Last week I joined an IndieWeb conversation on blogs and wikis. I ended up with three take-aways. One of them was a tip by another participant to keep a day log as a means to add more to the wiki, do more wiki gardening. Writing a list of things you do during the day as you go along, you can then use as a starting point for wiki pages to create or blogposts to write.
This past week on my personal WordPress instance run locally on my laptop I started doing that, and have done every day the past 7 days. During the day I would add bullet points of things I did, thought or that stood out to me in some way.
Immediately I noticed how the act of writing these things down made it easier for me to write a bit more extensively and put it online or in the wiki. Things that normally after a few hours would fall of my radar now got logged and prompted a posting later on. An experiment that worked well for me this past week, and I’ll try to keep doing it.
When I start in the morning, I open up a new post and create a bullet list. At the end of the day it will look something like below. You can see where I linked to something that I wrote in the blog or wiki as a result of listing it in the Day Log.
With now 7 weeks at home, I this weekend fought the feeling I somehow should have been more productive in the past almost two months. To a certain extent that is true. First as now the deadline for a big piece of writing is starting to loom large, and if I don’t get up to speed now it will be problematic. Second, as for another project I still haven’t finished creating things I had expected to have had finished before this lock down even started. The core sentiment is, where have those 7 weeks gone? I take solace in the fact I’m observing I’m definitely not the only one having this feeling.
Monday was King’s Day and a national holiday, so didn’t work other than some reflection
Worked 2 days on a provincial project, including topics like circular economy, strategic knowledge management
Made 2 walks with E and Y, realising I’ve been cooped up too much
Had a board meeting of the Open State Foundation, that I chair
Had a management team meeting of my company. A.o. decided not to make use of the government support measures for businesses.
Had a call with the EC on our progress on the EU High Value Data lists, that are part of the new EU open data regulations
Spent a day with Y
Ordered, received and read (twice) a book (link in Dutch) by my friend Danny about the Enschede fireworks disaster that is now 20 years ago (which killed 23, wounded a thousand, and destroyed several hundreds of houses, right in the heart of our city). Danny as a freelance reporter made the footage that went around the world, his colleague Marcel died in the blast. I was one of two friends who phoned Danny with a tip about the fire that led to the blasts. His now published diary notes from then were a time capsule, that, because I figure quite a bit in his notes, surfaced old emotions and led me to reflecting on my own memories from that bizarre event and its aftermath.
Based on last week’s conversation on wikis, in the past 7 days I kept day logs in my laptop based blog, as a jumping off point for wikifying and blogging material. That worked surprisingly well for me.
Enjoyed our walks around our water rich neighbourhood, under what we call ‘Dutch skies’ (blue skies with large cloud formations, often featuring in paintings by old masters)
Replied to Building a Day Log Habit by an author
Ton, I am replying to your post, I had been keeping a daily journal of what I was doing, but your description of a day log includes a little more, I am going to try that this week.
Writing into a wiki can become a bit addictive as a thinking and logging tool. I’m finding that some are better than others. Ease-of-use and user interface are certainly important. There are a few I like more than others, but I’m also still experimenting with a few. The ease of copy/pasting data into them is an important feature for me.
I’m also trying to find the balance between public/private as well.
Over 8 weeks at home behind us, some restrictions will ease as of tomorrow. Schools and daycare will open tomorrow, freeing up quite a lot of time for me and E with Y going to daycare again. Other restrictions may be eased on May 19th and June 1st, but the details may still change based on research outcome and new developments. The working from home rule remains unchanged, which is no surprise, and will likely continue until the end of year, or for as long as society needs to dance around the point of equilibrium until a treatment or a vaccin is available.
This week I had a hard time focussing and being productive.
Worked on the EU research project, sending out invitations for online focus sessions in 2 weeks
Wrote a one-pager for a client on the interplay between policy goals, public tasks, indicators and data collection and data management, requiring a much broader scope for what data governance should entail
Worked on an EU subsidy bid for a client
Had dental surgery, the first step towards a molar implant. Until last week it looked like it would have to be postponed, but dentists got the go-ahead to open back up just in time for my appointment. With a range of additional safety measures in place however. No waiting times though!
Thought back way more, and with way more emotions, than I had expected to the fireworks disaster of 20 years ago, about which I read my friend Danny’s book the week before this one. Maybe it’s the same as Danny who wrote his book precisely now as some of the pandemic circumstances look and feel similar. Wrote a (Dutch) blogpost which will get posted on the 13th around the time the blasts ripped through our city and our lives
Enjoyed being in the garden, sipping coffee, looking at the flowers, the water and the birds
Kept up my daily routine of creating day-logs
Participated in the first week of an online course in philosophy of technology by my alma mater
Over 9 weeks at home, there was a change of pace as daycare has re-opened. While welcome it also took some getting used to, having time to focus all of a sudden, and less interruptions in the home. It did not immediately transform into productivity, it also translated in taking some time to do my own thing, such as tinkering with a bit of code. It felt like a very unproductive week, but mostly as I measured it against the lack of progress of a single project that I should be focused on more than I was.
This week I
Coded up a new rss feed for comments on this site
Kept up keeping daily logs, for the third week in a row
Made a ‘kanban’ style board for a project nearing a deadline, to get an overview of its various components and quircks. Used the new NextCloud Deck app for it, and it works well. Made working with a colleague on this way easier, cutting back on coordination time.
Worked on the EU High Value Data study
Celebrated my 50th birthday. E themed it ‘play (more)’ and gave me both a book about Play, and a Lego Boost robot to play with. I had a visit from my sister and brother in law who live nearby, and E’s brother. At the request of Y we had take-away pancakes for dinner. The evening we did a Zoom Trivial Pursuit game (with questions about me added) with dear friends in Switzerland. But the program then stretched out into the rest of the week. There was a ‘pubquiz’ on Wednesday with E’s entire family with questions about me and my birth year 1970. There was a ‘virtual escape room’ on Thursday with my colleagues, and an app-mediated scavenger hunt through our neighbourhood with my dear fried K on Saturday afternoon. Thank you E, and all!
Received a mountain of Playmobil (12 kilos!) which will provide for Y’s birthday, and family members can subscribe to parts of it as their gift. The mountain is big enough to also cover for Sinterklaas in December I suspect.
Worked on a provincial data publishing platform
Spent quite a bit of time in my head on the fireworks disaster which was 20 years ago this Wednesday. That had been building in the week and a half before, after reading the now published diary from then by my friend Danny, in which I feature quite a bit.
Went to the dentist for a next step in getting my implant tooth. Next stage in August, so for now it is done.
Had some meetings with a provincial digital transformation team
Had a meeting with Maltese civil servants on meteo data
Discussed a EU project proposal with a client
Wrote background material and sent it out for two online workshops I’m doing next week
Participated in Oliver’s unconference, which was a good end to the work week and start of the weekend
Got about half way in building a robot cat from the Lego kit I got, putting it together with Y
I’ve now kept daily logs of my activities for a month and a week, on a blog run on my laptop. It hasn’t been an effort to do it as a daily habit, logging activities, notions/ideas/brief thoughts, and state of mind. Early on I noted how it led more easily to spin-offs in the shape of blogposts or (local) wiki pages. There are other benefits as well. It helps me see what I did on days that feel like I’ve done nothing, usually by more readily showing the variety of small things I did do. In the past two weeks as I was extremely stressed out from writing two client reports, it also showed me what progress I actually did make in a day, as opposed to my mind only seeing the amount of work that still needed to be done. Finally it is now gradually allowing me to see and tweak how I take breaks, build in relaxation. That is something I easily ignore otherwise, spending too many hours in one sitting behind the screen.
Starting my day now has a clear and predictable marker: I open up my laptop, click the shortlink to a new blogpost in edit mode, hit two keyboard shortcuts (.dag for the title with date, and .dlist to populate the post with a basic list) and enter what time I started working and on what. After thirtyseven days I think this habit is a keeper.
In part 1 I explained how Obsidian is a tool I use in support of the methods I employ that make up my system to process incoming information as well as track and do my work.
I started using Obsidian to make better notes (Notions as I call them), and link them together where I see relevance. This is a networked type of use. For my daily work and for logging that daily activity I use a folder structure, which is a hierarchical approach. My personal knowledge management system is based on the interplay of those networked and hierarchical perspectives, which allows emergent insights and putting those insights to action or keep them until they can be used.
Folder hierarchy
To kick-off my more detailed description of using Obsidian, I will start with that hierarchical perspective: the folder structure. I will also explain how I make daily and week logs, as well as what I call ‘month maps’
Obsidian allows you to use multiple ‘Vaults’. A vault is a folder tree structure that is perceived as a single collection of notes by Obsidian. The tool tracks connections between only those mark down files in that folder tree. I currently have only a single vault, as I want to be able to link between notes from all my areas of activity. I can imagine you might use separate vaults if one of them is meant to be published, or for instance if one is a team effort. As there is no such division for me, I am building a personal system, I have a single vault.
Within that vault I have a folder structure that currently looks like this:
Main folder structue in my Obsidian vault
That list of main folders is a mix of folders for each of the areas I’m active in, some folders that I use to manage my own work, or that I have/had as Notebook in Evernote to keep their contents apart from other things, and the folders that contain the notes and notions that led me to start using Obsidian.
Areas (a component in the GTD method) are things like my company (4TGL), family and health, home, my voluntary board positions, and websites/automation. Within each area there are projects, specific things I’m working on. Projects all have their own folder in an Area. Some of the projects may have subfolders for (sub)projects taking place within the context of a client assignment for instance.
Examples of folders for managing my work are 1GTD12WY which contains things related to my longer term goals and 3 month planning cycle (combining elements from Getting Things Done and the 12 Week Year methods), and the 2Daglogs folder which contains day and week logs, and month maps.
Evernote notebooks like travel related material (bookings, itineraries) en digital tickler files (also part of the GTD method), and Network (where I keep contextual notes about people, as LinkedIn etc e.g. stores nothing about how you met someone) also have their own top level folder at the moment.
The actual folders for notes are Notes (for notes made from information coming in) and 0GardenofForkingPaths (why that title?), which contains my Notions, the conceptual Zettelkasten-style notes. Those two folders internally take a networked perspective and have no subfolders.
Some folder names start with a number to ensure them being shown at the top end of the list. One folder Z-Templates contains, well, templates, and is called Z so it is always last. Templates can be copied into new notes for those notes where you want to keep a specific structure.
Whenever I start a new project I run an Applescript that after asking me the project name, the area it belongs to, the description and project tag, creates the right folders and in them the right notes I need to start a project (albeit a client project, an internal one, or something else). That script used to create those structure, tasks and notes for me in Evernote and Things, but now creates them in the filesystem within my Obsidian folder. Each project e.g. has a ‘main’ note stating the projects planned results, to which goal(s) it contributes, main stakeholders, budget and rough timeline.
Day and week logs, month maps
Within the folder 2Daglogs I keep day logs, week logs, and month maps. Day logs are ordered in monthly folders, all weeks in a year are in one folder, as are all month maps. Day and week logs are for the now and looking back (they’re logs), month maps I use to look forward to the month ahead, at the start of each month (they’re surveying the coming weeks).
Folder structure that keeps day/week/month files
The first thing I do in the morning, is start the Day log. I do this by clicking the ‘tomorrow’ link in the day log of the day before (after glancing at what I did yesterday). Then in the new note I hit the keyboard short cut /dnow which (through Alfred) adds date tags (like #2020- #2020-10 #2020-1025) and links to the day logs of yesterday and the (as yet not existing) one for tomorrow. See the screenshot below. During the day I add activities to the log as I’m doing them. I also mention thoughts or concerns, how I think the day goes etc. I link/mention the notes corresponding to activities, e.g. things I wrote down in a project meeting. I started keeping day logs last April, and they are useful to help me see on days that seem unfocused what I actually did do, even if it felt I didn’t do much. That helps spot patterns as well.
Example of a day log with the links to other days shown, beneath a bullet list of things I mention during the day
Week logs are notes that collate the day logs of a week. (Since I restarted doing weekly reviews, a week log is accompanied with a note that contains review notes.) Collating is done by transcluding 7 day logs into one note. I add links to the previous and next week on top. I use the week logs in my weekly review on Friday, to write hours in my timesheets at the end of the week, and to write my Week Notes blogpost on Sunday.
A week log is a list of transcluded day logs. Above in edit mode, below in preview mode
Monthmaps are something I make at the start of each month, they are a mindmap of the coming month, hence the name (the Dutch word for month, ‘maand’ sounds a bit like the English mind in mindmap). It’s a habit I started 4 years ago. I list every area (see folder structure above), and within those areas I list every project where I see I might hit a snag, where I have concerns or urgencies are likely to pop up, or where activities are in store I know I usually try to evade or postpone. I add easy actions I can think of that will help me deal with such barriers. It’s a way to confront underlying hesitations or anxieties and prevent negative consequences from them. I refer to it during the week, to see if barriers indeed popped up, or what I had planned to deal with them when they do. I go through it during weekly reviews as well.
In the next part I’ll take a look at how I’ve replaced my todo-list app Things with simple markdown files in Obsidian.