PTPL #7: Plain or Fancy; It’s Your System, Not Theirs
On productivity and mental health, weekly logs in Obsidian, iPhone keyboard wars, decluttering your notes
Welcome to the seventh in a series of posts documenting my plain text, paper-less, Obsidian-flavoured journey.
Each post is a 5-minute or less summary of what I’ve read, learned, and implemented since the last edition. Earlier episodes are listed in the Index.
Today I’ll be talking about —
- Productivity styles and mental health
- Decluttering principles as inspiration for good note making
- Using Drafts to append text to a weekly log
General Productivity Tips
iPhone keyboard wars
Do you type a lot on your phone? Bet your choice of keyboard is a source of either joy or frustration. Click here to read about my recent iOS keyboard showdown and the winners in 5 different categories.
Mental health and productivity
This week I read about two ways to boost concentration and self-esteem, both of which can help you burn through that to do list.
Your mental and emotional health has a profound impact on your ability to be productive.
I’ve also written an important piece about why complex or fancy systems, both physical and digital, can be an important part of some folks’ journey to better mental health. Read it here. Here’s another, about how to tell when it’s time to change your system to suit your evolving needs:
Beautiful focus music
I’m aware of Brain.fm, but didn’t think it worth the cost as there was only one style of the many offered that I actually enjoyed during my free 3-day trial. YouTube is my go-to for background music when I need some help to focus.
While I’m usually a binaural white noise kind of person, this nearly 4-hour piece also hits the spot for me. Even better than the music itself are the comments. Seriously! Go read them if you want a boost from people who know what distraction and pain feel like.
Here’s my favourite comment, written in reponse to the stressed exam-studiers who found the video:
Hey you. Yes you. Random person that I will never meet. I truly hope that you will find happiness in life. Today is going to be a great day.
Awesome comment, and what a great way to get people clicking on their own, competing work and study music channel.
Keep a compliments file
On a similar note, June Thomas recently wrote about the benefits of keeping a compliments file. After you’ve read her piece and set up your file, I recommend you go about giving other people some good material for theirs.
The only way I can think of to get out of a writing or working slump that’s better than reading over nice things people have said about me, is to give other people nice things to read about themselves.
Productivity Inspiration
We all have a bag
Here’s a quote I appreciate from a decluttering perspective, which I like to apply to note making:
We all have a bag. We all pack differently.
Some of us are traveling light. Some of us are secret hoarders who’ve never parted with a memory in our lives.
I think we are all called to figure out how to carry our bag to the best of our ability, how to unpack it, and how to face the mess.
I think part of growing up is learning how to sit down on the floor with all your things and figuring out what to take with you and what to leave behind. It’s learning to do the hard work that comes with dealing with the messy.
It’s being wise enough to take that inventory and ask yourself: am I being held back? Am I really free? Is there something I’m still refusing to let go of?
This is how I’ve paraphrased it to inspire me to take better notes:
We all have a collection of notes. We all keep them differently.
Some of us only keep notes that are focused and succinct. Some of us are secret hoarders who’ve never parted with a fleeting note in our lives.
I think we are all called to figure out how to keep our notes to the best of our ability, how to structure them, and how to face the mess of notes taken when we didn’t know what we were doing.
I think part of growing up as a knowledge worker is learning how to sit down on the floor with all your notes and figuring out what to turn into permanent notes and what to delete. It’s learning to do the hard work of improving things on the go, rather than thinking we have to go back and bring past notes up to today’s standards all at once.
It’s being wise enough to take that inventory and ask yourself: am I being held back by trying to conform to someone else’s system? Do I really feel free to branch out and try things for myself, just because I want to? Are there false expectations I’m still refusing to let go of?
Adventures in Obsidian
Thought of the week: Logseq is a tool for people who like to tinker. Obsidian could be, but it doesn’t have to be.
This week I’ve been neck deep in setting up my daily notes to co-exist on my weekly log pages. I can now choose to write notes on either the daily or weekly page, and have both sets of text appear side-by-side on each page. I’ll add the link here when the detailed description (with included Markdown and transclusion code) is finished.
I just love this! The choice to write zoomed in or a little zoomed out, that is. Having my notes on one weekly page makes it easier to see things as a whole, and to use progressive summarisation to highlight the important parts — the parts I want time-poor future-me to see first.
It also means I’ll be less likely to lose an unmarked but important note inside one of several hundred daily pages.
Another option would be to use Otto Vanluchene’s (and others’) approach to dumping everything in a daily log and using Dataview to create separate log pages. He has a dev log, music log, and a sport log. What do you think? Do subject specific, separate log pages work best for you, or are you more of a daily dump-and-tagger?
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