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My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

jeffhuang.com

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Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

#61

Post by anon2020dot00 »

Interesting especially with the rise in popularity of productivity apps recently such as Obsidian, Roam, etc..

A single .txt file can work as a to-do-list and a what-done list but it really isn't a knowledgebase like Obsidian or Roam. It is more comparable to a To Do List app like Microsoft To-Do or Amazing Marvin.

It wouldn't work as a knowledgebase because a knowledgebase has copious amounts of text about a topic which wouldn't fit neatly in the by day subdivision.

Although, I don't use Roam Research, I think the single .txt file approach also has similarities with the Roam style of using Daily Notes and Outlines.

Roam Research is an outliner which emphasizes not using paragraphs of text but instead just using bullet points. His single .txt file approach is also using this outline and bullet-style approach and I think it is an underrated aspect of why his approach works.

Using an outline and bullet points helps a lot, to quickly see the forest and the trees; I've only recently realized how powerful this approach is and so I think it's worth mentioning.

On a personal note, I've operated for years without a to do list app and so I can easily imagine someone using a single .txt file and being way more productive with it. But I highly recommend anyone to try Microsoft To-Do or Amazing Marvin or the single .txt approach since I agree that it is better than going without.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

#62

Post by ChrisMarshallNY »

elk9410 wrote: post #56
ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of my favorite quotes, is one [incorrectly, probably] attributed to Aristotle: We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.

https://blogs.umb.edu/quoteunquote/2012/05/08/its-a-much-mor...

That makes sense. I don’t really care who said it. It’s a great thought.

Another one that I like, and it isn’t clear who said it first, is:

    Good judgment comes from experience. Experience comes from bad judgment.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

#63

Post by dahart »

dotancohen wrote: post #53
rav wrote: post #17

My productivity app is a Git repository (that happens to be a GitLab wiki git repository at $WORK as well) with my "priority queue" text file and the following bash function. The contents of the text file are similar to what Jeff Huang describes in the blog post (but MUCH less organized). Since it's in version control, I can freely delete old content that's no longer relevant for my day-to-day, and then I frequently…

Why rebase? I would imaging that preserving history would be a feature. An important feature at that.

That rebase doesn’t lose any history, it’s just flattening the commit sequence coming from multiple computers. This is a good normal/default workflow for personal repos.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

#65

Post by yakshaving_jgt »

kristianpaul wrote: post #59

I moved to mutt 10 years ago, no regret and its the first thing i look in the morning

I've been a happy mutt user for several years also but my understanding is that it is just an email client, so I'm now not sure how it fits into the context of a todo list. Are there more mutt features that I'm not aware of? Or do you mean you manage your productivity with an email inbox? I'm curious to hear what your workflow is like.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

#66

Post by dotancohen »

superkuh wrote: post #24
cableshaft wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what about an application wrapper around plain text files, like Obsidian or a Markdown editor? You get some benefits while the files are also saved in plain-text format.

What benefits? My notes are now full of someone elses arbitrary mark-up I get to see with my eyes? That's just clutter. I doubt those programs have existed for more than a handful of years and I doubt they'll exist longer than that into the future.

I had exactly that line of thought for decades. My notes files go back to 1999.

That's why I'm so happy with org-mode. Seriously give it a try. It's syntax is not far from what I was using on my own - though it seems that I independently invented Mardown - just that it uses a * for headings rather than # (which I choose because of C comments). Org-mode has been around since around the turn of the century I think. And I'm happy to open the org-mode files in VIM and edit them there if need be.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

#69

Post by dotancohen »

dahart wrote: post #63
dotancohen wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why rebase? I would imaging that preserving history would be a feature. An important feature at that.

That rebase doesn’t lose any history, it’s just flattening the commit sequence coming from multiple computers. This is a good normal/default workflow for personal repos.

I see, thanks.

Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)

#70

Post by trevcanhuman »

quaintdev wrote: post #43
kamaal wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This, several times this. My favorite system for knowledge management is Google Docs(due to obvious advantages- online drive, WYSIWYG etc), and for metadata/task-management tasks(GTD, working things out, mind maps, todo lists, solving software problems) is a plain cheap notebook and a pen. If you study GTD the hardest aspects of GTD are sticking to routine, and it's very easy to fall off the GTD routine. Its hard to…

Until Google suspends account for no reason.

For anyone wanting a FOSS alternative, cryptpad [0] exists.

[0] https://cryptpad.fr/

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