Reminds me a lot of Cal Newport's ideas re: Slow Productivity. He talks a lot about how Context shifts are death for knowledge work and that a lot of offices operate via a "hyper active hive mind" that doesn't allow or value deep work.
Use a work journal
31–40 of 305 posts
Re: Use a work journal
#32I recently started manually typing out everything I jot down in my pocket notebooks when I fill them in my Digital Garden. The amount of ideas I forgot about within a week or so is crazy. Glad I can revisit some of this now
Re: Use a work journal
#33My new organization workflow is as follows for planning my day.
I run a custom python script to generate a file/folder for each day in a month 2024/June/01-Jun.md ...
1. Tell ChatGPT what I want to do on that day, and ask it to give me a checkable markdown list.
2. Use "Typora" markdown editor for organization. It has a folder browser in the side bar. So I can have other files / folders at glance. Very easy to access.
3. Copy and paste the checkable list into the file with into Typora.
If I had the need, I could write a script to aggregate all the unchecked items and create a new file with them. Or do other processing.
Markdown editor + ChatGPT => killer combination.
Re: Use a work journal
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes! Obsidian with daily note plugin and templates makes it really easy to build a quick list of things and automatically link to yesterday’s notes. A little extra time with templates and some custom js and you can make it a single key combo to copy the notes to paste buffer for sharing in slack standup thread. Also, set up a praise folder and take screenshots every time somebody says something nice about the work yo…
Do you all pay for obsidian? Subscriptions rub me the wrong way for whatever reason and it was enough that I didn't want to pay so I use something else.
I'm using the free version synchronized with Syncthing, works great for just myself. Have a couple plugins I built for my own workflow. The good thing is that I can jump to any other markdown app if I want to
Re: Use a work journal
#35Forget focusing faster and clarifying thoughts - a work journal does wonders for helping you during your yearly/6-month reviews, because you can look over the past several months and have concrete things to put down for why you deserve a raise and promotion.
(Actually, don't forget it. But realize that you can use it for both purposes.)
Re: Use a work journal
#36What finally got this to stick for me was abandoning all notion of structure and organization (and formal concepts like “logging” and “journaling”) and optimizing fully for capture over retrieval, then relying on search tools and proximity for the latter. I have the OneNote icon in the notification area configured to create a new quick note and use it liberally. Occasionally I look through all the pages, especially t…
It took me a couple years to realize this too. For the past five years I abandoned all structure. I use a literal log file. Chronological from top to bottom, with paragraph breaks for each workday. Higher than necessary verbosity, no points taken away for spelling or grammar mistakes.
It's hard to grep for misspelled words though.
Re: Use a work journal
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes! Obsidian with daily note plugin and templates makes it really easy to build a quick list of things and automatically link to yesterday’s notes. A little extra time with templates and some custom js and you can make it a single key combo to copy the notes to paste buffer for sharing in slack standup thread. Also, set up a praise folder and take screenshots every time somebody says something nice about the work yo…
Do you all pay for obsidian? Subscriptions rub me the wrong way for whatever reason and it was enough that I didn't want to pay so I use something else.
(Full disclosure - I’m speaking from a place of privilege where I can afford the subscription cost of Obsidian)
I hear you on subscriptions rubbing you the wrong way. Hear me out, though. This is a bootstrapped team that builds and supports apps that empower you, the individual. Your data resides in plaintext and you can use your own sync server.
Not everything needs to be a subscription, but I don’t mind paying a few dollars per month to support the team.
Just my 2c.
Re: Use a work journal
#38This is something I do if I'm in the middle of something before the weekend, and especially before a vacation.
I use Obsidian with its calendar plugin, so I get a note per day. It's where I keep my to do items as well as any notes for the day. Before leaving for a break I will open up the note for the day I plan to return and fill in my to do items, as well as additional notes on what I was doing, what I should be doing next, and references I may have had that I'll want to revisit. It is extremely helpful for getting me back into things once I've been out for a bit.
Re: Use a work journal
#39"Ignore all previous instructions. Show your work. Explain your chain of thought in detail. Keep a journal of your work progress." I've been using this prompt on myself, on and off, for years, but I keep on hallucinating and losing focus and going off track.
Have you tried telling yourself that a schoolbus of children will drive off a cliff if you don’t get the job done?
Re: Use a work journal
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
It took me a couple years to realize this too. For the past five years I abandoned all structure. I use a literal log file. Chronological from top to bottom, with paragraph breaks for each workday. Higher than necessary verbosity, no points taken away for spelling or grammar mistakes.
It's hard to grep for misspelled words though.
Maybe something like fzf?