

Better than notepad in terms of formatting etc and very reliably available across devices.

What's nice about this workflow is when I create TODO items and don't finish them for a day it transfers over to the next day.

- https://blog.isquaredsoftware.com/2020/09/coding-career-advi...

Since then, I've switched tools. I now use VS Code to write a Markdown file per-day. I also use the Foam extension, although the only feature I actually use from that is the "Create Daily Note" command, specifically tweaked to auto-create the right folders and filenames like "2022-10-24 (Monday).md" and similar main file header. I keep those in a Git repo.

I use a little script I wrote that, once per hour, opens a full screen always-on-top window that forces me to write one sentence on what I have been doing this past hour, and saves it in a plain text file. The input field is a combobox, so I can just press arrow up if I'm doing the same thing as the previous hour. This way, by the end of the day, I have a journal for the day that went.

Linux: https://gist.github.com/allanrbo/4f2ae1968afe9cb8b3ce6e9580d...

Windows (includes screenshot to get a visual on this idea): https://allanrbo.blogspot.com/2017/05/utility-to-remind-you-...

https://xit.jotaen.net/

https://syncthing.net/

I use a single flat text file, and use it for years. I have an editor macro that adds a new, timestamped entry at the end of the file, which looks something like this:

    ----------------
    27-Oct-2022 9:38:48 am
    
        |

I dump everything into this file. At my last job, my notes file was maybe 20-30MB and nearly a decade old. I record hard-won knowledge, TODO items, pieces of debug sessions that are interesting, little notes about what's going on, jokes and random thoughts, contact info, whatever. Editors load big files fast, and incremental search works great. The idea is to make this practice fast, nearly frictionless, and not adopt complications that are tough to maintain over time.

I've found that the less formal and structured I make things, the more notes I take; if I had to conform to a schema it would be a burden. No Emacs modes. No email or contact or TODO-system integration. Just notes.

It's saved my butt more times that I can remember. It's great to have at review time, too.

Step 1: send yourself a message and mark it as Saved. It will now show up in your Saved items. The message should contain a section for what you did yesterday and what you're going to do today. Other than that it can be any content or formatting you like.

Step 2: set up a channel for posting your daily logs, e.g. #yesterdayandtoday

Step 3: update your daily log (saved message) as you go through your day. Add things you did TODAY in the Yesterday section, add things you know you have to do TOMORROW in the Tomorrow section.

Step 4: At the start of each day, copy-paste your saved message into the daily logs channel. Do this every day, this will form the longevity of your logs.

Finally, to review all your logs, just search for your name in the channel. Or tags, or whatever. I like to divide my log entries between tasks, accomplishments, blockers, and goals.

This system works really well for me. I've stuck with it for years, longer than any other "daily log" system I've tried.

Why it works for me:

- The separation of notes between days mitigates the visual clutter that comes with a "one giant document" system. Each day I start with a blank slate.

- I can quickly reference notes from any day in the past by scanning the calendar and finding the day I worked on a particular thing.

- Everything is still searchable via Notion's global search.

Take a look at obsidian-tasks, templater, and the dataview plugins to understand how powerful (yet simple) this is.

I used to do this in Sublime, which was fine, but Obsidian let me automate the date and frontmatter stuff, which made my life marginally easier. The point though, is that Obsidian is not something I'm locked into, which is nice.

So its the Date and Bulletpoints for each New Activity with Timestamp. Often I jump from task to task and have to add what I have done later. Sometimes it does not work at all (if I am away from my PC). Guess I am at a 80% rate and its fine.

But back when I did use it, it had a nifty feature where if you create a new empty text file in notepad and save it as .LOG, then each time you open that file it'll append the timestamp. Something like that (my memory about it is a little hazy).

* The review of pull-requests.

* Meetings.

* Some "tickets" I work on.

* etc

So with that in mind I have an emacs org-file, which has a standard set of headers which are inserted in a single file, beneath today's date.

I use the following emacs package to make that easy to manage:

* https://github.com/skx/org-diary

With that in place I get something like this automatically:

      * 31/08/2022                                                   
      ** Desktop Setup
      Updated my =brew= environment once again, this time it was =git= that required the update.
      ** Merge Requests Reviewed
      None.
      ** Meetings
      - 11:15-11:45 - Example Meeting
        - Notes here
      ** Tickets / Stories / Projects
      - JIRA-1 IN-PROGRESSS example-project
        - Stuff I did.
      - JIRA-2 DONE example-project
        - Stuff I did.
      ** Problems
      None.

* Write down today what you want to accomplish tomorrow. Each item on a line.

* Check them off the next day.

* You could add meetings, but if your day is full of meetings rely on your calendar for that.

* If you did something meaningful, not on the list, add it. Cross it out.

* There will be enough space on the paper to capture some meeting notes or thoughts.

* At end of day, throw (recycle) or retain that page.

I use the Amazon Basics graph paper notepad and a simple gel pen.

Writing works better than most things if you need a list.

For long projects, I use Apple notes to capture the plan. When ready to be worked on, I switch to paper.

My end goal is to not even need these. But I haven't met anyone that at that level and I don't see a way to get there.

One key insight - its not about writing things. Its about reading them and re-reading them.

I originally created this system when I was using vimwiki, but it is compatible with Obsidian's Daily Notes feature too (a big advantage to using A Folder of Markdown Files as a knowledge base). In fact, the two can share a diary without undue effort.

Obsidian does charge for sync, but you don't have to use their sync service. You can sync yourself using syncthing, dropbox, or whatever you like. I use git to sync, with the obsidian-git plugin[1].

[1] https://github.com/denolehov/obsidian-git

https://noteplan.co/