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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

#291

Post by bishalb »

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,…

Just a thought but would't creating a new file for each year make it more maintainable? I can't imagine searching a 100k line file or scrolling through it.

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

#292

Post by war1025 »

grifball wrote: post #265
war1025 wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been doing something similar to track what I do at work for just over a year. I tried keeping a home journal with a similar technique, but it didn't stick. I have a git repo set up, and I run: "vim `date -I`", which opens a text file named for the current date (2020-02-08 today for example). Then I'll put in notes about what it is I'm currently working on. I've come up with the convention of separating tasks wit…

I use vim. Doing files based on timestamps sounds smart so I might steal that. I used just one big file right now and one thing good about it is that you can search all your notes with one command. I also use the uuid command to tag/reference sections. Then, I can just put the cursor on the uuid and hit '*' to jump right to that spot in the file.

Had never used `*` before. Turns out it's search for the word under the cursor. Handy.

I guess that's basically what you wrote, but I had to play with it a bit to understand.

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

#295

Post by musiccog »

I found FreeMind (a mind-mapping program) back before 2011, and have been using it as both a daily task tracking system as well as for project planning, and task mapping.

I have introduced many people to FreeMind, and the interesting thing is that the numbers have not changed over nearly 10 years: - 50% hate it and cannot grok it - 50% love it and have used it every day since

(link:http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page)

I suggest you use the 0.9.0 version as it has only crashed and destroyed a file once is nearly 10 years..

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

#296

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

war1025 wrote: post #188
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,…

I've been doing something similar to track what I do at work for just over a year. I tried keeping a home journal with a similar technique, but it didn't stick. I have a git repo set up, and I run: "vim `date -I`", which opens a text file named for the current date (2020-02-08 today for example). Then I'll put in notes about what it is I'm currently working on. I've come up with the convention of separating tasks wit…

i have this function in .vimrc that puts in an entry header with the date + time. (use it as :Entry )

  "======================================================                                                                                                                                       
  "put an entry with the date/time (for keeping plan.txt)                                                                                                                                       
  "======================================================                                                                                                                                       
                                                                                                                                                                                              
  command! -nargs=* Entry call s:RunEntry()                                                                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                      
  function! s:RunEntry()                                                                                                                                                                        
    let s:tm = "\n---" . strftime("%d/%m/%y %H:%M:%S") . "----------------------\n"                                                                                                             
                                                                                                                                                                                              
    execute "normal! i" . s:tm                                                                                                                                                                  
    " enter insert mode because it's time  to write stuff   now.                                                                                                                                  
    call feedkeys("i")                                                                                                                                                                          
  endfunction

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

#297

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

treebornfrog wrote: post #263
yjftsjthsd-h wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just put my text files in version control. Push/pull, occasionally merge when I forget.

I save these text files to my desktop, call me old school.

But then you've only got it locally. The advantage to VCS is that you can trivially have it on multiple machines (desktop, laptop, android with termux). You can even do it between your own machines via ssh if you don't like "cloud" stuff.

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

#299

Post by rasengan0 »

robomartin wrote: post #113

I've been doing this kind of thing for years, to the point of managing highly complex multi-million dollar multidisciplinary projects very successfully with basic text files. When you get right down to it, it's the embodiment of a Kanban system in a text file. Because I have so much to manage every single project has its own text file in the relevant directory. In other words, I don't have one text file to rule them…

Thank you for the visualization! Your category line delimiters make so much sense. For years I've used folding headers in org or vimwiki but named by content vs project status or supporting sections. Toggling line item statuses is less visually clear than your line movement across the kanban cards. So excellent!

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

#300

Post by d0mine »

aidos wrote: post #217
Stevie300 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I handle this by aliasing `todo` to `vim scp://[my website]/~/todo.txt`.

Wait, you can use scp as a protocol?!

Emacs' Tramp supports multiple protocols https://www.gnu.org/software/emacs/manual/html_node/tramp/Qu...

For example, to run a remote command using an inline org-mode source block:

    src_sh[:dir /ssh:host:]{some command}
Or to run code using a remote Jupyter kernel within Org-mode in Emacs:

  #+BEGIN_SRC jupyter-julia :session /ssh:ec2:/run/user/1000/jupyter/kernel-julia-0.6.json
  ...
  #+END_SRC
https://github.com/dzop/emacs-jupyter/blob/master/README.org...
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