Daybook

DEVONthink Tips
1

I want to experiment with using DT to create a “Daybook”- I think it’s called different things by different software. Essentially, every day you have a new entry and you write miscellaneous bits you might want to remember that came up that day. So I have two questions for the community:

1.) Has anyone else tried this ? Any reason why it’s a particularly good or bad idea?

2.) Is there anyway to automate the creation of the entries- in other words, make a new document in the database where the title is the creation date?

2

I gave an example of my approach to daily journaling at http://www.devon-technologies.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=3607.

3

Thanks for pointing out this interesting thread. It certainly answers the question.

4

Hi, birameus

I use two different files:

  1. A daily personal journal which is updated all day long. Each entry is marked with a time and date stamp. There is a new file for each day, named by date. This might be similar to what you are looking for.
  2. An activity file that I use to record tasks, and any notes about them or some activity in the future. It’s actually several tables with different subjects. It also works well for all those fleeting thoughts that pop up while you’re doing something else and will fly away if not captured. It’s not Getting Things Done-ish, but it works for me!

… and
A group named “–2007” so it will stay up at the top of an alphabetized list. Within this group are others, each labelled a different color:

  1. Groups for each month, where I put the daily personal journal and activity files. You might put your daily files under a similar group.
  2. Groups for projects I’m working on. These mostly hold replicants of other groups and files.
  3. Miscellaneous items I want to stay in my face until I do something about them are drifting around the --2007 group. They stick out because they are files instead of groups.

I used to keep a “commonplace” file as well, similar to the commonplace book of old, for all the great quotes, ideas etc that I wanted to keep. But DT’s find is so efficient that now I have separate groups for quotes, big ideas, etc. I just make a new file to record the thought, and use the “set title” function to find the part of the text that best describes the note. Makes it easy to browse the group, and DT finds by title lightening fast.

Hope I’ve helped a bit!
Mike