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My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

jeffhuang.com

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Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#161

Post by allenu »

beejiu wrote: post #58

My favourite "productivity app" is not an app at all. It's a plain old notebook. I write down any notes and actions I need to take, and strike through them once finished. It has a nice benefit that I can scribble notes, draw lines between ideas, sketch out diagrams, etc.

I use a notebook as well but mostly for hashing out design ideas. It's a great pleasure to just sit with a coffee at a cafe with just your notebook drawing system diagrams. No distractions from online. However, I still keep track of work in a text file since it's much faster to type things as I'm working at a machine. (Obviously it's not great for drawing ideas though!)

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#162

Post by RobRivera »

Pen and paper and .plan files weekly have gone a long way in motivating me to use my time and not procrastinate. Furthermore, I recall an article title called 'procrastination is about emotional management ' or something similar, and it really drove home the WHY behind the time sinks i have in my daily routines.

I increasingly see these claims of simple means to enhanced productivity to me more true.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#164

Post by entilzha »

kabdib wrote: post #109

I use a single text file, have done this for decades. I dump everything into it and don't worry too much about structure, it's an incredible resource for "remembering" minutia, things like "what was that server that i thought might have had some issues last August?" Just a quick control-S and I'm there. My current 7+ year old notes file has about 100K lines in it right now. I can tell you what I was doing last year,…

Any thoughts on how to access/modify on mobile without making it too cumbersome? I often think about todo on walk/train, but could see making it a computer only thing.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#165

Post by closed »

A single file seems like a forcing function for including the right amount of context you'll need later. I use nvalt, which is basically a small collection of text files. It seems like whenever I let myself create many files, I just feel scattered, and am more likely to enter garbage.

Nowadays I just use maybe 10 notes. If I create a new one for a meeting, etc.., I'll copy in the relevant parts and delete the meeting note after.

It seems like having a proliferation of notes has also been an issue on most orgs I've been in :/.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#167

Post by bachmeier »

entilzha wrote: post #164
kabdib wrote: post #109

I use a single text file, have done this for decades. I dump everything into it and don't worry too much about structure, it's an incredible resource for "remembering" minutia, things like "what was that server that i thought might have had some issues last August?" Just a quick control-S and I'm there. My current 7+ year old notes file has about 100K lines in it right now. I can tell you what I was doing last year,…

Any thoughts on how to access/modify on mobile without making it too cumbersome? I often think about todo on walk/train, but could see making it a computer only thing.

If you version control it using Fossil, and it's in markdown, you can access it directly from the repo website.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#168

Post by hoorayimhelping »

agumonkey wrote: post #86
beejiu wrote: post #58

My favourite "productivity app" is not an app at all. It's a plain old notebook. I write down any notes and actions I need to take, and strike through them once finished. It has a nice benefit that I can scribble notes, draw lines between ideas, sketch out diagrams, etc.

do you use a full sized A4 pad ? I tried tiny (A6, A7) notebooks and they frustrate me. My brain prefers scribbling but I have to admit that I'd love something that connects idea to realization directly (the good old bidirectional modeling app)

I use Muji A5 notebooks paired with muji 0.7mm tip pens. I hated carrying a notebook and writing in it until I found this combo.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#169

Post by rct42 »

beejiu wrote: post #58

My favourite "productivity app" is not an app at all. It's a plain old notebook. I write down any notes and actions I need to take, and strike through them once finished. It has a nice benefit that I can scribble notes, draw lines between ideas, sketch out diagrams, etc.

Same for me. My note book is A4 sized (lots of space), has a hard cover (easy to write with while out "in the field") and the pages are not easily removed (so I don't loose notes).

While I do write a lot of notes in it, I also like to draw block diagrams and high level designs of systems.

While some of this could be done on a tablet, I also try to reduce the amount of screen time on my eyes. I started this habit since starting my Masters 10 years ago.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file

#170

Post by chrisweekly »

There's beauty and power in simplicity. Thanks for sharing! Also, take a look at Roam (https://roamresearch.com) which almost comes full-circle to a place of simplicity (just write instead of worrying about where to put things or how to organize them) while providing all kinds of benefits. There are many tradeoffs and valid reasons to prefer your .txt (or my .md) file(s), but I highly recommend playing w Roam to see what's possible.
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