I’d like some help with my end of day processing and is this even possible?
I’d like to store the stuff I’m working on each day in DTP when I’m done for the day.
The Stuff -
Can I automate this?
Dennis
Possibly some of it. Firefox is out of the game, since it has no API to talk of. But then, you can simply restore its last session. Which actually makes a lot more sense imo them saving/restoring tabs in DT (or don’t you want to restore them the next day – then why bother saving them?)
The rest can probably be automated using find or Spotlight search predicates. Not sure if and how well Reminders is scriptable.
But: what is your goal here? It seems to me as if you’re trying to keep track of everything you did. Kind of Git on steroids? But why?
Thanks for the question, I appreciate the thought.
I am in a new position at work. It comes with more responsibility and projects to track, with information I need to access quickly from previous days and sometimes at high level meetings where time is of the essence. I thought keeping the things I work on handy, I would be able to use DT to help with this.
I’m open to other thoughts, for sure.
Well, at least Firefox remembers where you were at yesterday. I don’t use safari, so don’t know about it in that respect. Finder has, iirc, something like a “modified yesterday” smart folder. If it doesn’t, it’s trivial to implement. And Reminders should be able to tell you what you did, too.
I do not really see the advantage of writing a fairly complicated script to repeat all that functionality in DT.
You want to implement this script which creates a markdown log of all the files in DT that you’ve interacted with that day: Grouping items by date opened or like a daily journal - #6 by pete31
You’ll also want to make DT your main navigation if it isn’t already so that any time you open a file you do so from within DT and it gets picked up by the script.
For web browsing, you want to purchase HistoryHound and set it up to track your browsing across Safari and Firefox. That at least pulls all your history into one place, so you don’t have to remember what browser you were in.
I vaguely recall reading somewhere that someone had set up a script to write HistoryHound’s data to a Markdown file, but I never implemented so can’t advise on that. Perhaps worth a Google though.
Task Manager apps are a whole different ball game. You can’t just swap to a new app if one doesn’t meet all your needs. Reminders didn’t work for me for other reasons, and I’ve finally settled on NotePlan. It’s a markdown based task manager where files are stored natively and each day is assigned its own note. This could work for you because you can keep a file open during the day to add notes to, manage your tasks in there, etc. I use my daily note for all sorts of things, e.g. memos to myself, things I need to remember for later as well as writing down my to-do lists. I’ve set up a template with different sections where I add different bits (there are videos online and the developer has great examples).
NotePlan has its own searching and linking system and I mostly use that, but you could either archive old notes to DT or even index the NotePlan folder to your database if you want to find everything via DT. They’re just markdown files so they’re readable outside NotePlan. As an example, I keep project notes in NotePlan, with things like meeting minutes, next actions, stray thoughts I’ve had whilst doing something else, etc. When I add the project to my daily to-do list, I either write a specific task I need to do that day, or just link to the project note and tell myself I need to work on it (I’d then track the tasks via the project note instead of my daily note). When a project is complete I move the file into DT. It’s no longer in NotePlan, but I can refer back to it if I need to.
It wasn’t my reason for switching to NotePlan, but it does mean I now have a handy daily log that’s recorded what I worked on, and it means I can easily track projects via individual files that can be moved between my task manager and my database as needed.