Obsidian for Tasks and Reminders: My Logbook

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My Logbook started out as paper and in a more-or-less Bullet Journal format. When I discovered Obsidian I thought that if it couldn’t handle replacing my Logbook, I could save myself a lot of time migrating all my notes. But, it can and has for over a year now. Here is how it works:

Folder Setup

  • Magic Book
    • Archive: All past daily journal (Logbook) files.
      • Annual folders by year
    • Future Log: All my reminder notes not in use this month.
    • Vertical File: Will explain this one further down.

The Note Setup

  1. A separate note for each recurring item in my year to include birthdays, daily journal, trackers, reminders of things I should do regularly, appointments.
  2. File names follow this format: 2021-07-17 – Item
  3. Appointments receive a start time time like this: 2021-07-18 – @1900 – LYT House Chat
  4. For structure, each day of the week has a note which starts with an emoji so that it floats to the top. Like this: 2021-07-18 – (:books:) SUNDAY -----------------
  5. Every day has a daily “Logbook” for journal entries and notes and funny puppy pictures, etc.

Using the Magic Book

At the beginning of each month I move all files in the the Future Log that belong in the current month out into the top-level Magic Book folder so that it contains:

  • All reminders (birthdays, anniversaries, special events) for the current month.
  • All seven Week-Day files (#4 above).
  • All recurring reminders/events at the date of the next occurrence.

After I have attended to each task, reminder, event I simply change the date in the file name and it moves to the next location in the Magic Book automatically. If the next occurrence is not until after the end of this month, I move it manually back into the Future Log where it settles automatically into the next month when I will need it.

2021-07-17--Magic Book
2021-07-17--Magic Book451×1284 66.8 KB

Vertical File

My Vertical File holds a file for every day of the year but without the year in the file name so these notes look like this: 07-17. At the top of the file, I keep a little happy-birthday note, in case there is one.

Once a week or so, when I am archiving my daily logbook files, I keep an eye out for anything interesting that happened and append it to the vertical file for that day with the year. Sometimes I link to back my Logbook if I wrote about the event. The interior of one of these notes might look like this:

17 July

  • Happy Birthday, Jennifer!

2015 - Mom arrived for her annual visit
2016 -
2017 -
2018 -
2019 - Crazy thunderstorm took some tiles off the roof.
2020 -
2021 - First gooseberries!

Over time this gives a sort-of “On this Day in History” effect and it’s fun to look back over the events that happened in the past.

A heartfelt “Thanks so much!” to forum user oyvind for the question about using only date as daily note. I’ve been wanting to write this up for months and now I have. :smile:

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Maus, thanks for sharing with us.

I do something similar, wrt the day-of-the-year notes. Yours are like 07-17, mine are jul17, aug20, etc. I’ll do a regex, like /\s19\d\d0820/, to find all August 20 references in the 1900’s across my genealogy and other files, then add notes (some linked, some not) manually that feel relevant or noteworthy.

Example for aug21.md:

# August 21 (0821)

> [!info] TimingApp annual license expires

* 1688 - Thankful Rowson, 12th child of William and Ann Rowson in Mass, died at age 15 days. She was last. The 13th child, Nathaniel, was the first to survive infancy.

* 1907 - Bennie Klabunde left Monday for Rochester MN to enter hospital to eliminate some of the scars from burns acquired on 0804 in explosion at Klabunde & Co when young George lit match in room with gasoline stored.
* 1914 - Ida Klabunde and sister (Milwaukee) stayed at Oak Spring Resort on WI.
* 1914 - BORN, Sophie L Hineline

* 2013 - Mtg @ GW w Mayada, Dr Jagasia, Celano, Tina, MB, Larry G, SD re M3 [[201308 Notes]]
* 2017 - comments sent on MIA NWA due [[MIA NWA Network Adequacy 31.10.44]]

I’ll put annual reminders at the top.

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