I do something similar, but use a Sqlite DB! I have some views set up to view today's to-do items, etc.
My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
131–140 of 205 posts
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#132The key to this solution isn’t really the .txt file or the formatting. It’s the ritual. Any productivity system can be made to work once it becomes a habit and therefore your default action. I think .txt files or Org mode are attractive to devs because they feel like something we’d be doing anyway during our day. the same system will work with a paper journal or even a fresh piece of paper every morning if, and only…
Definitely true, but sometimes the lack of sane tooling makes it harder to follow rituals. I used to use the same format as the OP in a text editor, but struggled with the daily grind of copying items around and carrying over todos from the last day. Paper is much better for this, but messy (even with scanning).
In the end I wrote a small tool to assist with starting each day with a blank journal and all remaining items from the last day. Syntax is primarily markdown. Everything stays in a single text file.
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#133Earlier quoted context omitted.
Professional artists are really interesting to listen to when they talk about their productivity routines. Since many of them work alone, they are more prone to not accomplishing anything. The successful ones have a repeatable process for balancing creativity with the time required to produce a work of art. They tend to have a daily practice of challenging / improving their skills. They setup a dedicated studio, and…
Inspiration often comes after starting any given creative process.
I am a professional artist and I have to disagree with this. Once creative work becomes the thing you spend a large part of your life doing, you cannot rely on just sitting around waiting for inspiration.
Creative workers regularly discuss the ways to get ourselves to work when we feel a total lack of inspiration for something with a looming deadline, as well as ways to create conditions where some kind of creative inspiration is more likely.
There is also the fact that sometimes "inspiration" can lead to a long process, I am finally nearing the end of a multi-year process of grinding away at drawing a comic book that came from the simple idea of "what if I told a story from two sides, with the characters changing designs to ones that scream 'Good Guys' or 'Bad Guys' depending on which side we are currently following".
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#134I use the Mac Os notes app because the bullet points / hierarchical lists have the best ux I've seen yet.
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#135[deleted]
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#136The author makes some points about the benefits of doing this, but I really think he's making things more difficult for himself. Even a basic note-taking app would provide a much larger number of features and be equally easy to use. It's quirky idea but it's really not that practical.
A text file is not difficult and impractical. "Number of features" is not what makes a tool practical.
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#137I think the real insight here is the calendar: it sounds like new tasks go straight onto the calendar, and that's how a to-do backlog is avoided! Interesting.
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#138Earlier 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...
I'd still say it's correctly attributed b/c it was based on Aristotle's thoughts. One way or another, his words need to be translated because he didn't speak English.
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#139ORG-MODE ORG-MODE ORG-MODE Jeff, everything you do could be done with org-mode by using a key combination. it would also add a calender with an agenda and schedule and and and and the main thing: it's a text file just like what you are using. this is a nice how to (no relation to me) https://youtu.be/SzA2YODtgK4
Isn't org mode less portable though? My understanding was that you need an editor plus appropriate tooling for it to really shine, which to me is similar to saying "productivity software" and less like text editing.
I'm working on making org more portable (at least bring parts to iOS), via https://plainorg.com and flathabits.com.
Karl Voit is doing the hard work of rallying folks to promote org markup outside of Emacs and hopefully create a diverse ecosystem under the Orgdown proposal https://gitlab.com/publicvoit/orgdown
Re: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020)
#140Earlier quoted context omitted.
Inspiration often comes after starting any given creative process.
I am a professional artist and I have to disagree with this. Once creative work becomes the thing you spend a large part of your life doing, you cannot rely on just sitting around waiting for inspiration. Creative workers regularly discuss the ways to get ourselves to work when we feel a total lack of inspiration for something with a looming deadline, as well as ways to create conditions where some kind of creative i…
> I am finally nearing the end of a multi-year process of grinding away at drawing a comic book that came from the simple idea of "what if I told a story from two sides, with the characters changing designs to ones that scream 'Good Guys' or 'Bad Guys' depending on which side we are currently following".
That sounds cool.
Game of Thrones was like that. You just got a good hate on, for one of the characters, and they went and spoiled it, by telling their story.
The Boltons were bad news, though. Even the author hated them.