Journaling using Nix, Vim and coreutils

I've never found organizing notes purely by calendar dates to be ideal - I rarely think "didn't we discuss load testing with Bob sometime last October?" Instead, when I tag Bob and add a 'Load Testing' tag to my note, which automatically gets filed in Org-mode's date-tree outline, I can always find it - whether through Bob, 'Load Testing', or the date itself..

And because just like in the article - the notes are in plain text, it opens possibilities for easy syncing, version control & backup, and any other automations. Add to that a tons of other features like having executable source blocks where you can pipe data through, or pdf annotations, LaTeX embeddings, incredible LLM integration, spreadsheet-like calculations, publishing machinery, etc.. There's simply no better alternative - for me, if it ain't the pen&paper - it has to be in Org-mode. And I too, tried tons of different approaches before finding Org-mode.

If getting into Emacs and Org-mode feels too much for you right now, still, do yourself a favor, read this book - "How to take smart notes", ISBN-10: 1542866502.

- My basic nix-darwin and home-manager setup for my laptop

- Declarative tooling install for my clone of an open source Rust project

- LaTeX setup for my notes for a book club, including creating a nix package inside the flake to install the version of Garamond I wanted. Traditionally, installing LaTeX and non-free-fonts involves running a bunch of commands as root and praying. This is way better.

It took a lot of prodding and telling it things like "you'll know you did it right when `make all` works", but they all ended up working exactly how I wanted them to.

Then, while reading some productivity book, I stumbled on a trick: set the bar for success absurdly low. So low that even on my worst days I could still clear it.

Enter The One-Line Journal: the goal is to write just one single line each day. And, as it turns out, most days that first sentence is quickly followed by a few more — sometimes a lot more. I’ve been doing it almost every single day for 2.5 years now.

In the spirit of keeping the barrier low, I deliberately start with a blank slate each morning by creating a new file for that day. The fresh page lowers the threshold even further. Everything is done in Vim with this little alias:

oneline='printf "## $(date +"%Y") \n \n#" >> /path/to/folder/year/$( date +"%Y-%j-%b-%d" )_ol-jrnl.md && vim +$ /path/to/folder/year/$( date +"%Y-%j-%b-%d")_ol-jrnl.md'

Nothing fancy. Just works for me.

In my case I wanted to get back into working out more but the pandemic had completely messed up my existing workout routines, plus I travel a lot, so it's not easy to build new habits, either. So I decided I would just do one single exercise every day – doesn't matter when or what, as long as I do something.

I ended up doing the exercise usually right after getting up in the morning to build as strong a habit as possible. Also, I usually do 4 minutes instead of a fixed number of reps because 1) this way I can fully focus on perfecting the movement, 2) when it's early in the morning I often forget to count anyway, 3) this way I always know how long it's gonna take, so even on busy days I can make time.

Then once I had mastered that habit, I decided hey, why not try to do two exercises per day whenever possible? It's only 5 minutes more (including a 1 min break) but 100% more impact!

Now, recently, I've started doing 3-4 exercises because why not, it's only 5-10 minutes more for another 50-100% increase in gains! I think this – (up to) 20 min every morning – is probably my sweet spot. I get a decent workout, yet I can still squeeze it even into the busiest of days with relative ease, as long as I've made it a habit and don't waste time thinking about & hesitating to do it and instead just do it.