I’ve struggled with time administration, staying targeted and group for my total life. I’ve tried completely different processes and plenty of instruments, each actual and digital, however nothing sticks. It is a vicious and irritating cycle.
However, lastly, I believe I discovered one thing that works for me.
Dendron is a VS Code extension and a “information administration instrument”. It is half wiki, half todo checklist, half journal, half calendar and way more. And it is all based mostly on utilizing plain markdown information.
However as a vscode extension, it really works inside the identical instrument I write code in! That is the magic ingredient. It is barely a context swap for me once I’m coding vs writing notes in Dendron. It is simple for me to maneuver forwards and backwards.
If you wish to use Dendron as a staff instrument, you possibly can verify your dendron “vault” right into a git repository and share it as any common codebase.
Nevertheless, I am utilizing it as a person planning instrument to assist me handle my time, private group and purpose setting.
Dendron has a built-in each day journal function that is straightforward to make use of. However I additionally needed a “weekly overview” inbuilt to my workflow. So I created one.
To do that, I create a “schema” and a “template“. Schemas are a option to describe a file naming conference and which template to make use of when creating a brand new observe with that conference.
All dendron notes are in the identical listing. There isn’t a tree construction on the file system. However don’t fret, you will not be utilizing the “Workspace” view very a lot. The Dendron extension comes with its personal sidebar and its personal views.
Dendron information use a dot-namespaced notation to construct a digital tree construction. For instance, a file named foo.bar.md shall be a peer of foo.bar.md and the 2 notes shall be within the foo namespace.
These information:
Creates this tree:
A typical conference for managing templates is to place the notes in a ‘templates’ namespace. I press ctrl+l to create a observe named ‘templates.weekly-review‘ with this textual content (loosely based mostly on the David Allen’s ‘Getting Things Done‘ methodology):
Secondly, I create my weekly report schema file. I press shift+ctrl+l to create a brand new schema, and kind in weekly-review. This create a brand new file referred to as ‘weekly-review.schema.yml‘ and I sort in my schema doc:
This doc describes a file sample with 5 elements. Schema information will be extra complicated, the place every half has a number of youngsters, however this one is pretty easy. Every “half” will get its personal id, a doable sample, and the final one will get a template. You may see we outlined a template named templates.weekly-review.md for the final schema half.
Notes named within the format of: weekly.report.2022.05.08 will match this schema.
Let’s create it. I press ctrl-n to create new observe. I identify it ‘weekly.report.2022.05.08‘ (you do not give it the .md extension) and it comes pre-populated with the template textual content we outlined earlier.
Now, each time I create weekly report observe it’s pre-populated with questions for me to reply. I can edit the template and it is going to be used for subsequent week’s report.
I’m nonetheless ramping up my utilization of dendron, and my tree of notes is rising as I collect my ideas exterior my head and work towards managing my time and vitality higher:
It is working for me thus far. Possibly it is value a strive for you as effectively. Additionally, If in case you have concepts for a greater weekly overview template, I might like to listen to your strategies.
