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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

#81

Post by lostgame »

aloknnikhil wrote: post #73
beejiu wrote: post #58

My favourite "productivity app" is not an app at all. It's a plain old notebook. I write down any notes and actions I need to take, and strike through them once finished. It has a nice benefit that I can scribble notes, draw lines between ideas, sketch out diagrams, etc.

Agreed. I tried using the "pencil" on the iPad. Writing on glass doesn't feel as satisfying as writing on paper at all, despite the iPad being very very responsive. I also started using an ink pen to slow down my pen strokes so that I think more before I put things down. Oddly that's changed how structured my thoughts are.

I personally use a journal + pen, but I've heard that matte screen protectors for the iPad can make it feel a lot more like writing on paper. Just a suggestion.

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

#82

Post by Finnucane »

_emacsomancer_ wrote: post #35

Greenspun's 11th Law: "Any sufficiently complicated note-taking/productivity/GTD system contains an ad-hoc, informally-specified, bug-ridden, slow implementation of half of Org-Mode."

So Org-Mode is a more complicated note-taking, etc., system that does twice as much as you actually need it to?

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

#83

Post by kragen »

anilakar wrote: post #79

My boss does this and he is a multitasker who routinely has stuff in eight columns on four monitors. For searching his notes, he basically uses the Windows start menu search funtionality. He's tried to switch to different Linux distributions but none of them has had a properly functioning indexed search box.

Generally you don't need an indexed search on modern personal computers when what you're searching is the text you've written yourself over the last 20 years. You just use Emacs C-s incremental search.

20 years × 16 hours/day × 365 days/year × 160 words/minute × 6 bytes/word is only 6.7 gigabytes. That fits in RAM on a modern machine and takes 150 milliseconds to search through by brute force. In 1990 it was possible you would need an indexed search, and in fact you might have to print stuff out because you didn't have disk space for it. Now you don't.

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

#85

Post by koheripbal »

randomstring wrote: post #16

This is very close to what I do, with a few modifications. Biggest difference is that I use Emacs Org-mode ( https://orgmode.org/ ) which automates things like date strings, building a daily agenda, adding due dates, and the monotony of getting your itemized lists properly indented. (and a whole lot more) Everything lives in my TODO.org file that's mirrored via dropbox between all my devices and on my phone where I u…

I do roughly the same thing with a Google Doc.

Of all the apps/tools I've tried, it turns out that the complexity of the tools was really just another form of procrastination.

Just a daily list I write out in the morning, and work through - bumping unfinished things up to the next day if needed.

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

#86

Post by agumonkey »

beejiu wrote: post #58

My favourite "productivity app" is not an app at all. It's a plain old notebook. I write down any notes and actions I need to take, and strike through them once finished. It has a nice benefit that I can scribble notes, draw lines between ideas, sketch out diagrams, etc.

do you use a full sized A4 pad ?

I tried tiny (A6, A7) notebooks and they frustrate me.

My brain prefers scribbling but I have to admit that I'd love something that connects idea to realization directly (the good old bidirectional modeling app)

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

#87

Post by problemtypora »

loughnane wrote: post #63

I jumped on this bandwagon about 6 months ago and I love it. Like many others I had some levels of success with other apps (trello, RTM, Todoist, Toodledo, etc.), but a single text file is a whole new world. I've been do My setup is a single .md file with typora as an editor. Some things I love about it are: - Markdown checklists that (with custom css) can be faded when checked - When I copy/paste an image in (often…

The problem with Typora is that the spell-checking is every intelligence agents dream. And it's a fucking cock app or whatever. Based on chrome. Can't come up with the name since I'm high as fuck. As always. But if you got spellchecking on you're likely monitored. Have fun with your cia shit my hnigger.

Edit typora is an electron app, I just forgot the name. All your cia is belong to the spell checker my dear sir. They got all your notes.

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

#88

Post by Finnucane »

spectramax wrote: post #75

Why do people feel a strong need to organize their day, spend tremendous amount of time(ironically) and energy in exactly what they need to do that day and how many calories they eat? I feel the complete opposite. I structure projects , not my time. I want a loose schedule. You could stop worry about time, try a free schedule, enjoy life a little, and get work done. This whole "productivity" bullshit is an urban conc…

To a large extent I agree with you. At work, I have projects that I know when they need to be done by. I know that other people will expect that certain stages will be done at certain points, because they need them to do their parts of the project. But within that there’s a lot of arbitrary ordering of work. It doesn’t really have to be micromanaged that closely.

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

#89

Post by charlesju »

randomstring wrote: post #16

This is very close to what I do, with a few modifications. Biggest difference is that I use Emacs Org-mode ( https://orgmode.org/ ) which automates things like date strings, building a daily agenda, adding due dates, and the monotony of getting your itemized lists properly indented. (and a whole lot more) Everything lives in my TODO.org file that's mirrored via dropbox between all my devices and on my phone where I u…

This is what I do too, but I have it as a general list of things I want to get done like

[] Mon - task 1

[] Mon - task 2

[] Tue - task 3

[] Tue - task 4

This way I don't hard time lock the tasks and just do them until they're done

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

#90

Post by alpaca128 »

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.

Depends. For just checklists org-mode is overkill, I use a few custom shortcuts in Vim for that.

But org-mode also has a couple additional features like time tracking and a way to generate summarised tables based on that tracking, or the agenda. Either way learning Emacs just for org-mode is probably only a good idea if you really want to use the features coming with it in one package.

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