How are you using Daily Notes?

Knowledge management
6

I only have 2 folders in my “Professional” vault - Notes and Sources.

All new notes are automatically placed in “Notes,” including all of my daily notes and “evergreen” notes. I find this reduces the decision anxiety of “what folder does this go into” or “my inbox is filling up rapidly to unmanageable levels.” I tag my #daily notes so that it is easy to filter them out or focus on them, if desired. I (try to) use link any orphan evergreen notes within MOCs or other notes, although am not so strict about this - I’ve found the search tool to be highly efficient in finding what I need, which has relieved the urge to link everything immediately.

2 Likes
7

I do something similar to your “do” and “done” topics, although less explicitly - anything above the line break in my daily note indicates I’ve already read the item, gathered highlights and written a summary, etc. Anything below the break, which is just a simple link, indicates I haven’t done anything yet, and is copied over into a “backlog” note which I’ll view if I’m out of things to do and want to quickly dive in to something I flagged in the past.

Honestly, though, once something enters the backlog it will probably just stay there - which is kind of the point. “backlog” could be renamed to “not important enough to warrant work within even the daily note” which itself is a pretty low threshold. But moving those things along is useful in reducing mental clutter.

I do prefer to keep the daily note structure, rather than all together, as this can help with referencing. E.g. I may link to [[2020-10-29#Europe locks down amidst second COVID19 wave]] which itself may include a few links to related news articles and my personal summary/highlights of the issue. If I link this in my evergreen notes elsewhere, it will be clear from the link what the time and topic is even without transcluding it.

3 Likes
8

Very true.

I tend to overdo things to the point they often overwhelm rather than help me. So my instinct tells me to overly declutter with options to revert to complexity and slowly transition into it for a purpose. Of course, occasionally I can’t resist and dive deep into systems and logic that make my head spin. But it isn’t sustainable.

Your comment made me realize that I may want to start peppering in headers within the folds of daily task lists to try to preemptively build some linkable structure and avoid having to search for importance later.

Thanks.

1 Like
9

I very much identify with the temptation to create complex systems; at least far more complex than I’ll ever truly leverage.

@icebear Thanks for the tip on adding headers because I definitely didn’t know you could link directly to them! Knowing that, I’ve updated the template for my daily note at work:

### {{date:dddd}} {{date:M/D}}
This makes up a portion of [[{{date:YYYY MMMM}}]]

#### Todo
- [ ] Hiya, Buddy!

---
#### Things that happened
- An occurrence or event

#### TIL
- Something I learned or of which I was informed

I’m still figuring out where it fits (or if it even does fit) into my workflow given I’ve been using Obsidian about 2 weeks now. It doesn’t sit quite right with me to have TODOs spread out or duplicated between Obsidian and Todoist, but I really like ticking off the box on my landing page for the day.
Todos that don’t get completed on the day of remain unchecked and are copied over the next day - which is another thing I’m not too much a fan of.

3 Likes
10

One suggestion to reduce the complication of transferring todo’s from note to note: saved search for “- [ ]”, which you can then sort the results of by time modified/created, and make your way through past daily notes with incomplete actions to address or delete.

4 Likes
11

You mentioned Todoist so I figure you will be interested in this thread:

It is what will become known as a “legacy plugin” since it is not (yet) using the new API available with the insider release at the moment. But that just means the installation process is a little more involved. It looks that good I just about tried out Todoist for the first time, but I refrained! :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
12

That’s a good idea! Thanks for the feedback.

13

Heeeeeck, yes! I really appreciate you sharing; this will make things much, much more streamlined.

1 Like
14

I basically primarily use it for a calendar. Every morning, I go into my work calendar and type it into the daily note in the format:

time - [[customer]] - [[name of meeting]]

So an example would be:

8:00 - [[KevinR]] - [[KevinR - D5 - Standing meeting]]

Then for each “routine meeting”, I just put the date at the top and write notes for the current meeting in the same page. Then I’ve got a timeline of all the notes from that meeting and previous incarnations.

2 Likes
15

I use my daily notes as a catch all record of my day, but with a concentration on work activities. I use the daily note plugin to provide time stamp as the name. I have a text expander snippet to to add the previous days date with cursor positioned to finish the link to that daily note. I then add today’s not link to the previous day note for navigation purposes through daily notes (I got this idea on the forums but forgot who suggested that. Apologies for not remembering and giving credit where credit is do). The text expander snippet also adds a #dailynote and #process tab. #dailynote is for categorization and the #process signifies that I need to come back (usually weekly review) and process this note.

The next major use is for work meetings. I have a text expander snippet to set up a meeting header and formatting for placement of my first meeting. I then fill out my meetings for the day with title and time in header. Notes are taking below with appropriate keywords/link added throughout the note. I do have some meetings which are more in-depth that require a lot of note taking for capturing new materials or presentation items. Those are linked out from this daily note to its on note and tagged as a meeting and a #process tag, but operates sort of as a literature note to be processed at a later time.

I also, utilize a #todo to items that need to be tasked out in my task manager, either MSFT ToDo or Azure DevOps. These can be processed during processing period or individually as I see fit. I use the block reference to the #todo tag location and save it to the task. That way if I need to navigate to the original mention of the task I can go to that location by searching the unique id.

The second area, outside of my work notes, is the Activities section. This is where I capture important knowledge base items I do throughout the day. Books or articles being read, YouTube videos watched, work items being performed. These serve mainly as just activity captures. If I want to fully process and dive in-depth on something I make a literature note. I just make the item listed as a link and click to make note. I have a TextExpander that fills out metadata that I want to add and then proceed as with any literature note. I also will make permanent notes from either of the two main buckets on the daily note also.

So, that is my use and processes for the daily note. I don’t have a full fledged zettelkasten setup as one can see from the above. However, it is a more hybrid system. This has all been made possible by #obsidian. I love this tool and its functionality. It really help consolidate and streamline my workflows.

2 Likes
16

Daily Notes + Block IDs could be useful for creating “Fleeting Notes” or notes that you take for any content you want to be reminded in future.

1 Like
17

Couple additional thoughts on this for those following along -

  • If you’re looking for a TextExpander utility on Windows that’s Open Source to try this out, I’ve tested out a few and Beeftext works really well.
  • I have started doing templates for my daily page and meetings using text expansion after reading Jeff’s usage. I haven’t used block tags yet, but I’m a relative noob.
  • Rather than a tag for todo, I use [ ] (per markdown spec) - you can surface those through a shared search ("[ ]"), and I’ll apply metadata when I move them to a different task manager (Outlook or AzDO). So [X] means complete, [<-] means moved into a different task manager. It saves me from having to remove tasks and I can also search on completed tasks, or migrated tasks.
5 Likes
18

I like your idea for the arrow in the [ ] to signify an action on that task. I remove the #ToDo tag and have not knowledge it was even a task or not. Will implement that. Thanks.

1 Like
19

When I do “Insert template” command, the {{date}} placeholder is replaced with the actual date, but this doesn’t happen when the daily note is created when clicking “Open today’s note”. Is there any way around that?

20

The daily note template needs the exact format specified for some reason, if you add the placeholder in your daily note template like this it will work:

21

After changing my daily note template for the millionth time, I simply leave it as a blank page — no friction, no pressure.

I begin my day by reading the lectionary and the saints of the day. This almost always inspires the creation of a note that, while it may not be permanent, is more substantive than a daily or fleeting note.

2 Likes
22

I’m still in the experimental phase of figuring out my Obsidian. I’m trying to use my Daily Note as a Journal and a catchall.

When I’m researching or going about just daily work, if I don’t want to figure out how to format a note or where this information goes or how it fits somewhere. I just open a daily note, create headings, and take notes. At the end of the day or week (if super busy), I’ll go back through my daily notes and either embed (which is why heading are helpful so I don’t have to link each paragraph) or just straight up cut and paste sections from a daily note into a topic or source note.

I am trying this for a few reasons.

  1. To maintain flow while working
  2. It lets me review notes later when sorting out the daily notes. I can usually see the bigger picture at the end or the day or week. Or even just after I have finished the video, podcast, article… It is easier to see what is important.
  3. I can see personal progress and what I learned every day while still sorting information into topic categories.
  4. I’m more likely to “correctly” format a note and link it if my main task at the moment is to cleanup Vault. When my main task is learning, I don’t focus on the format of a note or how I should be linking. My main goal with formatting, linking, putting in keywords, and tags is to be able to find this note later either on purpose or accidentally.
5 Likes
23

I use a synced todo.txt on my smartphone, laptop and desktop, so no need for replicating my To-Dos in the Daily Notes. I’m also not much of a journal or diary writer.

That said, I haven’t yet found my real use of Daily Notes, but I love some unexpected inspiration for my writing in the mornings.

So I use the templater plugin and a Daily Notes template to give me local weather, a random Unsplash image and a quote of the day as an inspiration, and immediately put my thoughts below it, which later might become actual notes.

I also put other stuff in it that comes to mind (like watch a video, read a book, work on xy).

So my »inspirational morning note« might look like this:

obsidian-daily-inspiration
obsidian-daily-inspiration1183×1035 194 KB

In case anyone wants to experiment, here’s my current Daily Notes template:

# {{tp_date}}

{{weather}}

### Inspiration

{{tp_random_picture:size=1920x1080}}

{{tp_daily_quote}}

#### Thoughts

{{tp_cursor}}

and here the code for the internal template {{weather}} I use with Templater:

curl "wttr.in/?format=3"

Other weather formats are possible (help).

This may not be the most »productivity-boosting« setup for Daily Notes, but at least it gives me a nice inspirational kickoff every morning. :slight_smile:

5 Likes
24

I’m using obsidian since the beginning of the but my daily note system is going since 3-4 years now. I used it previously in a self-hosted wiki.

My main ideas are:

  • Use a single daily note to capture 2 things
    • List of 50min / 10min pomodoro cycles with a very informal description of what I did
    • Remaining daily notes
  • Have a weekly note to make a short summary of last weeks events at the beginning of next week to connect to the topics and continue the train of thought
  • Create a quarterly note in advance to sketch out my plans for the next ~12 weeks. Contains a list of all weeks in that quarter (links to weekly summaries) with a check-mark list of all goals for that week

The system works well if you can establish the habit of weekly reviews and planing the next quarter once you finish the current one. It’s not as much work as it sounds and is really useful to keep things aligned and go in a intended direction.

My daily note template looks like this:

#CaptainsLog, {{date:YYYY-MM-DD}}, week [[{{date:YYYY}}-W{{date:WW}}]]

### Logbook
1.

It is automatically create with the date (e.g. 2021-03-09) and also linking the parent week (e.g. 2021-W10).
The quarterly note is a bit more manual work, but you only have to do it every 3 months.
I want to look up the dates for completeness and think a bit about my goals for that time period. I cross out weeks that passed and move around weekly goals as things progress.
A 2021-Q1 note could look like this:

tags: #CaptainsLog #12WeekYear

## 2021-Q1

### Goals
- Learn to program in python

### Weeks
- ~~[[2021-W01]] from 2021-01-04 to 2021-01-10~~
    - [x] program hello world example
    - [ ] write own library
- [[2021-W02]] from 2021-01-11 to 2021-01-17
    - [ ] write own library
...

By the way, the resulting graph is beautiful. :slight_smile:

11 Likes
25

This is such a fresh and inspiring approach to Daily Notes. You’ve motivated me to build something personal around these topics. Thanks so much, @Moonbase59!

1 Like