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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

#151

Post by jvanderbot »

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,…

Same, of course. I added some bash aliases to make it much easier to write to the file, and use markdown instead to allow tracking todos easier.

I also added a vim command to push it to github while editing. These just remove barriers to opening and syncing the file, but the concept is the same.

You can see the result here: https://github.com/jodavaho/bashlog

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

#152

Post by orev »

supersrdjan wrote: post #33
orev wrote: post #5

One step up from this (if you’re a vim user) is vimwiki. But it really doesn’t matter what you use, the real benefit comes from having a process/habit of continuous review.

Yes, I retired Evernote when I discovered Vimwiki. I keep wondering, though, am I shortchanging myself by not using org. mode? But I don't know emacs and I am not sure whether it makes sense to make such a costly transition.

There is a danger in making things too complicated. You reduce the number of systems you can access it on, and you increase the complexity of just doing basic stuff.

Humanity made a huge number of advancements using just simple paper and ink.

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

#153

Post by jkmcf »

g3houdini wrote: post #23

I have been using nvALT. Its very fast and searchable - wish it connected to my iphone though. On my iphone I use notes.

Put nvAlt in iCloud docs directory and use 1Writer or similar.

nvUltra is hopefully right around the corner and I’m praying there will be an eventual iOS version.

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

#154

Post by Topgamer7 »

aloknnikhil wrote: post #76
endisukaj wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd agree with you, but the killer feature digital notes have, for me, is the quick and effortless searching.

Yup. I miss this too. I tried OCR for all my written notes, it just doesn't work.

You can use your own writing to create a font set for OCR to recognize off of. Will doing a better job off a data set trained off of your own writing.

I've done some minor OCR to scan my bank PDF statements. I use tesseract iirc, there are different training sets to use. You can build a training set from your own writing.

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

#155

Post by gremlinsinc »

I do similar only it's a notes.txt inside whatever project I'm in... for all todos for that project...

I've been working on getting more organized though and have started using Joplin for similar thing, though not single file it does sync things... I like having a more organized look at things than just searching through a txt file that can get super huge.

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

#157

Post by yjftsjthsd-h »

ramraj07 wrote: post #121
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,…

That sounds quite elegant, but seems this is only possible if you work out of a single machine almost always. Perhaps it could be made into a service? As long as explicit effort is taken that there's absolute minimum extra effort as possible!

I just put my text files in version control. Push/pull, occasionally merge when I forget.

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

#159

Post by allenu »

I keep a daily log like this at my job. Basically, if I have a list to-dos, I add them to today's log and if they don't all get done, I copy-paste them into tomorrow's entry.

Like the author, I tried various productivity apps (even created my own to-do app), but the one constant for the last 15-20 years of working for me is the daily log.

For my personal coding projects, I just keep track of tasks using a TODOs.md file. Whenever I encounter a new bug, a design idea, feature request, etc., I add it to the file. I check off the items as I do them and move them around the file to keep it easy to find incomplete tasks.

Here's an example of one: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/allenu/slouchdb4/master/TO...

The big learning for me is simple tools are often good enough. Just get things done and don't worry too much about complicated tools or workflows that you may end up getting tired of and ditching.

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