Ask HN: Maintaining a searchable work diary/agenda
Suggestions for maintaining a work-related agenda/diary? In the old days I used a Filofax (remember those!). New days, the equivalent would be I guess a bullet journal notebook sort of thing. What about an electronic version? I am mainly on MacOS. Day One app? Agenda app? emacs orgmode? Just plain text files in my own directory structure? I don't need a system/app that allows multiple users or collaboration, this would be just for my own benefit. Would be interested in hearing from people who actually have something going.
18 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 51.1 ms ] threadI use zim-wiki for simple searchable lists. I also journal, but hand-write everything. Keep a few pages blank in the back for an index. Then when I fill a journal, I go back and read it, and write out an index on those last few pages. Keeps things as searchable as is possible for a dead-tree diary, at least the important bits and keywords.
Creating an index like this forces you to revisit, evaluate things. Forces you to think through what's important, what to take away from what you've written. You may take away very little (and that's okay).
I mean search only has to be good enough and maybe a Filofax is good enough or you can make it good enough through progressive change to the way you use it.
This is premised on the fact that you have experience with the tool and have had many years to better learn what works for you since you have used it.
To put it another way, a Filofax might be the simplest thing that might work for you because you can pick up where you left off.
And if nothing else, using a Filofax again will give you a clearer idea of what you don't want (learning from failure)...it might be the case that you like the idea of being a person who maintains a diary/agenda more than the fruits/labor of maintaining one (not maintaining a dairy/agenda currently would be consistent with that).
Anyway, software wise, you could do worse than OneNote (and quite likely better) with the caveat that I am the type of person who likes the idea of being the type of person who is organized on paper more than I like the fruits/labor of being organized on paper.
Good luck.
Digital: Almost certainly. I back the notes up.
Physical: Almost certainly not. My day to day minutia notes are essentially ephemeral. They aren't about committing a practice to long-term but 'monkey-barring' between days or the week. If it is something I want long-term, I write it into my digital notes. I also desire digitizing them but for the reason of extracting what I did that day and do analysis / using it to keep a digital TODO list up to date. No interest in having them be searchable.
The files locally are in Markdown but that may be a consequence of importing it from Roam. Obsidian doesn't seem to have a native exporter as far as I can tell so you have to use a community plugin exporter.
As you have hinted at, yes, the exports from Roam and Obsidian generally lose your graph so you only get the plain-text.
It's one of the main reasons that I swapped from Evernote - zero vendor lock-in and plain text format.
1 classic project for my check lists. The cards are open and I use check boxes to check them off as I perform them.
1 non-classic project for my tasks. I create a title only card and added a 'status 2' type (25%, 50%, 75%, complete, waiting, staged) and another field for the type of work (Paperwork, maintenance, project a, project b)
I'm also using Microsoft Sticky Notes to track pending work.
(I haven't found anything I like yet)
Obsidian has got strangely popular... but for me Logseq wins because of the block-based way of working (which Roam also has) is much more flexible. Instead of just making monolithic notes, you can measure data points, reproduce blocks, query data, etc. You are crafting from much more flexible clay.
I can interlink all around my knowledge base. I can, in my daily journey, add points under tags or headings, that I can then query in reverse. I can make pages from blocks on other pages. I can keep track of meeting types, specific meetings, individuals at them, topics, etc. It is flexible enough to be very powerful but also doesn't need me to make upfront decisions. I can just build things out day by day.
I don't think obsidian popularity is very strange. It's got a very clean look to it, the search is very fast, it's very easy to interlink all of your notes together, it's got a graph builder, and it's trivial to write plug-ins in JavaScript and extend its capability.
I do wish it was open source – that's the only drawback to it for me.
Guess differences in approach make the world richer :)