| I took the idea of rapid logging from Bullet Journaling, and keep a plaintext rapid log in nvAlt. I use Keyboard Maestro macros to generate daily templates that I log under, one plaintext file per month. A KM macro also seeds the month file with a bullet key. The two basic sections per day are "Agenda" and "Journal." Agenda has planned meetings noted, things I bring in from tracking (OmniFocus or JIRA depending on external visibility), and things that carried over from the prior day (marked with a leading ~ so I know I've been carrying them). I indent notes beneath them. Journal has anything that opportunistically comes up, including ad hoc meetings or new adds, notes and tasks not directly relevant to something in Agenda. At the end of each day (or beginning of next because I'm rarely perfect about this) I'll copy unresolved tasks from the previous day to Agenda of the next, then mark it with trailing ~ once moved. Moving to a tracker is considered resolution, so ideally I either finish the task or track it within the same day. Finally there's a Highlights section where I cherry-pick stuff to later put in a weekly status report. All together, you get something like: ----------------------------------------------------------------------
2018-11-05 -- Monday
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Highlights:
- Met with Bob, etc. re: proceeding with Widget tests
-! Learned something surprising from Carol
Agenda:
o 1-2pm Git and Onboarding w/ Alice
o 2-3pm Widget Tests
- https://docs.google.com/notarealdoc
- Requirements vs. Tests?
x Reach out to Ted re: followup
*~ Schedule meeting w/ Bob
c 3-4pm Yak Shaving
- Cancelled, moved to Wednesday
> Goal I brought in from tracking
~x Task I copied from yesterday
x Write status report
Journal:
o Watercooler discussion with Carol
- Some salient thing I didn't already know
-! Surprising or urgent note
< Send followup document to Carol
x Sent helpful aliases for working with the code to Alice
< Some task I moved to tracking
* Some task I still need to resolve or copy forward
*? Some task I'm not sure I need to do, explore further
- Alice working on diagnostic information for whatsit module
The biggest challenge was not going too nuts with bullets while still putting together a dialect that was personally meaningful. At this point I can log pretty quickly in realtime, whether on plaintext in an app or in a field notes book I also carry around for capture. |