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My simple knowledge management and time tracking system (henrikwarne.com)
104 points by henrik_w 3 months ago | hide | past | favorite | 29 comments



I really enjoy the obsidian daily notes feature for this [1]. It's a dedicated button to create a new note with a title of your choosing. I typically do YYYY-MM-DD d, so 2024-12-1 mon.

I'm not sure about the time tracking though. Is this more for people working on contract for billing? I see the value in having the data but collecting the data seems difficult.

[1] https://help.obsidian.md/Plugins/Daily+notes


The task plugin for Obsidian allows tracking time to completion iirc. If you're billing hourly for clients or trying to use it as a stand-in for a stop-watch it could be useful. I personally don't use it though


This reminds me of the dead simple .LOG feature in notepad:

https://www.howtogeek.com/258545/how-to-use-notepad-to-creat...


Crazy, never heard of that before


Wow!


I too save information that may have future value in a textfile. I too am managing knowledge!


Let's all submit blog posts about our notes files and see how many HN front pages we can fill.


I have separate files for different types of information.

Also, in my notes files, I have different sections for different subtopics within that file.

Note: My patent for this method is still pending. I'm hoping it gets reviewed by the person that handled 1-click purchase.


It starts to become a burden to open these files to make entries, so you create a terminal alias to do it. Then writing the entries becomes tedious so you make a macro to write a timestamp and put you in edit mode so you can just start typing the entry. Then you move computers and it gets tiresome moving the files around.

- The Wails of Sisyphus, author unknown


Org-mode! There. I said it. Now this thread has the obligatory post.


Yes, I have been using org-mode for task management for over a decade, enjoying all the advantages of plain text.


Right, any knowledge not in Org-mode is not really knowledge.


Apart from the funny timestamps (two-digit years ´༎ຶД༎ຶ), his files more or less are in org-mode already :-)


I just use Logseq (+ syncthing for sync) with extensive tagging (thousands of tags added a year) + a random Pomodora app that keeps records and descriptions of each Pomadora. Simple and effective


How do you manage having thousands of tags? What is your use case? I quite quickly moved away from them because I couldn't have a strict/normalised system for it. E.g., I would end up with #a, #as, #<synonym of a>, #parent/as, etc. After a while of this, it would either reduce to nothing better than keyword search, or the effort of keeping track of existing tags and the "right" tags would prevent me from tagging at all.


Well I try to make sure each topic/page has a unique tag, and then I tag keywords within that. So within a page I will tag with consistent generalizable tags like #docker, #blog, #security, #auth and then underneath those I will have more specific tags like #repository_name #author_name #equipment_name.

Its more of a tiered tagging style where there are more generalizable tags are parents of more specialised tags.

It might not be the best for everyone but my brain works well with it. I can usually derive what the parent tag would be from whatever topic I'm searching back up and then find the children notes/tags from there.

It is essentially keyword search that just somewhat organized.


I do basically the same with Zim Desktop Wiki, just with only hundreds of tags ;)


The weird sync decisions on mobile have kept me away from LogSeq, Obsidian, and similar apps which otherwise seem very attractive. If an iOS app forces me to sync exclusively through iCloud or their proprietary sync, it isn't useful for me. I have a mix of Windows, Linux, iOS and Android, and prefer notes apps that work well between OSes.

Currently Joplin is my goto, since if fills all that plus encryption, and I'm eager to see what AnyType does in the future.


What do you mean ... You can just sync with whatever you want. I sync my mobile Logseq with my PCs with syncthing.


I like the idea of a stream of knowledge in one file, I usually used the Saved Messages in Telegram for that.

I'd rather use Markdown though, for the formatting capabilities alone.


Telegram supports Markdown syntax.


Unfortunately, it supports it's own formatting syntax that is somewhat similar to markdown but bot quite it.

For example, in markdown:

    _this is italic_

    *this is also italic*

    __this is bold__

    **this is also bold**
While in telegram:

    _this doesn't work_

    *also doesn't work_

    __this is italic__

    **this is bold**


I do pretty much the same with a file that I called worklog.txt

Days separated with a blank line, and starting with date. Then I use initial spaces to differentiate between task, comments on this task and what is needed to do to finish the task.

Pretty easy to keep it consistent, and the use of spaces allow to easily identify the order of importance in each subset.


I just use markdown. Headline 1 for the week, project gets a headline 2, and within that there’s a ton of nested lists and code blocks.

It’s always open in my editor, so it’s quick for notes of copy paste from the terminal


for command lists i moved away from notes just create long and descriptive aliases on my shell rc file which i already move everywhere anyway.

with the extra advantage of recalling them with tabtab instead of never remembering to read said notes :)


I have been using Gollum[1] for git based wiki. Impressed so far with its simplicity. [1]https://github.com/gollum/gollum


Still using and paying for noteplan for a few years now. Works really well, and storage and syncing can be done anywhere (local, dropbox, icloud, whatever)


What is that keyboard on the top image? Looks beautiful!


Goldtouch Ergonomic Keyboard




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