December 2021 Daily Notes

12.31.21

I realized today I shouldn’t archive my Daily Notes on the last day of the month because then the last day of the month’s Daily Note would disappear from my main Daily Notes page before people even have a chance to read it. I've decided to archive my Daily Notes at the end of the day on the first day of the month instead, giving people a chance to see the last note of the month before it goes into the archives (where you can still go to see all my previous Daily Notes should you miss any of them).

12.30.21

Another productivity related gift I received for Christmas was the book The Bullet Journal Method by the creator of the Bullet Journal, Ryder Carroll. I haven't read the book yet, but from what I understand is it's more than just how to set up a Bullet Journal, which he explains well enough on his website, bulletjournal.com. He also goes into mindfulness practices and how to be more intentional about what goes onto your task lists. We tend to carry around tasks with us that aren't really that important, so we need to learn to let go of those things and focus on what's most important. I haven't used my Bullet Journal for task management for a couple years now, but I'm still using principles and ideas from it, such as calendaring and rapid logging. As with all productivity systems I study, I take what resonates with me and incorporate it into my own personal system. I look forward to reading the book and seeing what improvements it inspires me to make.

12.29.21

I’ve completed my January calendar and my first weekly spread for 2022 in my Bullet Journal. I’m going to be keeping track of things such as when bills are due and my various personal and work events / meetings. I can’t really have my work and personal calendars combined on any of my devices, so putting everything into my Bullet Journal will help me keep track of events much better. I’m going to be using my weekly spread to time block my days so I can be more efficient with my time. I haven’t done a weekly spread for a few years now, but I was flipping through some of my old Bullet Journals and saw one I really liked, so I’m giving it another go. If it works out I’ll be sure to include an example of how I set up my calendar and weekly spreads (probably in one of my permanent articles).

12.28.21

I test drove Pixaki in the evening on Christmas by doing a little Charlie Brown Christmas picture. The app was an absolute pleasure to use, and I was able to complete the image really quickly. I feel it improved the quality of my pixel art having tools that are specifically designed to handle the medium. More pixel art images to come in the near future.

12.27.21

I got two new pixel art tools for Christmas: a book on pixel type called Arcade Game Typography: The Art of Pixel Type, and a pixel art app for my iPad called Pixaki. The typography book features a wide array of different types of pixel typefaces, which will be a great resource for me as I create pixel art graphics for this site. Pixaki, unlike my current pixel art app Procreate, is specifically designed for doing pixel art, and therefore features some very useful tools that will significantly speed up my process. Some of these tools include pixel perfect lines (eliminates duplicate pixels as you’re drawing), reference images at full resolution that you can trace over with your pixel line work, and being able to export at larger sizes. I already have plans for content I want to create for this site using these two great new resources.

12.23.21

As we are getting so close to Christmas, I didn't focus on my regular productivity research today. And as tomorrow is Christmas Eve, I won't be posting anything the next couple of days. Taking some time off to spend with my family. I'll be back to my regular posting schedule next week.

12.22.21

Historically, I’ve found it difficult to keep up with my daily routine when I’m on break from work for the holidays. I didn’t want that to be the case this week, so I set a goal of getting all my recurring daily tasks completed each day (though I have a feeling I still won’t get all those tasks done on Christmas Day, but that’s a special day, so it’s perfectly fine). It’s been a bit tough, but I’ve managed to keep up with my goal for the most part. I missed setting a highlight one of the days, and I’ve missed a couple other things here and there. It’s all still a vast improvement over what I’ve done during holiday breaks in the past. It’s amazing how quickly habits can break, so I want to do my best not to let that happen this year.

12.21.21

I’ve been using a Bullet Journal off and on since 2016, and pulled out all my previous journals today and flipped through a few of them. It’s fun to see how they’ve evolved throughout the years, and how my use of them has changed. For instance, I don’t really use my Bullet Journal for task management anymore as I’ve moved all of that into Things 3. I use it much more for actual journaling, which has primarily taken the form of notes on my Daily Highlights this year (See my note on 12.13.21 for a little more on Daily Highlights). As I was flipping through my Bullet Journals, I noticed a bunch of great monthly and weekly spreads that I would like to start doing again. I’d like a place to combine my work and personal calendars, and schedule time to work on my Daily Highlights. I’m setting up my Bullet Journal for the new year right now, so I’ll be starting up my calendaring starting in January.

12.20.21

I’m subscribed to a few channels on YouTube that talk about new productivity apps, and I’m starting to think I shouldn’t be. I’ve got a great set of core tools and apps, as I outlined in my Second Brain diagram, so I don’t need to constantly be looking at new, shiny toys. Sure, one of those YouTube channels introduced me to Obsidian, which is by far my favorite note taking / writing app I’ve ever used, but I’m not going to continue to be productive if I’m constantly switching apps. There needs to come a point where I’m satisfied with my tools, and my system should largely stay the same. There will always be a need to tweak things here and there as circumstances in life change, but my core system is now in place, and shouldn’t change too much going forward. We’ll see how well I stick to that.

12.18.21

I worked on implementing the changes to the Daily Notes section I talked about on 12.6.21. The changes aren't live yet as I haven't yet reached the end of the month, and therefore have nothing to archive yet. You'll be seeing the changes come the first of the year. Basically there will be a Daily Note Archives section, organized by year, and on each year page you'll be able to access each month of the year. I'll be archiving the Daily Notes at the end of each month.

12.17.21

I completed the productivity system diagram I've been working on for the past couple weeks! Click here to check it out, or click on 2nd Brain Diagram in the nav menu!

12.16.21

Article: Embracing Messy & Inconsistent Journaling

Some notes I took as I read the above article:

Know the reason why you’re journaling, then tailor your approach so you achieve the outcome you want.
Write as little or as much as you want in your journal. Your journal is for you, so you don’t have to worry about following a strict pattern.
Start small. Write a single sentence about what happened that day, answer a prompt, or write down what you’re grateful for.
Make it easy to write in your journal.
- Setting Daily Highlights has been helpful for me to get back into a consistent journaling habit because it gives me a focus for my writing every day.
Don’t beat yourself up if you miss a day. Just pick it back up the next day.
Find a schedule for journaling that works for you. Write every day, every couple days, or once a week. Journaling should reduce your stress, not add to it.

12.15.21

Video: How I Take Notes on Books - Effective Remote Work

Notes I took on the above video:

When you copy quotes straight out of a book, you lose the context around it. You most likely won’t be able to remember what the quote meant to you when you copied it.
Write down what you’re thinking

The last several books I've read I just copied quotes from them into Notion, and I have found upon reviewing them again that I have indeed lost the context around them. I'd like to take better notes while I'm reading books, so I'm going to start writing down my thoughts and feelings rather than just copying the author's words verbatim.

This also reminds me about something I read on Austin Kleon's blog about reading with a pencil. He suggests you always read with a pencil so you can write your thoughts in the margins, and have a conversation with the author rather than passively consuming. You can read his blog post here.

12.14.21

I’ve been interested in learning how to do Pixel Art lately because I’ve been dabbling in JavaScript video game development. I really like the simplicity of Pixel Art, plus I enjoy the challenge of figuring out how to convey complex objects using only tiny squares. It’s actually quite amazing how much detail can come across from just a few pixels. As a way of practicing Pixel Art, I’ve decided to make all the illustrations I do on this site in a Pixel Art style. I’ve been doing my productivity system diagram as Pixel Art on my iPad in an app called Procreate. I hope to have that up on the site within the next few days. In the meantime, here’s another piece of Pixel Art I did for practice in which I drew several of the Disney Princesses in the style of the SNES Legend of Zelda.

12.13.21

I read a book earlier this year called Make Time, in which they talk about setting a highlight each day to focus on. Your daily highlight is meant to be the most important thing you want to get done that day. I've been setting a highlight each day since I read the book, and I incorporated it into my Daily Note template in Obsidian. Here's what my template looks like:

# Daily Highlight
#record_in_journal 

[Today](things:///show?id=today)

**Today’s Highlight:**

- [ ] Did I make time for it?

**How did it go?**

**Moment I’m grateful for:**

- - -

# Notes
#post_on_site

I have a link to my Today list in Things 3 so I quickly jump to it and pick one of my tasks to be my highlight. The tags #record_in_journal and #post_on_site help me to remember to transfer my highlight notes to my physical journal, and to post my Daily Notes here on the site. Once I've completed those tasks, I delete the tags so they no longer show up in search results. The Daily Notes plugin in Obsidian automatically creates a new note with the template each day, which has made it really easy to keep up my daily writing habit.

12.10.21

Video: How I Take Literature Notes in Obsidian

I watched the above video today, which had some similar thoughts I wrote about in my daily note on 12.7.21. Here's the main idea I got out of the video:

When reading an article, reading a book, or watching a video, don’t just copy and paste things. This doesn’t help you internalize the information. Write summaries of the big ideas (similar to how you would with Sketchnotes).

I also started working on a "What I Like About Obsidian" article that I'll be posting sometime in the near future. It'll be the first article I write in (Obsidian)[https://obsidian.md], and since I've been linking all my notes on Obsidian together, I'm hoping it'll make writing the article take much less time.

12.9.21

I finally finished migrating my notes from Notion to Obsidian. It feels good to have that done. I thought I would feel regret or miss Notion, but I find I don’t really miss it at all. The amount of inspiration and motivation to write that Obsidian has given me far outweighs any features I may be missing from Notion. And I’ll be keeping Notion around for collaborative projects as it’s still a great tool for teams.

12.8.21

Moved my Article Notes from Notion to Obsidian, and just like the Video Notes, I ended up deleting a large number of them. I kept the ones that had ideas I want to further develop. It has felt good cleaning things out that have just been taking up space, and focusing in on ideas and thoughts that I want to explore further.

12.7.21

Video: Why Obsidian Will Overtake Roam

Some thoughts I had after watching the above YouTube video:

”Our apps shape us in profound ways”
- Obsidian has already helped me to focus more on writing about ideas rather than just collecting and databasing.
“Roam encourages connecting & databasing”
- I had this experience not with Roam, but with Notion. Notion is built on databases, and that greatly influenced my behavior towards organizing and cataloguing rather than exploration and creativity. I was focused on collecting other people’s words and providing meta data and organization around them. I didn’t really think too much about the words I was saving. I found as I was moving notes from Notion to Obsidian, a lot of the notes didn’t hold any value to me because I hadn’t cultivated them and allowed them to grow. I had simply copy and pasted them, filed them away, and forgot about them.
"Obsidian encourages connecting and writing"
- I’ve done so much more writing since I switched to Obsidian. This is the behavior I prefer over collecting and databasing. I want to grow my ideas, then write about them and share them with others, not just copy other people's words. I’ve long struggled with writing, so I’m glad I’ve finally found an app that makes it so easy and frictionless for me.

12.6.21

Spent some time figuring out how I want to structure the Daily Notes section on Productivity Dudes. I was going to have the entire year of Daily Notes in a single file, then allow you to jump to specific months and days in the right sidebar. The scrolling will get really long in that case, though, as there will be over 300 notes in a single year. I’m using a prebuilt template for the site, and I can kind of get the organization I want, but it’s going to take some code tweaks to get what I really want. They shouldn’t be too difficult to implement, however. This Daily Notes section is likely to change slightly sometime in the coming weeks. Stay tuned!

12.4.21

I started moving my video notes from Notion over to Obsidian, and was surprised at how many I had. I moved a few over as is, then realized I didn’t have things organized in Obsidian the way I wanted to yet. I also found some of my notes to not really be relevant anymore, so I did a little purging. I watched a few videos on ways to organize Obsidian, and got some great ideas on how to minimize directory structure and take advantage of the backlinking features. I want to keep the structure of my notes as loose as possible so I’m not locked in to a particular organizational strategy, and to make it easier to make connections between notes.

Videos I watched:

12.3.21

Started a Daily Notes section on Productivity Dudes as a place to post short bits of content, such as random thoughts I’m having or experiments I’m running. This is my way of following the advice given in Austin Kleon’s book, Show Your Work where he says to post something about your work every day. I’ve been writing up these daily notes in Obsidian using the Daily Notes plugin.

I’ve been working on a diagram of the various apps I’m using in my productivity system to put up on Productivity Dudes. One of the pieces of content Austin Kleon suggests sharing as part of the daily sharing of work is rough drafts and sketches. So, here’s a couple rough drafts of my productivity system diagram. I’d already had to make some tweaks due to me recently shifting my notes from Notion to Obsidian.

Original Draft

Revised Draft

12.2.21

Did some more exploration with Obsidian, and I am falling in love. I love how easy it is to link notes and thoughts together. And because the notes are all local files, the app is super fast. Notion is completely online, so it tends to slow down when you add large amounts of content. I've been learning more about how to use Obsidian today, namely Plugins. I watched a video about some popular plugins (Obsidian Plugins), and the one I started using and really like is Refactor Notes. It allows me to create new notes based on selections in other notes, or take text from one note and quickly move it to another existing note. This also creates a link between the notes, so it helps to grow my knowledge graph.

12.1.21

I've been experimenting with a new note taking app called Obsidian. The thing I like about it the most is it stores all my notes as Markdown files on my device, so I'm not locked into a software with a proprietary format. I've been using Notion for a year or two as my primary note taking app, and it has been great, but I've been finding myself using more specialized apps for things such as project management and task management lately. I've slowly been moving away from Notion, and if Obsidian ends up working out for me for note taking, then I might move away from it completely. I'm going to be experimenting with Obsidian for the next little while and seeing how I like it.