Note that I've been fiddling with this for a long time. I find logging my work to be very useful (at least within a given timeframe), but I don't generally like to take the time to do it. The best solutions for me are automated, as seen in my Git logger that scans all of my working directories and compiles a log of commits, my TaskPaper scanner that finds @done tasks in the last day, and my AppleScript to compile completed OmniFocus tasks every week, all into Markdown-formatted entries in both nvALT and Day One. On the occasions where I want to log something that isn't part of any repo, todo list or action item, I use a LaunchBar script to drop a text update into a @whatiwasdoing file and Day One.
It's definitely counter to the whole idea of "journaling," there's not a lot of personality or passion in my log. I've never been one to enjoy reading over my own drama a year later, though... If I'm going to reminisce, I'd much rather know what project I was working on 3 months ago and since forgot about.
Regarding dual logging, I like having everything in Day One because it's pretty and easy to navigate, and it makes sense for logs--which are first and foremost chronological. I like to have the plain text in nvALT, too, though, because it provides a lightning-fast means of searching for keywords and @tags in my updates. Someday I'll find a way to fully meld the two, but with a little scripting I can just keep dual updates handy for now.
There, now that I've written an entire post in the comments, I'll save some for a more eloquent description another time.
I kinda feel bad that I clearly didn't search thoroughly enough before asking my question, but on the other hand having a summary of the current state of things is still useful information.
I need to read through more of the posts tagged for this, but think I may be looking for some additional detail with my logging than you do. For example, one of the things I do is writing, and I would like a record of word count as well, per day, split per project. I'm sure I can get this in plaintext but it may require some really oblique automations...
Thanks for the reply, and, as well, all your fantastic work with markdown tools and nvALT. You've been a big help in feeding my markdown addiction, and I am still riding the serotonin high from transferring all my notes into nvALT recently.
Explain word count to me. Are you talking about writing prose, or coding changes? Either one would be fairly easy to script just by running files through wc -w on the command line, but the desired results may be different depending.
In this case I'm more concerned about prose. And for that, I know wc has some limitations, but my needs are imprecise enough that I am willing to live with them. Basically I want to chart progress on writing projects and with prose and fiction word count is a decent approximation thereof (when you don't know how long the end product will be).
load more (1 remarks)
I use a similar technique, but since I tend to have lots of little context switching things going on at once, my method is to have a textfile named Short Stack that's just a list of everything that's on my plate at this instant, which I keep open in either nvAlt or vim (depending mostly on whether I'm coding or doing something else).
Out of curiosity, can you speak to how you do logging of work? I'm trying to come up with the best way of doing just that using my as much plaintext as possible nvAlt / vim / taskpaper workflow. There's some interesting scripts that people have written for taskpaper (notably http://www.hogbaysoftware.c... ) but it seems a little awkward (and didn't work for me out of the box, but no doubt some hacking could fix it).
This sentence made me laugh so hard:
It’s probably a result of choices I made in my younger years…
My memory stresses me out very often, too. I'm combating this issue with nvALT and a Geeklet with a note. If I make a pause or I got an idea I open this note via Launchbar and write it down. If the idea or note isn't related to today then it goes into my OmniFocus inbox. Anyway, it's always great to see how you geek out and tweak your workflow writing something like QuickQuestion. I'm now heading to your 2nd scatterbrains post.
Cheers,
Patrick
Remarkbox