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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

#381

Post by raintrees »

I am thinking the consistency is part of the value.

I use paper and pen for my weekly ToDo lists, even while I play around with QtPy and MariaDB on Linux (most recent set of tech I am experimenting with) for an eventual electronic version.

I always put a title at the top left, and the date at the top right. This helps if the page eventually gets filed (like when I take notes during support calls). And if it is multi-page (usually is) I put Page X of Y at the top center. Y gets back filled once I am done, as I then know how many pages total there are.

I begin the list with my calendar appointments for the week at the top so that I keep them in mind.

Then I start with most recent or most urgent items from memory. Next I canvas my Inbox for electronic communications that indicate items to go on the list. Then I can file the email into permanent storage to keep my Inbox from becoming overwhelming.

After that I look at the accumulated service notes (I run an IT support business, among others) and add any open items/follow ups, etc. to the list prior to filing those notes in client folders in a filing cabinet. This likely catches all my phone calls, as I tend to take notes while assisting others, eliminating the need to go through my voice logs.

Last, I review any previous To Do lists and add their content so I can destroy the old lists.

This system has been working for several years, even as my programming attempts have morphed with each new platform/dialect/db I turn my attention to.

The act of writing also helps organize my thoughts and solidify some of the items in mind for the week.

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

#382

Post by aws_ls »

I do the following.

When consulting for clients:

  I use an email draft with subject:

     Tasks done for week ending 7/Feb/2020

       -- task 1

           -- task 1 detail 1

           -- task 1 detail 2

           ...

       -- task 2

           -- task2 detail 1

           ..
When working on own projects:

- I use a physical register

    - Date (at the top)

       - organized notes

       ...

       - random doodling/scribbling
Edit: On a Monday morning, I send that email to myself. So that that week's activities are always searchable by that week ending date. It helps me in my client reporting.

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

#383

Post by mb720 »

tasty_freeze wrote: post #148

I started doing this at my first job in 1985. There is a direct lineage of the file to a few of the text files I use today. "todo.txt", "address.txt", and "dates.txt" have morphed continuously for 35 years. Besides this reminiscence, I wanted remind vim users of a particular feature that allows easily navigating between text files like a hypertext system. The "gf" key sequence (mnemonic: go file). Typing "gf" will ca…

Similar to 'gf' there's 'gx' that opens a URL in your browser. I use this every day.

https://github.com/tyru/open-browser.vim

Here's my config from the vimrc:

" Disable netrw's gx mapping

let g:netrw_nogx = 1

" If the current word is a URL, open it in the browser. Else, pass it to a search engine

nmap gx (openbrowser-smart-search)

vmap gx (openbrowser-smart-search)

let g:openbrowser_default_search="duckduckgo"

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

#384

Post by tkainrad »

I think your system is great, especially for this kind of daily logs and personal record of what you have accomplished.

If you start to widen your scope and try to do more complete personal knowledge management, I think this system will have some limitations. Some obvious ones, such as no image support and no integrations with other software (project management, GitLab/Hub,...), and some less obvious ones that only become apparent once you use more complex tools.

If you want a more capable setup at the cost of more complexity and friction, have a look at how I use Notion, GitLab, and other tools to manage my personal knowledge base: https://tkainrad.dev/posts/managing-my-personal-knowledge-ba...

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

#385

Post by tripzilch »

mejutoco wrote: post #255
trunc8 wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Being doing this for years also, occasionally emailing to myself as a backup, mine is at nearly 60k lines. Top tip is to add meta tags. I suffix them with a colon to help with searching. For example, the section containing my git notes begins with this line: Git notes: / Git: / Git commands: / Github: / Git bash: And any time I search for something I didn't have a tag for, then I add a new one, even misspellings.

Funny how similar this one it is to mine: I use tags surrounded by colons so I can attach a few of them and grep them easily (distinguishing them from normal text contents) Ex. :label1:label2:labeln:

Any particular reason not to use hashtags? (except habit)

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

#386

Post by anilakar »

kragen wrote: post #83
anilakar wrote: post #79

My boss does this and he is a multitasker who routinely has stuff in eight columns on four monitors. For searching his notes, he basically uses the Windows start menu search funtionality. He's tried to switch to different Linux distributions but none of them has had a properly functioning indexed search box.

Generally you don't need an indexed search on modern personal computers when what you're searching is the text you've written yourself over the last 20 years. You just use Emacs C-s incremental search. 20 years × 16 hours/day × 365 days/year × 160 words/minute × 6 bytes/word is only 6.7 gigabytes. That fits in RAM on a modern machine and takes 150 milliseconds to search through by brute force. In 1990 it was possible…

it's not about the amount of data, it's just that nothing else than Windows currently does it reliably for stuff across the local and remote filesystems plus Outlook.

His motto is that if any human interaction on computer takes longer than a kid's attention span, the feature is unusable and it must be reworked or killed – and I completely agree with him.

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

#387

Post by HenryBemis »

I use Scrivener, it is a software mainly used by writers. Downside of that was that it "lived" on my PC and I had to send Signal messages to myself with additions during the day. I recently discovered and all called JotterPad. By uploading the Scrivener container to a Dropbox/Google drive I can use it from both ends, PC-Scrivener and Phone-JotterPad, so I can continue on the same medium and not have to copy & paste.

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

#389

Post by [deleted] »

Groxx wrote: post #275
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'll toss in my setup too, which I started semi-recently and has been working well: In my .bash_profile I essentially just `open --background -e "...$(date +%F).txt" &`. Since I'm in the CLI daily for work, I get day-stamped files passively opened without having to think about it. It's a nice quiet reminder to keep notes throughout the day, and it all just goes into a folder in dropbox that I can trivially `grep` or…

[deleted]

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

#390

Post by loughnane »

mackrevinack wrote: post #272
loughnane wrote: post #63

I jumped on this bandwagon about 6 months ago and I love it. Like many others I had some levels of success with other apps (trello, RTM, Todoist, Toodledo, etc.), but a single text file is a whole new world. I've been do My setup is a single .md file with typora as an editor. Some things I love about it are: - Markdown checklists that (with custom css) can be faded when checked - When I copy/paste an image in (often…

I never really used typora but been trying out marktext and notable the last while and they both look very promising. both can be found on github. notable is new enough so it still needs a bit of work though

I liked Marktext a lot, but it can't do relative paths for images so when I upload to github the relative links don't work :/

There's an issue for it already and I'm watching it so that I can switch once it's addressed.

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