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My Daily Workflow

Every Day (and Night)

I use notes to limit interruptions. When I think about something I need to do, read, check, buy or when I have a new idea about a project, I write a short Google Keep note (usually a few words or just a link). The motivation is to get everything out of my mind as soon as possible.

Using an application such as Google Keep is great because the application is easily accessible (I have the Android application on the home screen and have a pinned tab in my browser). The notes are automatically synchronized between devices. These kinds of notes are best managed outside The NoteWriter (and is one of the core principles to keep the codebase minimal).

Every Week

Every week, on Friday, I devote one hour processing all these notes in bulk. For every note, and inspired by the Getting Things Done (GTD) methodology, I asked myself a few questions:

  1. Is it relevant? Several notes are just deleted without any action. What seems interesting is no longer valuable just a few days later.
  2. Is it actionable? When?
  • Now? If the note takes less than 2 minutes, I do it immmediately. For example, when finding a new book to read, I create a note with the title. During my review, I check the book online (the reviews, the table of contents, etc.) and add the new book to my reading list (a note using a custom type ReadingList in todo/maybe/read.md). If the note is a link to a YouTube video, I quickly browse the content and add it my “Watch Later” list.
  • Later? If the note is useful for a project (in-progress, planned, or future), I put the note inside the project file (I keep a directory per project with an index.md inside). If the note is an inspiring quote, I move it to my commonplace book (in the directory thoughts/on-<topic> in the file best matching the topic).

Example of common daily notes:

  • A quote ▶ move to references/persons/<name>.md + add tags, attributes like @source, etc.
  • An idea ▶ move to projects/<project>/index.md or create a new directory into projects/. It can be the idea for a new blog post or just a seed to reread during a future blog post.
  • A book ▶ add to todo/maybe/read.md + add a rating to evaluate my interest for it. Same for a video (todo/maybe/watch.md).
  • A task ▶ Do it now or add to the note Todo: Backlog inside the corresponding projects/.
  • A link ▶ Browse the page and determine the next action (ex: add into todo/maybe/buy.md for items to buy someday).