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Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

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Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#111

Post by bnj »

Balgair wrote: post #67

Two more low-key ideas here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pm9CQn07OjU Basically, just get into the habit of logging first, then worry about making it seamless. https://www.artofmanliness.com/articles/the-man-book-creatin... Go for just the highlights, ignore the noise. Personally, I tried logging all my finances, my workouts, my diet, my car's miles, etc. for a few years. I never really could get into a very good…

To be honest I think you’re correct here about focusing on the highlights. I’ve read about things like quantifiedself and I’m honestly really interested in those types of things, but more from a distance—I think too much persistent active logging drags me down and feels like a weight so it isn’t worth it.

When I think about logging, I think about wanting to grab those highlights, and while I’m at it to also unify some of the other logging and tracking that I’m already passively keeping, like my bank/credit card statement. I’ve come around to the idea that I need the smallest number of ongoing projects as possible so that they can continue for the long term, and unifying some of that noise brings so much context if there’s a way I can do it fairly effortlessly.

I have this image in my head of having something in a scrollable/ queryable/ filterable/ or outline view and being able to dive into it . For a long time now I’ve sort of spiraled on the same topics of interest that I periodically return to so I need a log or something to help me expand my attention span to cope with cycles on the order of months or years instead of just days and weeks.

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#112

Post by bnj »

gibrown wrote: post #64

> The goal is to capture information passively enough that I can add context and commentary when I want to without spending more time on it than it's worth If the goal is to pull data from potentially multiple sources, then I think you should think more about how you are going to analyze the data than just how you will just capture it. I have been extensively tracking my spinal cord rehab for over two years. I use Go…

That’s a great point, I do need to figure out what my end goal is before I sink a lot of time into having a capture system. I come from a line of librarians and I often find myself falling into information capture and management related puzzles, and while it’s nice to build resources that can go on to fuel unexpected opportunities, it’s equally important to be able to articulate goals for a project like this.

I think part of mine is a general anxiety about memory, wanting to be able to have a passive, external, searchable record that can help me hold onto context that I’ll otherwise forget. I think that having a log which is flexible enough to be the bucket into which everything can be placed will also help me solve a problem of having lots of different places that different types of things end up—it fractures my system of organization in a way that makes everything a little unreliable. Inventing this new log is just another symptom of that.

How I want to use and analyze it is the next thing I need to hold myself accountable for answering.

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#113

Post by bnj »

brazzy wrote: post #47

I've been using TiddlyWiki https://tiddlywiki.com/ in the node.js-based server mode. But I use it more as a journal than a logbook, and not really for structured data. What I like about it is that I can combine the journal/log aspect with a general knowledge database and seamlessly interlink the two. Theoretically, TiddlyWiki is ridiculously customizable, so any kind of automation would be possible. Unfortunately, it…

I’ve never seen this before! It’s great to see that there’s a strong community around it, I’ll learn more about how it’s built. I think wikis are incredible and it would be great to be able to have something like that set up, I saw that there are options for all kinds of different platforms, which has been the biggest challenge for me so far

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#114

Post by bnj »

aj7 wrote: post #81

Apple Notes. Always with you, and searchable.

I’ve been using notes a lot lately, the document capture is brilliant. I should learn more about it, but I’ve had some trouble figuring out how I would want to export and manipulate the information in notes if I wanted to—it’s seemed like the types of features I would be looking for: export, get everything into a database that I can interact with and manipulate... those are some areas of weakness in notes, it seems. Another strange thing is the difficulty in finding the dates associated with note creation and edits; you can sort notes by that and you can pull down on the note to reveal the date and time, but as far as I’ve found in the past it’s hard to grab all your notes and get the dates with the content.

I think it’s really promising to see how fast notes has been evolving—it seems like with every new release Apple has been adding and polishing to make it a really powerful option.

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#115

Post by bnj »

tonymet wrote: post #58

- Google Keep ( chronological, good search, hashtags, simple, fast) - Evernote ( more features) - MS OneNote — Comparable to Evernote but free. - A github repo + `ack|grep|fzf` - Apple Notes (only if you exclusively use iPhone - Keybase Files + Encrypted Git repo (an encrypted alternative to github) - Moleskine pocket notebooks My breakdown is 80% keep, 15% moleskin (then I transcribe to keep) and 5% Keybase (for off…

I used to keep a moleskine in my pocket absolutely everywhere. I have a great stack of them. Being able to sync and search a digital alternative is really attractive, but I do think it’s telling that I’m here asking the community for help essentially reinventing pen and paper.

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#116

Post by kirubakaran »

bnj wrote: post #109
kirubakaran wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You might like my https://histre.com/ It (optionally) connects to Telegram, so you don't even have to install an app to quickly save your thoughts. They all go into a "notebook", ready to be organized later (if you so choose).

This is really interesting! I’m really glad you mentioned the telegram connection, looking forward to digging further into it

Thanks. I'd love to hear your thoughts. My email is in my profile.

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#117

Post by bnj »

panda888888 wrote: post #37

I have a feeling you're overthinking this; a simple spreadsheet will be easiest. Ignore the integration bit for now and just start by tracking your time/tasks. Do it for a week and see what you think. Personally, at the end of each work day, I use the spreadsheet method to record my progress for that day. I have one column for the date and one for a 1 or 2-sentence summary or notes about what I did during the day. I'…

Yeah you’re spot on that starting with something and moving out from there is the best way to not shit myself down.

> In Google Sheets, use command-shift-colon to do a timestamp

Okay not for nothing but I use sheets constantly for work, and as soon as I’m back on a desktop I am stupidly excited to try this out

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#118

Post by bnj »

szhu wrote: post #68

This might get buried, but have you considered using your calendar? I create calendar events in the past to keep track of where I've spent my time. If you want to create an event quickly, there are tons of integrations. You can even use Siri or the Google search box. I don't do thi s, but if you want to attach things to your entries in retrospect, most calendar providers have APIs that let you edit the calendar descr…

This is a great idea, and nicely solves some of the risk of finding one particular perfect tool that won’t be around in five years. I’m going to look at the export options and see if I can make the kinds of notes that I have in mind associated with events

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#119

Post by randomor »

I created ZenJournal for this exact reason. I've used it continuously for the last year and a half, in contrast to all the dozen other apps I've tried. It was actually showcased here a few days ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21876939

However, my focus is more manually inputted private thoughts, ideas, and todos, not an information dump with all my activities like what you described.

The app is essentially saving an array of logs with timestamps, so technically it should be easy to merge and blend it with your other automated logs from other devices, but currently, it's kept intentionally offline only with no syncing function.

I found the biggest thing for me is speed to log, ZenJournal accomplishes this with a super quick open and log interface, and also provides a Discreet Mode feature that will help you log in public spaces.

It's also very fast to search because you can simply type ? to start searching.

For those looking for a cross-platform alternative, I'd recommend a private Twitter account too: - It supports most media types. - It exports. - There are many clients and ways to automate it.

It's unnecessarily online to me and the information density is too low with the redundant profile picture and revert-chronological timeline, which is not easiest to read (a private Slack channel or Telegram chat will fix this).

Re: Ask HN: Best solutions for keeping a personal log?

#120

Post by rrampage »

OrgNet wrote: post #88
accrual wrote: post #20

This is my solution but it may not be best for everyone. Notes: # .profile function note { mg +-1 "/home/.../notes/$(date "+%Y-%m-%d").txt"; } mg is micro emacs, +-1 opens the file with the cursor at the end. Transactions: I record my transactions into ledger[0]. I wrote an auto-complete wrapper in Python to help speed up entry and another to keep the formatting consistent, but otherwise it's a manual job. It helps k…

an alternative: # .profile note () { echo $@ > ~/Backup/Notes/$( date '+%F_%H:%M:%S' ).txt; } usage example: ~$ note this is my new short note

I use a similar function in my bashrc. I keep notes on a daily basis with :

  function note { 
     if [[ -z $1 ]]; then
        vim ~/my_notes/$(date '+%F').md;
     else
        echo -e $@ >> ~/my_notes/$(date '+%F').md;
     fi
  }
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