My productivity app is a never-ending .txt file (2022)

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 tasks in the list. So shit would just pile up in that text file, making me every day more nervous about things.

For what it's worth, I think I am more "normal" than the person who wrote that piece. So that's a consolation...

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.

I agree with the parent comment, but I would phrase it as:

This article feels so foreign to me because I’m not trying to be productive. I don’t have a productively system, because I’m not.

I complete my works tasks. Those usually have lists.

After work and on the weekends, I spend time with friends and family, and do hobbies as I enjoy them.

Beyond that, I don’t try to remember things. I let stuff slip through the cracks (ok, I have a planner for birthdays). I don’t try to get things done.

For what it’s worth, if you looked at my life on the outside, you’d probably think I was “productive”. I can speak multiple languages, I make music, I play sports, and I have various programming projects going.

But I don’t do any of those things because they are productive. Every day after work, I spend an hour or two doing whatever I enjoy in a completely non-systemic manner. And I find that over a multi-year time span you actually can accomplish a great deal with this “non-system”

You don't use productivity systems for planning your leisure time and hanging out, you use them to free more time and to let the things go your way at the same time. I can compare myself to my wife, who is not able to plan anything properly, and it is fascinating. She lets thing slip through the cracks, often small things which have no big consequences, but once in a while they snowball. A recent anecdote: a cabriolet she ordered gets cancelled, because she left the order unfinished for 3 months by not checking the order status and the model is not produced anymore. All easily avoidable with a proper organization. Her life mostly runs smooth only because I (and my productivity system) keep track of all the administrative stuff, otherwise things would bite her every other day.

No disrespect, but having / performing hobbies doesn't fall under "being productive" for me. You're just spending time randomly however you see fit (and seem to be happy with the outcome). Which is a nice thing, but probably the exact opposite of what is discussed here.

Sure, if you wander around, you can see nice places. But planning a trip, because you want to see specific sights, is something different. Both are nice ways, depending on what you want from life.

If it's a consolation, I feel the same as you.

I clicked because what I have is a gigantic TODO .txt file that grows and grows and grows. I typically only look at the bottom (newest) part, typically at what fits on screen. The rest is full of things I should have done at some point and never actually did.

I enter my to-do items into Google Calendar. If I can't finish them today I move them to tomorrow or another future date. Once they are done they stop moving.

If I could make a suggestion, try dividing your list into two: a to-do list and a "someday, maybe" list. That's a concept from GTD that helps a lot with peace of mind.

I’ve been in this place more times than I care to count. I find taking some time to go through it to ask if these things still need to be done can help a lot.

In many cases, what was once thought to be important is no longer important or even needed/wanted; delete these things. In other cases it’s more of a nice-to-have, not something that is really needed. For these, if it’s for you or someone you like, a someday/maybe list (as another comment suggested) is good, otherwise drop it.

Once the list is shorter and current, I find it easier to get things done. When the list gets too long that I can’t bring myself to read it anymore, this is generally what I do.

I’ve also found it helpful to have a kind of “backlog” list, and then something just for what I’m going to do today. That today list needs to be short. 3 things is the max for me; some days it’s just one. If I happen to finish it all, I can look at the backlog to add something. Being realistic about what can be done in a day is really important. Getting all that other stuff out of my view helps me to stop thinking about all the stuff I’m not doing, as it’s not helpful to dwell on it.

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.

fight with wife/GF

Life hack - you'll have fewer fights if you have Wife XOR Girlfriend, and not Wife OR Girlfriend :-)

On topic, I'm pretty much the same - my own brain sabotages me via nerd-sniping more often than any enemy ever could.

I don't really think there's anything to be done about it, TBH.

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.

Tony Robbins has a todo/project planning system called RPM. The training for it is hours and hours long, and the maintenance of it is also crazy. I wouldn’t recommend anyone use it verbatim, it’s just too much. That being said…

It did bring up the concept you mention. It basically had a person set their goal, then write down everything they could do to get there. From there you pick the ones that will get you the most bang for the buck. And when you hit your goal, you’re done. If that means it only took 5 tasks out of 47 possible, great. Goal achieved, trash the rest of the tasks and move on.

The trick is that you don't actually have to do all the tasks you write down. It is still nice to have a record of what you've planned so if you ever decide to jump back on any task you have a history of what you have done and any context associated with it on hand.

A lot of my todos are something like "I found this article interesting but I don't have the current skills to really understand everything in it" or "I want to add this feature to X but I think I will wait until the new version comes out because it will be easier then" or "I want to remember this when I finally decide to do Y".

This is what my read-later list is like. I always keep adding to it, but I don’t really have any part of my life carved out to read any of it. It’s full of good intentions to learn about things or start new hobbies. I migrated it a while ago and was really disappointed to find a lot of dead links. It makes me wonder what I missed out on.

ime it's a journey of knowing yourself. If you adopt this person's workflow it won't work for you, but if you try something similar, start small and gradually add more organization, you might end up with something that works

The issue about productivity tools is that they target two categories of people:

- those that like to obsess over productivity tools instead of doing work

- those that share the same brain structure as the author's

If you are neither of those, have ADHD, OCD or any other brain variety, most advice on the matter is worthless at best. The only way out is find how your brain operates, and what works for you. There is no silver bullet.

Does that mean that you don't get stuff done? Or does it mean that you just decide what to do moment by moment? If it's the latter, then why does having it written out add any more stess?

For me, NOT having stuff planned out is what's stressful and the difference in productivity is noticeable when I have some sort of to-do list/schedule vs. when I just wing it.

I think it may be the kind of work that you do too. It seems his work is well suited to his system. He can manage his own tasks, and the actual complexity of the work is stored in other systems and documents (like research papers).

Anyone, I mean anyone can write a simple to do list.

Surely when you go to bed at night or wake up in the morning you have in your mind what it is you want or need to do that day.

I've a notes.txt file that follows me around in most jobs I do. It's more a journal than a planner. Sometimes I put TODO in, sometimes what to do when a change needs to be implemented so I don't forget. That works quite well as I can return to that later, or see what I was doing some months ago. It's in vim, which works well too for me as I'm already familiar with how to edit.

One of the popular getting things done methods was to keep your stuff in one place, at least this article keeps inline with that idea.

If it works, keep doing it.

I use a similar system, but I duplicate and rename the file at the start of each day. Then I remove stuff that got done the previous day. Or stuff that is old and not relevant anymore.

The system has evolved over the years. The greatest thing about it is how flexible it is. When faced with new requirements (new projects, job change, etc) I can just start taking notes in a different way and see if it sticks.

I also commit it to git every 30 minutes using a cron script. Its awesome.

What are the benefits of keeping it in git? Are the commit messages useful?

Not trying to knock the idea, I just can't imagine branching or reverting or being curious about the history of a to-do list. Maybe it could be cool for statistics over time.

But I'm really curious to hear how you're using it!

I find that files under revision control have one awesome property:

they can be ruthlessly minimal.

The intermediate note-to-self stuff, the reference material, the stuff that was cancelled, all can be deleted.

But you have the peace of mind that you can get it back.

This might be especially important if it is a text file you run your life with.

My neighbor needs the name of the plumber we used. What was the amount of the bill? When did I order xyz last? What was the size of the wiper blades of my car?

My neighbor needs the name of the plumber we used. What was the amount of the bill? When did I order xyz last? What was the size of the wiper blades of my car?

But how do you look that information up in git?

The git "pickaxe" [0] is the canonical way of searching through changes. Probably `git log -Splumber` with narrowing down by date.

[0]: https://git-scm.com/book/en/v2/Git-Tools-Searching

You can just search over all the diffs, that’s how I sometimes do it in Fork.app

I have a similar setup as far as git is concerned - I use it to push a backup of my Joplin notes (note that I don't sync multiple Joplins, just backup the current one).

Pros: pushes only the differences, keeps history, can be rolled back, works offline (push fails but commit works), offers a time log of changes.

Commit messages are not needed really - the timestamp is enough and rolling back is only for exceptional events (e.g. accidentally deleting important stuff, etc.).

It can also save you when you try a different sync solution, and you see in git status that it messed up the sync.

Synchronize between computers is easy and I can also use git client on my phone.

Hosting private repo on gitlab solves hosting.

I used to do this but that made it harder to search on the occasion I'm looking for a prior note.

I do everything in vim and it's more keystrokes to search across separate files.

I've been using one file for 2-3 years now and it's only 1mb.

I do the same in vi/vim/neovim, in a custom filetype with syntax highlighting for TODO items, status markers, tags, code blocks, etc:

  "my/work/xxx/201810.notes" 34502L, 1946600B written

5.5 years on this particular file, but I've been using the same system for at least twice as long as that.

The datestamp is the most recent time I thought it might be useful to rotate into a new file. It was not! I find it much more convenient to have everything in a single topic-based file, although I do separate personal from work, and employers from each other.

Care to share your file format with some dummy entries?

Doing the exact same thing using Obsidian and the obsidian-git plugin, which allows for automatic git push at a given interval. Works very well and it's very convenient to use.

Same setup here and pretty happy about it, only minor issue is the `Update time on edit` plugin creating some conflicts if I have my vault opened on two machines.

This is exactly what I do, in Notational Velocity. One file per day, duplicate at the start of each day, with regular backups.

I mark completed items with a "+" and items I won't do with a "-".

Simple and works great!

I've landed on a similar process, but one file per sprint instead of one file per day.

I take the last sprint's file, save a copy for the new sprint, summarize what got done to report in sprint meeting, then add the tasks for the new sprint to present at the meeting as well.

Still have JIRA tickets to track tasks in a more formal way. But the text file is far more flexible and easier to quickly edit and view everything at a glance, as well as including things that don't fit cleanly in a ticket.

I don't usually take the time to write out a daily to-do list, but I do keep one for long-term projects that I tend to lose track of. Each line is a task and at the beginning of the line is the date it was initiated/requested. It's semi-structured but doesn't take any longer than typing out a note.

At the beginning of the month I duplicate the file and rename it for the new month, then I clean out just like you do.

I've tried apps, I've tried tracking systems, and this seems to work best for me for now. I can keep it open all the time in a tab of my text editor which I would have open anyway and it backs up with the rest of my files.

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 to be a great complement for this type of organization. It hits the sweet-spot of flexibility and consistency for me.

[^1]: https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Daily+notes

[^2]: https://ckarchive.com/b/e5uph7hx43mn

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.

What hardware/OS are you using? I have a shitload of plugins but it's lightning fast for me on Mac.

Intel Core i7-4790K, 32GB, Linux.

I currently have 147 community plugins installed. Is your shitload bigger than my shitload? :-)

I don't have all of them enabled though. Only about 2/3. :-)

It's not only the number of enabled plugins that matters. Some graphical plugins eat almost no resources. But then there are other plugins that are constantly rescanning files and O is not necessarily "n", but worse than that.

You can start with setting up the following plugins to their full potential and see how it goes. :-) Breadcrumbs Dataview Dynamic Table of Contents Filename Heading Sync Juggl Link Favicons Linter Omnisearch Spaced Repetition Supercharged links

Slow on what hardware/OS? It's instantaneous for me on Mac, but can be painfully clunky on iPhone.

May I suggest giving Trilium notes a try? It's like opensource obsidian plus typed notes plus self hostable sync plus a web frontend for places where you can't install it.

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 set to accomplish.

Paper often wins for a lot of things.

Taking hard-copy printouts of code to study it for bugs, design or code review is one area some people I know use it for.

Edit: I guess even for non-code text files, though I haven't used it for that purpose myself, yet. Bet many authors do.

You can go through a text to be published 5 times on a computer, print it out and for any text of decent length, I guarantee you will find a ton of stuff you missed. I have never tried using an e-ink device for that to see if it has the same effect, but I would be curious of the feedback on that if anybody here has done so.

True dis.

Happy Obsidian user here. I love that the "vault" concept it uses is literally just a folder of markdown files, meaning I'm still in full control of my data. I don't use their proprietary sync service, I just drop it into a regular folder and let syncthing take care of cloning it to every device I own and a few extras for backup.

Obsidian itself has got to be the nicest markdown editor I have ever used, hands down. It gets so many of the little details absolutely right, down to tiny things like a quick shortcut to turn a list item into a checkbox (Ctrl+L) and then into a checked box (Ctrl+L again), without needing to even think about the underlying syntax. But you totally can, if you need that control. It's great.

Vaults are great. I compartmentalize all notes surrounding each consulting job as a self-contained folder/vault - that way I only have to search relevant information but still have access to it at a later time if I want to open that vault again.

Those who are familiar with both Obsidian and Bear — what are the principal differences for this particular use case?

+1 for Obsidian, it's invaluable for my day-to-day AND long-term stuff

I tend to format my plaintext notes as markdown to add a small amount of organization. I also have some light folder/file organization to break things into categories/topics/days, depending on what it is. That gives me a nice clean slate to work from each day, but lets me pick up where I left off on more long-term stuff. Finally, I push it all to a private Github repo so I can get to my notes easily from wherever I am.

Overall this system works for me for several reasons. First, I hate pretty much every note taking app out there. Second, I like having control over my files. Most importantly, though, I don't actually need to write notes all that often, and this way of doing things is convenient. When my brain is so crowded I need to overflow some thoughts or tasks for the day/week somewhere, this system is there. When I'm managing it all in my head just fine, I don't have to worry about keeping notes up to date, and I can count on my own system not to send me a push notification bugging me about it.

I'm guessing you're younger than 40.

At some point, either your jobs novelty will wear off or your memory will just degrade.

what happened to me is the lack of novelty in day to day and long term plans created a lot of unreliable data. having done a task multiple times, recalling the latest event details became a mixed bag of questionable facts.

I still have the same capacity but now because I had such a great capacity it's redundancy causes issues.

just take note.

Agree with your take.

I am currently enduring a home builder who seems to think he doesn’t need to take notes. He has made so many errors and has had to do so much rework that he’s run out of time to fix legitimate problems.

His belief in his ability to retain information way exceeds his ability.

Understanding and accepting my own constraints and limitations helped me to become far better at what I do. People who don’t take notes make me very anxious. (This includes waiters).

Even if your builder took notes, he would still have errors and omissions. In my experience with builders (and many other areas), it is my job to make sure they do their job. Notes or no notes. Same with waiters.

Not sure how you ensure waiters do their jobs. Do you follow them to the kitchen?!

Remind them when they inevitably forget. Unless they remember, then they get tipped more. I hadn't thought of following them to the kitchen....maybe next time. ;)

I get that you’re joking but the underlying point is that there’s only so much you can control without doing the job yourself.

With the builder - yep, told him we don’t need the stud wall. Met him every morning to discuss issues and progress. I start taking notes and sending them post meeting. Did not talk about stud wall because it’s no longer being done. 2 weeks later, stud wall appears. Sigh. Ask him to remove stud wall.

He tries makes me feel like it’s my fault, but fails.

I spent a lot of time in middle management. I simply got used to tirelessly repeating the same thing over and over. I don't do any of the work, just the reminding/nagging. Is it foolproof? No. But generally the major things are done right.

I just moved into a remodel that I checked daily for a year. The major stuff is done (mostly) right, but things inevitably went wrong. In particular when new staff or other crews were involved.

Stay the course. Even if it's your fault (which you can never admit as it will cost you), you need to correct him.

This reminded of the memorable Sherlock Holmes quote. Hopefully it is good advice for those of us who are a bit younger.

"His ignorance was as remarkable as his knowledge. Of contemporary literature, philosophy and politics he appeared to know next to nothing. Upon my quoting Thomas Carlyle, he inquired in the naivest way who he might be and what he had done. My surprise reached a climax, however, when I found incidentally that he was ignorant of the Copernican Theory and of the composition of the Solar System. That any civilized human being in this nineteenth century should not be aware that the earth travelled round the sun appeared to be to me such an extraordinary fact that I could hardly realize it.

“You appear to be astonished,” he said, smiling at my expression of surprise. “Now that I do know it I shall do my best to forget it.”

“To forget it!”

“You see,” he explained, “I consider that a man’s brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones.”

“But the Solar System!” I protested.

“What the deuce is it to me?” he interrupted impatiently; “you say that we go round the sun. If we went round the moon it would not make a pennyworth of difference to me or to my work.”

'Tis a lovely quote... though I believe our memory is less like an attic and more like the eponymous house in Mark Z. Danielewski "House of Leaves".

It is not a fixed size, but it grows and shrinks, and you might find it still houses long lost or useless memories, while somehow being too full to store the name of the person you just introduced yourself to.

This hits hard. As I've gotten older I've accumulated a lot more complexity in my life. Finances that I need to take seriously, properties, family stuff, a decade+ of depth in my career... it takes a lot to keep track of everything, and to make it legible when you come back to it a year or 5 years later.

My guiding principle for good note-taking is whether they can be understood by someone who has no background on what I'm writing about because that person will be me 3-5 years from now.

I... what the hell man? I'll turn 40 within the year. The only thing about my brain that's degraded is I sometimes find myself in the pantry with no idea why I'm there. I attribute that more to having 4 kids between the age of 7 and 14 who think I'm their personal assistant half the time. I don't see that getting better or worse in the next 10 months. But whatever, thanks for kicking off a thread of bad assumptions about my mental capacity, age and (this one's not your fault but sometimes you don't know how big the snowball will be when it reaches the bottom of the hill) overall character.

You make notes, organize them a little, make sure to back them up/synch. them but you don’t make notes for everything? How bizarre. Now let me berate you for being (apparently) young.

Sounds like Obsidian would make a great candidate for you on a note taking app.

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!

I cannot confirm right now but Notepad was rewritten for Win11. It might have lost that feature.

It still working, I just tested on Windows 11 and Notepad.

Just tested. Both the F5 and .LOG technique work on Windows 11 notepad.exe

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

Metapad is a nice replacement for Notepad, with a few extra useful features, but don't know if it has the feature you refer to. Likely not, because work in it stopped a while ago. But it is still available. I had used it for some years. Still may in future.

https://liquidninja.com/metapad/

You can also insert a timestamp in notepad.exe simply by pressing F5. (At least it used to be like this - haven't tried on newest versions of Windows).

At my first job out of college in 1985 I worked for a unknown, unsuccessful mainframe company. I started a TODO.TXT file when I arrived; when I left a year later I put my TODO.TXT (along with ADDRESS.TXT, DATES.TXT) on a 5.25" floppy and took it with me to the next company, and the next, and the next. I didn't buy my own computer until 1997, and those files finally made it to a machine I own and control. Those files have been in continuous use for 39 years. TODO.TXT's icon is the upper left icon on my desktop and I view and edit it multiple times a day.

I now have 46 .txt files for managing things, where each one pertains to some particular topic: food, music, travel, a website, etc. All are listed in my main TODO.TXT and since I use vim, I can just move the cursor on top of any of the files and type "gf" to jump to that other file. When I'm done, I hit Ctrl-O to jump back to the original file. It is hypertext without the html.

I did pretty much the same thing for years, using Emacs org mode (same hyperlinked setup).

Then I used vim using `CTRL-Wgf`, same as you.

Then I added to my .bash_profile:

     alias todo='vim ~/.todo'

Then I test drove a bunch of todo apps (yeah, Obsidian too).

The problem I found with this, eventually, is that it's really not great at allowing me to perform my most common workflow:

     push-context -> start-new-thing -> finish-new-thing -> pop-context

     switch-context $OLD-THING -> switch-context $NEW-THING -> switch-previous-context

Or even

     switch-previous-context -> switch-previous-context (repeat ad nauseum)

     switch-to-most-recent-context-in-admin -> switch-to-most-recent-context-in-other-project

etc.

Really, my tasks are not lists, they aren't even items to do. They're contexts which I want to switch to, switch between, discard once done (to maintain high SNR), branch off from, etc.

It's context management. A todolist app isn't going to cut it, and in fact, none of them did.

For the last 6 months or so I've been happily using a small tool I developed for myself, to suit my workflows (like the ones above). Even made a GUI for it.

It's the only thing I've used since I started with TODO files in the 90s that gets better at managing my contexts over time. Everything else gets worse over time, because the mismatch between what I want (context management) and what they provide (TODO items management) can easily be negligible when first using it with few items entered, but as that list grows so does the magnitude of the mismatch in what I want and what they do.

It's missing remote sync but I'll eventually add that in (so I can use it from the phone eventually). Easily the best 1 week I've ever spent on a project.

Hey, I've realized the same thing (that my workflows are stack-based) awhile ago, but didn't get to the point of writing a tool yet. Dare to share?

Also, which approach you use to efficiently store and re-store relevant context information? I often find that intricate but important details are lost during context switch.

Hey, I've realized the same thing (that my workflows are stack-based) awhile ago, but didn't get to the point of writing a tool yet. Dare to share?

Sure, but because I'm only using it for myself, you're going to have to compile it yourself if you want (for now, anyway).

Originally designed to be CLI app, I find I only use the GUI these days (also in the repo).

Start here in case this is not for you: https://github.com/lelanthran/frame/blob/master/docs/FrameIn...

Also, which approach you use to efficiently store and re-store relevant context information? I often find that intricate but important details are lost during context switch.

Everything is stored in a hierarchical DB, AKA the filesystem :-)

Each 'frame' is a directory with a specific set of files, and the directory name serves as the name of the frame. At any given time, a metainfo file in the root points to the currently active frame.

You made your private wiki.

I used to use Zim and it was splendid. Then I went down a few rabbit holes and explored a more GUI-less approach, but in my case nothing ever approached the level of Zim. It is more on me, than on tools. Now, when I'm doing a job that finally doesn't cause me a burn out I am slowly going back to Zim and I like it.

Full agreement. I use Zim Desktop Wiki for years now and still use it daily, but it has become harder. I also write on mobile and the experience is lacking. I don't mind syncing with Syncthing, but there is no good editor. Markor is able to open Zim files (which are just text files with markup) but it is just not cutting it.

Maybe I need to wait until the itch becomes too large to ignore and start my own little side project :/

Quite similar to how I started too! A single piece of paper with a list of videogames I wanted to finish. Then it kept expanding with time - one txt file, multiple txt files, Evernote, Notion,...

Finally settled with Google Keep (checklists) + Obsidian (~2,700 text files, interconnected and easy to navigate).

You would (probably) like obsidian

I have been using Apple Notes which is great because I can read/write in the moment on a Mac, on iPad, on iPhone, and everything is (almost always) synced and stored in the cloud. I have been doing one note per day.

On the other hand, PTF (Pity The Fool) who tries to export these notes. I know some people have written exporters but of course, whenever Apple decides to change format, PTF.

I would like to change to a more portable format, e.g. markdown, but I am looking for a solution that syncs nicely across devices. Maybe iaWriter. Maybe just sublime text or even emacs and just put everything in a dropbox folder.

I’ve gone back and forth between Apple Notes and more portable solutions many times now. It has been awful, but I decided to stick with Apple Notes. If/when it goes away, I will need to suffer one more time. If I keep trying to app hop looking for the perfect tool, I’ll suffer every 3-6 months for the rest of my life and never find peace.

I like that Apple Notes gives me the option to write, easily add images, make tables, etc. While 98% of my notes are just text, and some of these things can be done in markdown, it is higher friction in markdown. So I’m choosing the lower daily friction and extra features, knowing that I’ll probably experience one high friction migration day in the future, but that day could be 10 years from now.

The biggest issue moving notes out of Apple Notes was the extra new lines and spaces all over the place. I have to assume if the app is going to shutdown that some nice developer will make a little tool to take care of this. If not, meh… I’ll use it as an opportunity to clean up some clutter.

Thanks I appreciate this. It’s a very pragmatic take on this.

PS — Do you trust that your Notes will not disappear one day in some kind of OS-update-related or iCloud-related hiccup? I guess I still feel nervous from the "me.com" days in which Apple's cloud storage simply didn't work.

some nice developer will make a little tool to take care of this

There are already a bunch:

- (discusses the internals) https://devlog.notespub.com/2022/08/site-generator-for-apple...

- https://github.com/dunhamsteve/notesutils

- https://github.com/ydkhatri/mac_apt

- https://github.com/threeplanetssoftware/apple_cloud_notes_pa...

Text files in iCloud (or whatever whatever) works great. There’s a bunch of good iOS text editors. I like Runestone.

If you don't need collaborative notes, Memos is a great markdown supported option.

Every night before I go to bed, I take all the items on my calendar for the next day and append it to the end of the text file as a daily todo list, so I know exactly what I'm doing when I wake up. T

This is a key win. Most of the rest he describes is support (also cruicial). But setting up your day the night before is amazingly powerful. Many of the things I plan for the day I actually schedule into my calendar (12:30-13:00 read and respond to those three unanswered messages from Jane).

This is the challenge of the modern manager, especially in remote jobs. You turn on the computer with a plan, and then 345 Slack messages and 10 Zoom meetings later, you consider working on it. As an EM, I really miss that state of flow and productivity.

I’m whinging because I see other managers that have nailed this so much better than me and I don’t know what I’m doing wrong.

Heavily guard your morning time, and don't even open your email/chat programs until closer to lunch. At least for me (maybe it's the caffeine rush), but that morning block is the most valuable/productive time of my day and going down a rabbit hole early can kill the rest of my day's accomplishments.

In my previous role, I worked with a primarily West Coast team (being East Cost, myself), and it was wonderful having that first 3 hours of uninterrupted time to do deep work before the 'other' stuff crept in. The downside, of course, was then needing to be on-point in meetings where everyone else was caffeinated/ready-to-go and my brain was losing steam.

I used to work like this with email, to the point that I’d intentionally not sync emails for a few hours. But in my company, everything is done through “SlackOps”. Incidents (including alerts) line management duties, deployments, getting access to environments. Plus lots of information I need is in Slack.

Maybe some combo of Zapier, extracting into local text, and strict observance of non-slack time and I could make it work.

I used Slack at that prior role, and I know I had a bunch of notifications rules and schedules to mute channels that didn't require immediate action. As often written about, Slack can be a productivity killer with the constant chatter on various channels. I also aggressively pruned my channel memberships to ensure I actually needed to see all the chatter contained in them.

I address it with asynchrony:

I look at my mail when I get up and normally at three other fixed times.

Sometimes there's something complicated going on via mail and I have to be more responsive. Today I'm trying to debug something with a prospective partner who is in Japan (normally in NYC) so I check for messages from them between tasks. But otherwise it's systolic.

I also run a lot of automation over my mail most of which causes me not to see as much.

For slack, we have a culture that it's either transient (doesn't matter what someone wrote yesterday) or, depending on channel, archival ("here's the documents from partner P") which means you search for it but don't otherwise follow in real time. We're relatively hardcore about channels so that you can ignore ones that aren't germane to you. So I skim them in the same times I check mail.

Zoom meetings...I have the luxury of mostly only attending meetings with agenda and objectives published ahead of time. We try to do as much as possible asynchronously though we have one outside partner who doesn't do any homework and tries to use meetings to get work done rather than just use them for things that can't be handled asynchronously.

And also: certain topics are only handled on certain days, e.g. patent (bletch) related stuff I only work on tuesdays and fridays. Otherwise it will just sit in my inbox or wherever.

Can you get started on the things you need to do before attending to those Slack messages?

I used to use a .txt file like this for over 10 years that I edited with Vim and could also edit on my phone using Dropbox. And then I used the Mac Notes app and realized the search, sync, autosave experience, and other properties made Notes way more useful for me.

Similarly, for over 10 years I used to compile my CV with LaTeX using a fancy template I designed, until I realized the time it took to edit it was just not worth it. So I pasted it into a Google Docs file with Arial font and just text bullet points and no rich text features. My life became way easier and my CV looks way less annoying.

(This may be irrelevant to the original post but) I found that a lot of the optimizations I thought were good for me were stemming from an unnecessary attachment to a minimalist technical aesthetic.

Similarly, for over 10 years I used to compile my CV with LaTeX using a fancy template I designed, until I realized the time it took to edit it was just not worth it.

I went the opposite way - trying to typeset[1] in word processors just became too hard as changed CV to emphasise some things over others.

My CV[2] in LaTeX was extremely quick to adjust for someone else who wanted an identically formatted CV.

[1] I like the ability to do proper boxes all over the page for things that require box-models, like advertisments, which is what your CV actually is!

[2] In case you are interested in what the output looks like: https://www.lelanthran.com/downloads/resume-1page.pdf

Not trying to be negative, but the photo on your resume looks to me like a "negative" face.

Not to say a picture like that should be happy smiling or linkedin look, but yours look like you are having a bad time.

Although I'm from US where pictures aren't on resumes.

I agree, I will change it.

Now that I look at at it properly, I look constipated :)

used the Mac Notes app

But then it's not Vim.

That was a little tongue in cheek, but seriously, I need Vim when I write/edit text. Currently have a todo.txt that's on iCloud.

Haha. I still use Vim for coding and for the rare occasions where I need to edit text that needs to be in a plain txt file.

The same exact thing happened to me and I came to the same exact realization. I moved all my dot files to an archive and started using built-in software. It's been great.

I've had pretty decent luck with `todo.txt` style tracking, but also tend to run into issues with tasks or notes "going stale" so came up with this system. `today` basically opens `~/Desktop/$YYYY_MM_DD-todo.txt`, but it'll start you off with a copy of the most recent (previous) file.

This lets me have "durable" files (I can grep for pretty much anything and get a date-specific hit for it, similar to doing a `git log -S`), and also lets me declare "task-bankruptcy" without any worry (I can always "rewind" to any particular point in time).

The addition of `report` (aka: `diff $YESTERDAY $TODAY`) is helpful to see what I've added/removed. Yeah, there's better ways to do things, but the degenerate simplicity of `open ~/Desktop/todo.txt` is fantastic. Having the equivalent of `open ~/Desktop/$TODAY.txt` (with no ceremony) has been very valuable to me!

   $ cat ~/bin/today
   #!/bin/bash
   TODO_HOME="$HOME/Desktop"
   TODAY="$( date "+%Y-%m-%d" )"
   TODAY_FILE="$TODO_HOME/todo-$TODAY-todo.txt"
   PREVIOUS_FILE="$( ~/bin/previous )"
   if [[ ! -f "$TODAY_FILE" ]]; then
     cp "$PREVIOUS_FILE" "$TODAY_FILE"
   fi
   report "$TODAY_FILE"
   printf "Press Enter to Continue, Ctrl-C to exit." && read -r PROMPT
   open "$TODAY_FILE"
   echo "$TODAY"

   $ cat ~/bin/previous
   #!/bin/bash
   TODO_HOME="$HOME/Desktop/"
   TODAYS_DATE="$( date "+%Y-%m-%d" )"
   MOST_RECENT="$( ls "$TODO_HOME"/todo-*-todo.txt | sed 's/^.*todo-//g' | sed 's/-todo.txt//g' ; echo "$TODAYS_DATE" | sort )"
   PREVIOUS="$( echo "$MOST_RECENT" | awk -- "BEGIN { YET=0 } /^$TODAYS_DATE/ { YET=1 } { if ( !YET ) PREV=\$0 } END { print( PREV ) }" )"
   PREVIOUS_FILE="$( echo "$TODO_HOME/todo-$PREVIOUS-todo.txt" )"
   echo "$( realpath "$PREVIOUS_FILE" )"

   $ cat ~/bin/report
   #!/bin/bash
   TODO_HOME="$HOME/Desktop"
   TODAY_FILE="$TODO_HOME/todo-$( date "+%Y-%m-%d" )-todo.txt"
   PREVIOUS_FILE="$( ~/bin/previous )"
   echo "${PREVIOUS_FILE}...${TODAY_FILE}"
   diff -U0 "$PREVIOUS_FILE" "$TODAY_FILE" | grep -v ^@@

I've been doing something similar for 20+ years at: https://github.com/nickjj/notes

    - Running `notes` will open this month's notes for YYYY_MM.txt in your default $EDITOR
    - Running `notes hello world` will append `hello world` to YYYY_MM.txt
    - Running `$stdout | notes` will append another program's output to YYYY_MM.txt (useful for piping your clipboard)

I find this offers the least amount of resistance for quickly adding notes. Every method of input is 2 seconds away on the terminal and grep makes things searchable enough where I can still pull things out from files 5-10 years ago without issues.

I tried YYYY_MM_DD.txt for a while but I found it to be too fragmented. Oftentimes I want to look at a few day's worth of notes at a glance.

You might want to try iso week numbers. Every week starts on Monday and is always 7 days.

Gives you quite a granular time reference but not too fine like days.

I made something similar for myself. It even has the same name!

https://github.com/alabhyajindal/today

This is brilliant - thanks for the great idea

I've been doing this long enough now (decades) that some of my .txt files (I have one per client/project) are in the size range of 20mb.

That's about 2.5-3 million words, 5 times the length of Lord of the rings.

I wonder what astronomical figure they’ve billed the client just to spend that much time on the notetaking part of this project

What astronomical figure does a law firm bill for all their words.

Lots of code and data ends up in my .txt files. Also I just checked actual stats. Only three client/project files are over 10MB. Most are in the 2-4MB range.

Takeaway: if you're already highly organized and disciplined a simple tool is all you need

I'm not highly organized or disciplined and simple tools still work better, but a single txt file is too simple. I've had good luck using Things 3 as an easy and flexible to-do list for tasks I will forget and I've been using Obsidian as a tool for everything else.

My takeaway is that the effectiveness of organizational tools scales with discipline and the simplicity of the tool removes organizational friction.

I don’t see any tool working if you’re not disciplined. Organization is just a facet of that.

I see the causation in the other direction:

a simple tool is more likely to help you get organized and stay disciplined, due to the low activation energy to get started and keep using it.

Otherwise, there is a great temptation to futz around with your organization tools instead of making plans and getting things done.

Make it .org file and you’re in a different league instantly.

I've maintained a single log.org file for 5 years now and it's been great!

I have multiple files, by the way. And as a recent org user I’m not quite sure what is better. It feels like org designed with huge files in mind, although for me it works with multiple files as well.

I just kept getting lost and having an org agenda with missing files, so I just have the one file and my org agenda pulls up all the TODO’s I have from across 1000’s of lines. That way I am sure if my org agenda adds anything then I have everything in one place (since its one file its all or nothing)

I am drawn to the idea of keeping todo lists, but it seems like whenever I start to do it, I begin to feel stressed out or overwhelmed. Not so much by the contents of the list, but by maintaining a list in and of itself. Kind of like an obsessive type of problem. Does anyone else feel this way?

You have to find your way of doing things. I mostly stick to GTD, and I've used Apple Reminders, org-mode, and Omnifocus (currently back to Omnifocus) over the years. My workflow does not change so much between these applications, I have to adapt it to technical limitations of the application somehow, but these are the same projects, due dates, tasks, inbox, reviews. Now what stresses me out out and overwhelms me is not having a system in place - now I have to keep all the tasks in mind and to think of them all the time.

I only do them when there is a big gap between finding out about the task and doing it. Mostly I do them on the end of the day friday so when I get back on Monday and have completely forgot what I was working on, I can see a few checklist items for what I was in the middle of.

Creating a 20 point check list is just pointless. Unless maybe it's a list of things you need to verify before pushing something forward and you absolutely can not forget any of them.

That's not unique, and also, it's often the trap of any productivity tool; doing things in the tool becomes a productivity goal and gets you the feeling of productivity in itself, instead of the tasks it's supposed to help you organise.

Personally, I feel that Todoist[1] has revolutionized how well I can track things. You can use it exactly like a text file, where each line / task is tracked individually. I'll often add tasks for my current day (that will fail over to tomorrow if I don't get to them). However it's real strength (compared to a text file) is in its features for repeating periodic tasks. Other products I've used struggle with irregular timing structures, but todoist simply understood (for example) "the first monday of every month" for street sweeping.

I still keep daily notes at times and track what I'm doing in other spots, but getting used to using Todoist to help me do periodic tasks at the proper rate has been one of the only productivity tools that felt like they "really worked." I pay for the app because not doing so would feel ungrateful, but I don't really use any of their premium features. The base app is more than good enough in my view.

[1] https://todoist.com/features

Big fan of todoist. I've been using it for less than a month, but have already switched to the yearly subscription. I use Obsidian for my notes, but for remembering to do something, I now use Todoist. Any passing thought that I want to deliberately go back to (or even patterns of thinking, like every 6 months, reflect on this concept) can be put into Todoist and I know that I'll see it again.

I contemplated trying to do all of this in Obsidian but the conventional advice seems that while you can, it isn't worth it. Todoist offering a simple mobile interface where I can quickly add a task is great. I wish reminders worked a little better (I'd been using alarms on my phone for reminders I want at a specific time, and Todoist reminders aren't nearly as attention grabbing).

I know they offer time-based tasks, but I've never used them. I limit myself to a resolution of one day and then setup alarms in the morning if I need.

+1 for Todoist here. Here is how I use it. Each project I do (dev stuff, research stuff) gets a ‘project’ in todoist, and I use the ‘boards’ view. Then, each project is going to have a bunch of mini-projects (e.g. end-to-end data project needs to build web scraper, set up database, set up backups, set up frontend) — then each column on the board is one of these sub-projects and all the tasks go underneath them. It is really great software and I’ve used it for many years and pay for it now.

I've been using what is essentially a single sticky note (Raycast floating notes feature) for a year now and it works great. I put todos, meeting notes, ideas, and everything else in there with zero organization. When I want to remember stuff I read it. When I finish stuff I delete it. Has worked for me better than Notion, Obsidian, Reminders, Tick Tick, etc.

I've found that for productivity tools, there is an inverse correlation between time it takes to setup and how effective it is.

+1 for Raycast Floating Notes. Looking forward to their version 2.0 which will support tabbing and markdown. Should make it even better.

You get it.

I finish stuff I delete it.

I run into the issue where I’m told to start new things all the time, then things don’t get finished, because of other new things that “need” to start. And no one ever seems to care than nothing actually gets done… but someday they might. So the list of what I need to look through keeps growing with nothing to keep it in check.

Now do an article on how to get the discipline to keep this going.

As an undisciplined person who nevertheless does something similar, elimination of the fear of forgetting something is enough motivation.

It’s your “backup brain”.

My personal approach was that I realized how useful it is for me, and how deeply I appreciate it that I don't forget things. The second thing that helped is to realize how I use my devices, and how the note taking can be set up to accommodate that. For me, this meant a system to sync my notes between my main computer and my phone. This way I have the information everywhere I need it to be, and also it's backed up, which is a nice bonus.

Obligatory reference to Emacs Org-Mode [1].

Author's approach is basically Org-Mode with fewer helpers.

Org-mode's power is that, at core, it's just a text file, with gradual augmentation.

Then again, Org-Mode is a tool you must install, accessible through a limited list of clients (Emacs originally, but also VSCode), and the power of OP's approach is that it requires no external tools.

[1] https://orgmode.org

A nice thing about Org-Mode is that you can keep an active todo list in one file for daily tasks and then at the end of the day send all done items to an archive file (C-c C-x C-a). That way, you still have all your tasks in a searchable format if you ever need to go back to them, but the active file — which you open each day — is small and snappy.

There's also org-journal, where a global keybind (I use the recommended C-c C-j) adds an empty timestamped item to a dated file.

I found the hierarchy imposed by Org was more friction for me than it was worth. Adding Org Roam into the mix and making many bite sized files in a directory, and hyperlinking them together has proven to be incredibly useful to me. Notes fall out of my brain and are instantly discoverable. I often find useful notes that I completely forgot that I wrote.

OP uses their calendar as a supplement for their the todo file. There is a lot of functionality implied in that decision:

- calendars have mobile apps which enable quick and precise entry

- calendars understand time spans

- calendars have many options to display events

- calendars have cloud syncing

- calendars are backed by a queryable data store

Not saying using a text file is good or bad, but I think a more accurate title would be “my productivity app is a never ending txt file and a calendar app”

I love using my calendar as a data store. The "notes" section of the calendar is often full of info. E.g. for travel it includes my itinerary, confirmation codes, links to my boarding pass, etc. One stop shopping for an event.

However it's limiting for detailed lists of things to do (e.g. great for travel, lousy for packing list), and it's terrible for time-independent data: notes from talking to my heating contractor, screenshots of setting for my media player, etc.

Indeed. The calendar app really is doing the heavy lifting in their case, not the txt file.

I can kind of understand the author not really registering just how much the calendar app does for their organization, since calendar apps are so ubiquitous.

Same. I saw a very productive friend just build a list like this:

    - Thing to do
      - Subtask before that can be done
        - Another level deeper
    - Another task

And he just deleted things from the list when done. I adopted it and quite like it. I've tried keeping it in git, using some tool, etc. but in the end the Notes app on Mac with the same format helped because I dislike the strike-through stuff. It just occupies cognitive space. Just deleting feels better.

Notes.app is nice as well because if I have it on a hot corner I can access it easily.

What about attachments? :) Comments on new stuff on that topic? Etc. I need more, at least something like Todoist/Ticktick...

Understood. I do better without those things because I'm more likely to over-record than miss out on information but I can see how things land differently for someone with the inverse abilities.

Overkill. Just use Obsidian and never look back.

How is a single text file overkill vs. using a whole application to structure your notes and format with markdown?

It's not a single text file, though. They're using a single text file AND a calendar app. (That said, I still think it's simpler than using Obsidian.)

I've been using chat apps "send to self" for this exact same workflow.. at work I just use Slack as it supports threads and basic formatting (e.g. render code blocks separately and clickable links). So every day has a few threads on different things I'm working on and I can just add notes on them as I go throughout the day. For my own projects I use a messenger app, which is not as nice because most messengers do not support threads. I was actually considering switching to an external text file for versioning purposes.. and being able to render code blocks would be nice, org mode looks like overkill though.

I like Slack-to-self for the reasons you list and also because I think of things to do whilst out walking the dog, sitting on the bog, or should be sleeping like a log (like now).

Nothing really works for me long run - my todo files get a bunch of random notes with the actual tasks, and I don't want to go back to them..

I rarely go back to my notes either (except with ripgrep), but a good chunk of the value for me is psychological - when I take a note I can evict the idea from my mind to focus on something higher priority.

I ended up at the same point after a lot of trying and failing but wanted a _few_ extra features than notepad offers. It's also important to me to be able to take notes in a browser.

I do use logseq/obsidian in my better moments, but having another faster system is so helpful for a number of reasons.

I have been building my own text bookmarklet[0] that I use for this.

[0]: https://github.com/pwillia7/Text_Bookmarklet

I'm curious what the reasons for another faster system are? Obsidian is pretty fast for me; I can't imagine it being much faster.

same, except I use MacOS Stickies. Way faster and much more persistent than Trello (where they end up, eventually)

Stickies is under appreciated. I saw someone in a coffee shop once outlining an essay or something in stickies. They had each point they wanted to make on a sticky, with some details, and they were moving them around the screen to re-order their ideas. Maybe not the most durable idea, but you could screenshot your screen if you wanted some kind of version control.

Anyone using Freeform (the recently added iOS/macOS app) similarly?

It feels to me like it can be a powerful yet simple productivity helper.

I like it! Kind of an infinite canvas app. I had a board with boxes for upcoming meetings, notes from calls, useful links, screenshots of things I was thinking about, etc. A really good system actually.

So my daily routine looks like

[...]

5. copy the next day's calendar items to the bottom of the text file

Interesting. For a file with 51,690 lines at the time this post was created, I'm curious why the file is not ordered with the most recent day at the top of the file.

All that text is heavy to push out of the way when you insert a new line break.

Also, the feeling of accomplishment as the job's entire history whizzes by when you press ctrl+end each morning.

there's a much better way providing simplicity with full data ownership and real tasks out of the box in daily documents https://acreom.com

Sorry but the fact that you would reply to a thread about a TXT file with the gibberish "providing simplicity with full data ownership and real tasks out of the box" shows you don't get your own product, and that you are unable to make a compelling case to use it over a simple TXT file.

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.

I use https://joplinapp.org because it allows for pasting images and files.

Supports markdown.

Has easy sync and also mobile and desktop apps.

Free and open source.

Joplin is good but I absolutely hate the way that they structure your notes.

If you have all of your notes in a folder

  ~/my_notes
  ~/my_notes/work
  ~/my_notes/music

etc

Joplin takes them and stores the notes internally as a SQLite table with UUID named markdown files. It makes it very difficult to use bash tools, finding them, other IDEs, etc to work with your files after Joplin has ingested them. Compare this to apps like Obsidian and Logseq (also open source) which don't mess with your markdown file organization.

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.

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.

[duplicate]

Why not just git?

This illustrates well that you don't need another productivity app - you just need a basic tool and discipline.

This also generalizes to other domains.

Agree, the rationale of the FA and the HN comments goes to show that productivity is not about the tool, it's about how you figure out a system that works for you.

I tried doing it this way. While it sounds nice, and apparently works for some people, my biggest problem was stuff getting buried hundreds of lines into the file. I couldn't trust it to remind me of anything beyond the few items at the top of the file. Another problem was having everything as a big blob of text mixed together, unless you take on some overhead when entering things (put them in the right place) or during the day (moving things around).

If this appeals to you, I'd recommend using a big html file with Javascript to query the things you want to see, using class names as tags. A good text editor will have snippet support, and you can just dump any new items at the top of the file as they come in. If you want to get fancy, you can write in markdown and convert to html on the fly.

I split my todo list into three files: today, this week, and later (backlog). Every Sunday, I move dated task reminders (and copy some recurring weekly reminders) from my later file to my “this week” file. Every day I move reminders from my “this week” file to my today file. Ideally my today file would be empty at the end of every day, but in reality I always have tasks that roll over to next day… or week.

This system helps me focus on my most immediate work and still have peace of mind that my system won’t lose the reminders in my later file.

I store my todo files in Dropbox so I can access them from multiple devices (including my phone) and get automated backup for free.

Going on 5+ years using a single giant org file. It's the only system I've ever been able to stick with for more than a couple days.

I think of it as my labbook.

Almost the same here. But I have two files, one as archive for completed stuff.

Old man checking in. I use the TOPS Steno Pad and PaperMate Gel Ink pens. Light weight, damage resistant, and no power required.

Still works a treat. There's something about writing information down on paper that makes it store in my memory differently. I read volumes of digital text on my monitor every day, but I write very little into the steno book, so almost everything I write gets stored very deeply in my memory and is very easy to recall even when I don't have the original.

I sketch all of my ideas on yellow legal pads for the same reason. It's my playground. Mostly diagrams and code snippets. Playing around with the names of things.

For my "TODO/notes," though, I still use a plain text file in gedit. No timestamps, no nothing. When I want to remember how to build Envoy with bazelisk, I search for "bazelisk" and see the most recent, oldest, and all intermediate attempts with my notes (e.g. "runs out of memory, but if you're not building the tests, you can get away with 6 cores"). I've gotten into the habit of "tagging" potentially useful information with words that I might search for later.

Need to save an error message for possible later reference? notes.txt. Meeting notes? notes.txt. TODO? notes.txt. Rough draft of slack message? notes.txt. You get the idea.

Flffmff

same, I use TextEdit specifically because its seemingly the only gui text editor left on MacOS that isnt online

sometimes I use notes, for the syncing, but then I regret it

4pm Rihanna talk (368 CIT) 5pm 1:1 with Beyonce #phdadvisee

Sounds like a nice day.

Joplin + Dropbox + Markdown = free form, full control over data, checkboxes (if needed), mobile/desktop support - top

To be honest, that's why apple notes really is great. I have the same, but apple notes manages to save my mess on all my devices without ever overwriting my own changes.

It's something I also tried to do for a while, just by using VSCode and a bunch of text files. I really like the lightweight-ness of just being able to edit as if it's text, but wanted to have for tasks what VSCode has for code: command palettes, "syntax highlighting", jump to "references" (like dates) and an editor which understands structure (like an outliner, but without all the awkward text selection issues).

Anyway all of that led us to try and build a dedicated "IDE", but for tasks/notes and multiplayer support [1]. Hopefully it's going to be useful for others working from their todo.txt/thoughts.txt!

[1] https://thymer.com

I didn't see anyone mention Markdeep [0] yet.

I started with a notes.txt file for the system I maintain. I found myself gradually adopting Markdown syntax because I need bulleted lists and headings to separate different sections. I also needed hyperlinks to documentation or StackOverflow answers.

So one day I just added the Markdeep tags to the bottom of the file and renamed it to notes.md.html

I still keep it open in a text editor for day to day use, but it looks really nice when you open it in a browser.

[0]: https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/

[2022]

My obsidian already got out of hand. I switched to asana for business todo but it also got out of hand. I still create txt files occasionally. I think it is inevitable.

I use all the systems mixed together, a bit of text files, a bit of Obsidian, apple notes, notion..

Same. Ever since I had my proprietary rich text note taking application/database corrupt and become inaccessible in the early 2000s I've used a single notes.txt file with filepaths for noting images and other rich media. It is super simple to search within; everything is in one place. And it'll never become corrupted or inaccessible.

I noticed your format is pretty close to markdown, which is itself just ascii. Might as well go all the way.

How did the meeting with Madonna go?

I do this as well, except I tend to stick to markdown for formatting. This file is routinely committed to git.

I am using a similar structure a single text file usually split by each day, which also gives a good start to writing my standup notes.

I tried to avoid bringing in some strange formatting rules etc, quite free form. With a single file, it's effortless to go back and find out maybe why something was done in that way or why it wasn't done at all.

Looks kind of like a work diary to me, I have seen people trying to do a similar thing by bringing too much structure/org modes etc and making it so complicated that they forgot at first why they are doing it.

KISS

I also use a simple text file, but for sake of context switching - I have one file for one topic - account x has a file, account y has a file, topic z has a file and everything related to it goes in. This is all now curated in my Obsidian vault that is synced via the fantastic Git plugin.

I use heynote.com just like this

I have a TODO.txt and it’s the only productivity system that I’ve ever been able to stick with. Just a list of stuff I need to do, what’s done gets moved down or deleted. Maybe there’s value in having an archive (a DONE.txt?) but I’ve found that after a while most notes/items lose the context and often it’s hard to decipher what they were about.

One thing I haven’t figured out yet: I’d love to be able to keep this file open at all time, have it pop up with a hotkey. Currently it’s just a TextMate window that I often close by accident.

I feel like this post gets posted to HN every few months.

Not as frequently as that, but a bit:

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

I also use a single text file, but it's Markdown. And I wrote a CLI application to help me maintain it -https://www.hackberry.dev/alas/.

This matches my experience. Its all about ingestion speed. Ingestion of the thoughts in my head, that is. Most note taking systems require you to structure it. That’s basically the whole point. I find that this just gets in the way. I just need a sort of working-memory dump.

I have a note directory with a root level markdown file which I use for general stuff which i dont use much. I also have folders for each task # with a similar sort of markdown file. And sometimes (rarely) other useful assets.

Previous: My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file (2020) (December 23, 2021 — 523 points, 202 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29661167

Same here but it's a spreadsheet

Previously standalone (libre) now google sheet

Probably needs a "(2022)" in the title.

I also use plain text files for a lot of my personal organization. My system isn't quite like what OP describes, but it has some things in common. Some of my files are also structured by date as a never-ending journal. This isn't for a todo list, it's for a journal of things I encounter that I'd like to be able to find again and that I don't want to accumulate as clutter elsewhere...i.e. in browser tabs, etc. Sometimes it's a web link, or maybe something I learned somewhere, something someone told me, etc. I include notes whatever words / strings I think I might use if I want to find this particular thing later. I use org mode and make each date be a top-level bullet so I can nicely leverage powerful text search tools like ripgrep, regular expressions, etc.

I don't find it useful to force everything into a single file. Instead, I'll organize these text files somewhere inside a directory structure that I can recursively grep. Unlike the OP I do use mutable TODO lists to track high level lists of things that I want to continue to spend mental energy on, but I do like the chronological list of done things and I might think about adding something like that or maybe augmenting the chronological notes file I already have.

I do depart from the world of plain text for keeping track of larger amounts of information such as good papers I encounter, complete blog posts that I might want to refer back to, etc. For this I use the fantastic DEVONthink tool. It's got a large array of powerful features including automatic OCR and indexing of images and an excellent search feature, but the one that I use the most is its ability to make a "web archive" from a link. This downloads all of a web page's resources and stores them in the database locally, making it really easy to refer back to things that I've seen before regardless of whether I have internet access or not, whether the website is still around, etc.

Planning the next day on the evening before has to be the single most important productivity hack in the world.

I use my own messageboard: https://willashani.com/gigabots/threads Feel free to post! And I use Apple Notes. I like the messageboard because you can see the relationships in a tree-based structure. I store techy things in the messageboard above. I store non-techy things in Notes or when I am in a hurry and its not high priority.

I actually sent this to my friend as he always thought I'm crazy for doing this. Mine one is a bit simpler though, just a big .txt file with TODO and DONE sections. Some of TODOs just have dates next to them if they're urgent, otherwise it's just it's just a simple list.

That being said, I do use my calendar-equivalent app on my phone for very time-sensitive stuff, just in case.

I do the same grouped by week with some personal markup like:

  FEB 18
  - todo
  x done
  ! important
  ? optional
  
  FEB 11
  - todo
  x done
  ! important
  ? optional

Looks like markwhen[0]. When making it, which initially started out as a strictly timeline-making tool, I realized it is essentially a log or journal language - write a date, any date, and add some stuff to it. Good for notes, blogging, a calendar, etc etc.

[0] https://markwhen.com

Everything old is new again:

John Carmack's .plan¹:

https://garbagecollected.org/2017/10/24/the-carmack-plan/

Archive:

https://github.com/ESWAT/john-carmack-plan-archive

¹ https://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc742

I've tried various note taking / organising strategies in the past and nothing compares to pen and paper for me.

I used to go through a lot of notepads as "scratch" work and would also lose things that I would like to look back on. So for the past few months I've been using a rocketbook. I have a special format for weekly todo / done tasks, a kind of daily log format, pages for meeting notes, and then scratch pages for rough notes etc.

I usually upload the weekly / daily / meeting stuff or research stuff I may want to keep. Rocketbook ocrs the page and uses anything with ##s as a title so I can find stuff quickly. I have set up different Dropbox folders for different categories of notes.

It's been working quite well for me.

Some things like documention, or draft documentation etc. I do store in markdown text files, and sync between my devices with syncthing. On my phone I used termux and vim for editing them, which works surprisingly well.

Interesting. I've been using Things (similar to Apple Reminders) for 10+ years, which I thought was really minimal, but a .txt is about as barebones as you can get. Makes me want to give it a whirl. Curious about the use of Remote Desktop with a mobile device. Being an iPhone user, I'd prefer putting it in iCloud Drive or something more easily accessible natively.

This really is the way. Just one long append-only dump of all pertinent information. It’s the perfect complement to what’s in my head because I know where everything is!

Lists in text files work great. So unbelievably great.

I go back to them often, and some things can outgrow them completely when you want to:

- Reduce the work between my list and collaborating with others (a shared list) - First class convenient experience on all my devices is useful - Notes synced automatically can go a long way. - When projects grow, and there's more details to manage, along with updates, than not.

Has anyone used the text file appoach that can be compatible with LogSeq/Obsidian?

I'm not sure why, but this time using mainly LogSeq has clicked. I do run it inside of an Obsidian Vault just in case... but haven't used Obsidian much. I really like the feel of per line item like a text file that logseq provides. There are tradeoffs too though.

I think I might be enjoying it because it's plaintext, with a little bit more metadata, when/if I want it.

The hashtags I invent that only I know are almost an unfair advantage for pulling up all the meetings with a person, or a topic, etc.

I ended up using plain text files because it's the most efficient editing experience with my editor.

Although I have multiple files for different things: work reminders, abstract ideas, bookmarks, etc.

For time sensitive events I use stock calendar app on my phone because it's the only thing I need notifications for (except email).

This is how I run all my one-on-ones, just an append only list where every meeting just gets appended on top of another with a date. If there are kaban tasks/external documents/etc that are relevant they still get linked into this page. It very amazing to see what we're working on now, a week ago, a month ago, etc. And as a collaborative free-form document it gives both the manager and their report the ability to craft a story of what's happening (and check in on progress in a way that dashboards fail to represent correctly!).

Simple txt file is the best indeed. For easily creating a new file (from a template) everyday in VSCode, can recommend the vscode-journal extension.

This is basically this auto focus system I was introduced to. I use Google Sheets so I can have a few columns. I can print it out if needed, and easily accessible on my phone and desktop.

http://markforster.squarespace.com/autofocus-system

Reminds me of Heynote, posted to HN recently[0].

In general I think this approach of "super easy capture into an append-only log" is great, especially if it can be paired with features to enable editing/re-discovery/search/synthesizing old ideas together, which exist in a separate view/mode from the "just get something down as fast as possible" mode. Working on something like this, but just in nights/weekends free time with other obligations, so it's been slow going.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38733968

Yeah, I use a similar text file journaling system to this and have for years. Let's me know what I need to work on every day, let's me know exactly where I left of debugging, etc, makes status reports a snap, and makes figuring out what I did all year at review time simple.

Would recommend.

I love the idea. Do you think he uses Remote Desktop from his phone? Or does he only use a desktop or a laptop.

My daily workload is completely under my control the night before

This being the key for such a system to work.

Preparing a todo list the day before would be mostly pointless for people who have to deal with interrupts and such.

I've arrived at something similar after going through a lot of different solutions: Evernote, Quiver notes, Apple Notes, Logseq, Tana: now I just keep everything in one big Journal.md file in Obsidian. I added a datestamp shortcut that inserts the date as a title in "2024 February 19 (Mon)" format, and get to writing. I use subheadings sometimes if I'm writing a lot on a particular day and it gets messy, but most days it's just a hodge podge of everything, and that's fine.

It works. A big issue with computer notetaking software, I've realized, is that I was spending too much time trying to figure out where to put things: what note should this be connected to, which folder should this be in, etc. Dumping everything into a single document, under today's date, gets rid of that. The other issue this solved was that I never looked back at what I'd written previously: opening a bunch of files was too tedious to ever do unless I was explicitly looking for something. With this, I can just scroll down and see what I was doing last week, immediately.

There's a virtue in being able to take this and plug it into a large-enough-context-windowed ChatGPT to be able to search/converse with.

Makes me think that the real play is to use ChatGPT for, say, an ongoing todo list/dialog/personal notes system for that purpose. Or wire up a custom GPT to reference notes stored elsewhere.

Either way, the idea that you can interrogate, intelligently, a list of your own ramblings, is pretty damn cool.

I just use a weekly planner. I have a nice one without pre-printed dates made by Moleskein.

I find the act of writing things down with a pen helps me remember them better as well.

This little nugget at the end is the key of all of this, to me:

It does mean sometimes I miss some questions or don't pursue an interesting research question, but helps me maintain a manageable workload.

It's easy to get hyped up by modern productivity software, sort, categorize, and prioritize everything, only to end up creating way more work than you will ever be able to do.

Keeping things simple (eg using a TODO.txt file) is one easy way to help prevent putting too much on your plate.

I love the idea of using plain text files for note taking and task tracking. As others have commented on specific tools and workflows that make this easy for them to stick with, I thought I'd add mine. I use textnote [0], which is a tool I built for exactly this workflow but is hopefully flexible enough to accommodate many of the similar processes mentioned here. It simply opens a plain text file in your terminal and provides lightweight tooling for tracking by date and rolling up previous notes into archives if desired.

Thanks for opening another great discussion of plain text note taking as a productivity tool!

[0] https://github.com/dkaslovsky/textnote

I used to track every project in its own text file. Every task and a description was in this file. It was great, but got a bit messy. So now I use EasyOrg [1] where I also track each project's todos in its own text file, but now with time scheduling, search by time, links to other tasks in the file etc.

[1] https://easyorgmode.com

My todo.txt is more of a digital whiteboard, a temporary summary. Once the day or task is done, the text is wiped. (That's not to say I don't document things - only that I don't use my todo.txt as long-term record-keeping)

The concept (along with sentiments such as https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39434558, where the mundane inefficiency of having to access the todo.txt window every time is the annoyance) makes me think that a wall-mounted screen dedicated to displaying the list may be an improvement for some people. Alternatively a multi-monitor setup where one (perhaps smaller) screen is permanently dedicated to the list.

After all, back in the old days when people did literally do all this with physical black/whiteboards and similar, you didn't have to "pull up the whiteboard" every time you wanted to look at it - you just turned your head a little, or shifted your gaze. In that particular sense, having to open or pull up a file every time is a regression, an added inefficiency.

I use notepad++ with 2 columns of files and around 40 tabs open.

Did the exact same thing, sublime shortcut to add a datetime stamp (Python command) whenever I needed it. Moved to Obsidian recently and the daily note takes care of that. The folder system helps a bit with organizing recurring themes that the daily log journal didn't.

Edit: Reading the comments. Wow Uncanny so many people doing something similar

I thought I was the only one that did this

Original EverNote (v 2.0, first public version) was built on that idea - endless tape of notes : https://notes.sciter.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/evernote...

Plain text is OK, or Markdown as poor man WYSIWYG for that matter, but at least images should be there too.

Mine is: Orgzly Reloaded syncing to a webdav share, which is mounted at ~/Org so it can be opened by Emacs.

For shared shopping lists, my wife and I use the OurGroceries Android app and website. It's simple and just works.

Glad to know I'm not the only madman using a slew of text files to dump their thoughts into. My kids will surely think I was a crazy person if they ever stumble on them after I pass.

I have a similar system, I have the latest 3 + active in one org buffer and the rest in separate files. Mostly use org mode for expanding headers. Super fast search for anything is the killer feature.

https://people.iola.dk/arj/2024/01/02/a-work-diary/

I just read two posts, same topic, same day, same first name. Fun!

Yesterday, Jeff Geerling explained his .txt file TODO list: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2024/my-todo-list-txt-file...

This looks like a bullet journal (with the transfers to next day & from calendar), but without the journal. I, too, find the approach very natural.

I'm also using Obsidian daily notes, with all un-actioned items shown on a page with a dataview API[^1]:

    ```dataview
    TASK FROM "VaultName/Journal" WHERE !completed
    ```

Since at least 2012 I've also been using a text file format from http://todotxt.org/ and more recently I wrote a program that takes a crontab-like list[^2] to pre-generate entries on a daily, by-day-name (every Sunday for example), and I also pull in a list of holidays from gov.uk, so they are also populated.

[^1]: https://github.com/blacksmithgu/obsidian-dataview

[^2]: https://github.com/alister/alister-tools/blob/main/.todo.cro...

I use a format[1] that's _slightly_ more structured, in that files are divided into explicit entries with headers to indicate whatever metadata I want, and I also use this same format for storing other information (metadata about my music[2], workshop projects, orders, whatever).

Other than that, same, bro.

[1] https://github.com/TOGoS/TEF

[2] https://www.nuke24.net/music/music.txt

Archy had everything in one file too, for similar reasons to the ones expressed in FTA:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archy_(software)

Good choice for non visual users maybe

Jarring that the author doesn’t use 24:00 time notation.

  3:45pm meet with Oprah
  4pm Rihanna talk

  15:45 meet with Oprah
  16:00 Rihanna talk

Monospace typeface keeps it tidy and the timestamps pop in a visual scan. Zero AM/PM ambiguity.

I started doing this for work after reading this here 2 years ago. It’s been helpful, but I haven’t made it a consistent habit to check the night before. I don’t access the todo list from home (partially due to barriers inherent in my work’s IT dept and also of my own making). I also keep it pretty limited to my work and don’t let my other hobbies/projects/family onto it too much. It’s been a good record and reference for things!

Considering the size of LLM token contexts now, this has become easily parseable. It would be trivial to set up a GPT that has all historic notes ever, making them easily queryable.

Neat.

About a month ago I made a chrome extension that adds a "sometime this week" todo list at the bottom of google calendar (a feature I copied from Hey calendar). Any items that don't get done roll over to the next week and I can go back to previous weeks to see what I got done. Super helpful to help plan out my week that way and integrated directly into my calendar.

I use the notes app on my phone and I'm also split between two calendar apps and three email accounts, none of which integrate well with each other.

It's a real dog's breakfast of a system and while I forget few things, I procrastinate many of them because the act of even trying to track what's done vs outstanding is very taxing.

ahh well, c'est la vie

I made a Node CLI that captures everything in a flat JSON file:

https://github.com/ErikAugust/todo/blob/main/applications/cl...