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My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

jeffhuang.com

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Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#101

Post by et-al »

d--b wrote: post #77

I don't know how to articulate it, but I could never do anything like this. The ability to organize one's life like this is so foreign to me, it's almost like he's describing what it's like to be an octopus. I think it may be my emotional state that I can't manage. There is absolutely no way, I could decide what I'd be doing the next day every night. The thing is my state of mind would prevent me from doing half the…

I think the author is trying highlight that one doesn't necessarily fancy tools. The productivity space has so many options that it's easy for one to get overwhelmed with settling on the "best" option.

My partner relies on a Leuchtturm weekly planner; my father bought into the whole Stephen Covey system; a coworker has a stack of Post-its, and I use a hodgepodge of Google Calendar (far off single events), Apple Notes (weekly tasks for work) + Reminders (medium-term todos).

The whole point is not to rely on one's (aging) memory to keep track of stuff. As long as tasks aren't falling between the cracks, keep doing what you're doing.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#102

Post by stormdennis »

d--b wrote: post #77

I don't know how to articulate it, but I could never do anything like this. The ability to organize one's life like this is so foreign to me, it's almost like he's describing what it's like to be an octopus. I think it may be my emotional state that I can't manage. There is absolutely no way, I could decide what I'd be doing the next day every night. The thing is my state of mind would prevent me from doing half the…

My sister is far far richer and more successful than I am. She once told me that every night the last thing she'd do was to make a mental list of things to do tomorrow. That was it. Nothing written down.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#103

Post by troupe »

d--b wrote: post #77

I don't know how to articulate it, but I could never do anything like this. The ability to organize one's life like this is so foreign to me, it's almost like he's describing what it's like to be an octopus. I think it may be my emotional state that I can't manage. There is absolutely no way, I could decide what I'd be doing the next day every night. The thing is my state of mind would prevent me from doing half the…

I find it helpful to give myself permission decide NOT to do something. The to-do list is a bunch of things that I thought were important when I wrote them down. If the next day I only do half of them, but feel those were the important ones, then I have success. If I decide that half of them aren't worth doing, the doing those would be failure.

The goal of the list isn't to beat you up, but just a tool to make sure that at the end of the day you did the things that were important to you and YOU get to decide what that means.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#104

Post by realfeel78 »

331c8c71 wrote: post #85
BasilPH wrote: post #5

I'm doing something similar with Obsidian daily notes[^1]. I also have a weekly note that I use to plan the next week. Similar to how the author talks about scheduling their next day the evening before, I've started planning the big tasks for next on Friday afternoon, as this gives me momentum on Monday morning. Related: I've found the 3/3/3 technique from Oliver Burkeman[^2] and the concept of open and closed lists…

I plan exclusively on paper despite using Obsidian quite extensively for taking notes. I also do weekly and daily planning. Initially I tried to plan on Obsidian as well but it didn't work for me. Writing on paper is slow and not only it calms me down but also directly incentivizes me to state my tasks and goals concisely. Similarly, the limited space on a planning page helps me to be realistic in terms of things I s…

Paper often wins for a lot of things.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#105

Post by machomaster »

iaw wrote: post #99

VSCode and Markdown go a long way for me because it allows for index linking and some other nifty tricks. The main challenge is making sure the md files are organized.

If one uses .txt files, then one might as well use .md. And in the way, one might as well use something like Obsidian.

So information is still textual, but there are a great lot of additional niceties one can now have.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#106

Post by hk__2 »

I mostly do this, but with a physical notebook. I wouldn’t be able to work with a .txt file because it’s too limiting: you can’t draw anything, you can’t easily make arrows between stuff, you don’t have the nice mental reward when you strike some item off your list.

This is for the day-to-day organization. For the rest, I dump all my knowledge in a wiki (MediaWiki), and I use iOS/macOS’ Reminders app to remember things to do far in the future (like "cancel XYZ subscription" in 6 months) or at very specific times.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#107

Post by machomaster »

Al-Khwarizmi wrote: post #91
blackhaj7 wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Obsidian but it is unbearably slow upon when opening the app for me, to the point where I want to move away. It’s also dare-I-say-it too customizable for me. I just want it to look nice and do standard notes stuff without having to spend hours tinkering. The only thing keeping me is that it is just markdown. I don’t like the idea of being locked in with the proprietary formats of other apps

Curious, I have starting using Obsidian recently and one of the things that I love about it is that it's lightning fast on my systems, including startup time. Much snappier than other note-taking programs I've used, and than 95% of the programs altogether (only the likes of Notepad are faster). Maybe it's because I don't have many notes yet and it becomes a behemoth if the vault gets too big?

Usually the slowness of Obsidian is caused by plugins.

Try to have 50+ plugins and you will feel the slowness even in a small vault.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#108

Post by testcase_delta »

hk__2 wrote: post #106

I mostly do this, but with a physical notebook. I wouldn’t be able to work with a .txt file because it’s too limiting: you can’t draw anything, you can’t easily make arrows between stuff, you don’t have the nice mental reward when you strike some item off your list. This is for the day-to-day organization. For the rest, I dump all my knowledge in a wiki (MediaWiki), and I use iOS/macOS’ Reminders app to remember thin…

I have an iPad and use notability for this. I have a 350 page note that's filled with to-dos, doodles, screenshots of quotes, etc. I love being able to just scroll up endlessly to see what I was thinking about or working on, all in chronological order.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#109

Post by karolist »

stormdennis wrote: post #102
d--b wrote: post #77

I don't know how to articulate it, but I could never do anything like this. The ability to organize one's life like this is so foreign to me, it's almost like he's describing what it's like to be an octopus. I think it may be my emotional state that I can't manage. There is absolutely no way, I could decide what I'd be doing the next day every night. The thing is my state of mind would prevent me from doing half the…

My sister is far far richer and more successful than I am. She once told me that every night the last thing she'd do was to make a mental list of things to do tomorrow. That was it. Nothing written down.

I feel there's more to the story. One thing is being organized, another is being able to execute consistently, and being organized is not a precursor to that. I am extremely smart, and productive, sometimes. Most of the times my mind jumps to random areas of interest, life happens, fight with wife/GF, parent illness, alcohol binges and I'm back to a baseline with almost no output. As if I'm sabotaging myself. Consistency is key, how you achieve it is second.

Re: My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2020)

#110

Post by machomaster »

royjacobs wrote: post #47
web3-is-a-scam wrote: post #42

My productivity app is just todo.txt in one drive using specificaly notepad.exe. You put .LOG at the top of the new file with a return. Save and close the file. Every time you reopen the file, the timestamp is append to the file. Add your notes, save, exit notepad. Open it again when you need to update, rinse and repeat. Nothing I’ve ever tried has been more effective than just keeping this endless file.

Oh wow, I didn't realize notepad had that feature. Awesome!

You can always use Autokey/autohotkey to get this functionality in any software you may want.
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