Writing Down What I Do—In Obsidian — Sympolymathesy, by Chris Krycho
Assumed Audience:
People who find themselves all for working successfully, significantly with a watch to retaining monitor of accomplishments, constructing “brag docs,” and so forth.
Over the previous 12 months or so, I’ve transitioned my note-taking out of Bear and into Obsidian. The piece of my notes system I took longest to transition over, for quite a lot of causes, was my behavior of writing down what I do (see here and here for earlier write-ups). Getting [my basic Obsidian config][config] to some extent the place I used to be largely glad with the typography meant I used to be comfy sufficient with utilizing it for work monitoring.
Sitting down final Friday to wrap up my week, I used to be doing my regular dance of copying over my each day summaries into the week-level notice to assist with my weekly assessment and its abstract. This has been a reasonably repetitive and error-prone course of for me previously. Generally writing up the abstract of the week jogs my memory of one thing I did one of many days, which I wish to embrace for posterity, so I’ve to write down it up in each the week notice and the each day notice. It’s straightforward for these to get out of sync. Sure, it is a operate of my very own fastidiousness about this note-keeping, however I genuinely discover that very worthwhile after I look again at these for mid-year or annual critiques. However it’s a ache within the neck to do.
Then I had a flash of inspiration: now that I’m utilizing Obsidian, I by no means have to do that once more.
My work notes have a fractal construction to them: Each view is only a extra granular or extra summary view of what I’ve executed over a given time period, however by definition has the identical construction, although probably with further sub-structure. Most significantly right here, each single notice has an Outcomes heading, with Abstract and Artifacts subheadings. The Abstract part is simply what it appears like, whereas Artifacts is a pleasant place to checklist out gadgets I can actively share to signify my work to another person — pull requests opened or reviewed, paperwork written or reviewed, and so forth.
Having that checklist of Artifacts is tremendous useful when placing collectively an annual assessment, information for a promotion, and so forth. — any time I would like a brag doc. I don’t all the time protect the excellence between “Abstract” and “Artifacts” however it’s generally useful in distinguishing between the gist of what I did and the proof of what I did.
Every stage of notice above the each day notice has hyperlinks to the lower-level notice which makes it up, so weekly notes hyperlink to each day notes, month-to-month notes to weekly, and so forth. (There are hyperlinks the opposite manner for straightforward navigation, too, however these are usually not as related to the work of summarizing!) Traditionally, I simply did that with hyperlinks and copy-and-paste. A latest week would possibly appear like this, for instance:
## Outcomes
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.08.29|2022.08.29]]:
- largely 1:1s
- made some progress on mission q
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.08.30|2022.08.30]]:
- did some issues
- extra issues
- artifacts:
- [some PR](link-to-github)
- [some doc review](link-to-Google-Docs)
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.08.31|2022.08.31]]:
- (and so forth.)
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.09.01|2022.09.01]]:
- (and so forth.)
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.09.02|2022.09.02]]:
- (and so forth.)
…and so forth for the remainder of the week. By copying this data over, I used to be in a position to construct up a abstract on the finish of the week/month/quarter/12 months with out drilling down into the kid notes to determine what I had executed. However as I described above, it was lots of error-prone work to try this, particularly if I wished to tweak a abstract on rereading it! That meant it was straightforward to not do it as a substitute.
Obsidian’s block embeds change that calculus totally.
Obsidian has the unbelievable concept of block embedding. Block embeds are wiki-style hyperlinks that embed the content material of the corresponding a part of the linked notice. That works most straight and simply with headings, although Obsidian may also generate references for paragraphs, lists, and so forth. if you happen to so select.
You write a block embed to a heading like this:
![[other-note-id#heading]]
Since I already construction my work notes with a heading for the bits I care about on the finish of every stage, underneath Outcomes, all I’ve to do is substitute the guide copy-and-paste dance with a block embed as a substitute.
Right here’s how that appears, given the identical instance weekly notice:
## Outcomes
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.08.29|2022.08.29]]: ![[Work/Tracking/2022.08.29#Outcomes|2022.08.29]]
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.08.30|2022.08.30]]: ![[Work/Tracking/2022.08.30#Outcomes|2022.08.30]]
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.08.31|2022.08.31]]: ![[Work/Tracking/2022.08.31#Outcomes|2022.08.31]]
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.09.01|2022.09.01]]: ![[Work/Tracking/2022.09.01#Outcomes|2022.09.01]]
- [[Work/Tracking/2022.09.02|2022.09.02]]: ![[Work/Tracking/2022.09.02#Outcomes|2022.09.02]]
This renders the contents of the Outcomes part of the each day work notice straight in line. Together with the complete, absolute path (from the foundation of the notes “vault”) within the wikilink, like [[Work/Tracking/2022.09.02|2022.09.02]], means these wiki-links work in each software that understands wiki-links (for instance: I take advantage of iA Writer at the side of Obsidian fairly a bit, particularly on iPad) and nonetheless look good. Then the block embeds merely get changed with the related part from the goal notice.
The end result seems to be one thing like this:
The result’s that every work monitoring notice might be the supply of fact for that exact day/week/month/and so forth. — the opposite notice simply contains it. I don’t have to repeat backwards and forwards to maintain issues in sync anymore. That is unbelievable, and I like to recommend it extremely!
With that replace to my workflow in place, issues look comparable to how they did after I first wrote up my each day notes method just a few years in the past, however there are a selection of different small tweaks — some from Obsidian and a few simply because my work seems to be fairly totally different as a tech lead for LinkedIn than it did as a product engineer at Olo.
The essential workflow for me now’s: At first of every day, create a brand new notice, and use the shortcut I’ve for inserting templates (⌘⎇⇧T — “T” for “template”) to generate the physique of the each day notice. After creation, I make just a few additional tweaks:
-
Replace the hyperlink to the weekly notice. (I can undoubtedly use a templating plugin to make this occur routinely, however haven’t spent the time on that but.)
-
Write down my total objectives for the day, pulling from the objectives I set at larger ranges within the schedule.
-
Word my conferences for the day. That is technically a reproduction of my calendar, however:
-
Copying it over into my each day notice helps me really internalize the schedule in a manner that taking a look at my calendar view doesn’t. That is seemingly associated to:
-
I hate calendar apps. Not within the sense that I’ve an issue with any particular app, however moderately within the sense that I dislike calendar apps as a manner of managing my schedule. (Bizarre? Perhaps, however it’s a factor I’ve come to phrases with about myself during the last 5 years.)
-
-
Fill out what I do all through the day, taking notes on the assorted chunks of time within the day. I’m not at the moment within the behavior of utilizing a pomodoro timer more often than not, so I don’t worry about that stage of granularity as I did previously — it’s extra in regards to the broad strokes and something value noting as an “artifact” I generated. (If I’m in a season the place it issues, I’ll generally maintain monitoring of my working time all through the day right here, too.)
-
On the finish of the day, I summarize that work into the Outcomes part of the notice: I summarize what I did in Abstract and checklist out any fascinating artifacts (paperwork, pull requests opened or reviewed, and so forth.) in Artifacts. That is the important thing bit that Obsidian unlocked for me, nevertheless it depends on the remainder of it to be efficient, at the least for me!
At first of every week, I do the identical factor with a weekly notice, once more utilizing the template command and simply selecting my weekly notice template as a substitute of the each day notice template. Filling this out works almost the identical manner as filling out the each day notice does. I hyperlink to the month-to-month notice and in my objectives for the week primarily based on my objectives for the month. I do not copy over my schedule right here, although I’ll notice forward of time if I’ve break day deliberate or if there’s a firm vacation or such. On the finish of every week, I summarize it within the Outcomes part of the notice. As with the each day notes, this routinely rolls up into the corresponding month-to-month notice, courtesy of Obsidian’s.
I do the identical for month-to-month notes at first of every quarter, pulling my objectives from my quarterly objectives; and for quarterly notes, pulling my objectives from my annual objectives. In precept, I might additional prolong this if I get to some extent the place I wish to be monitoring at even longer phrases than annual, however to this point I’ve not likely wished or wanted that.
Sooner or later, I could make this even simpler for myself utilizing the Templater plugin, which might eradicate the remainder of the guide work concerned after producing issues from my templates — however as issues stand I haven’t discovered it value it but to go mucking with the related bits of JavaScript. (I do sufficient of that for my precise day job!)
Day by day notice template
---
aliases: ["{{date}}"]
---
**Week:** ==TODO==
## Objectives
### Quarterly deliverables
- [ ] ==TODO==
### Miscellanies & administrivia
- [ ] ==TODO==
## Conferences
## Particulars
### Session 1
1. **Aim:** **Precise:**
## Outcomes
### Abstract
### Artifacts
## Hours Standing
- [ ] 1
- [ ] 2
- [ ] 3
- [ ] 4
- [ ] 5
Weekly notice template
---
aliases: ["YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD"]
---
**Month:** ==TODO==
## Objectives
### Quarterly deliverables
- [ ] ==TODO==
### Miscellanies & administrivia
- [ ] ==TODO==
## Particulars
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD]]
## Outcomes
### Abstract
### Artifacts
Month-to-month notice template
---
aliases: ["YYYY.MM"]
---
**Quarter:** ==TODO==
## Objectives
### Quarterly Deliverables
- [ ] ==TODO==
### Miscellanies & administrivia
- [ ] ==TODO==
## Particulars
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD#Outcomes|YYYY.MM.DD – YYYY .MM.DD]]
## Outcomes
### Abstract
### Artifacts
Quarterly notice template
---
aliases: ["YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM"]
---
**12 months:** ==TODO==
## Objectives
- [ ] ==TODO==
## Particulars
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM|YYYY.MM]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM|YYYY.MM]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM|YYYY.MM]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM|YYYY.MM]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM|YYYY.MM]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM|YYYY.MM]]
## Outcomes
### Abstract
### Artifacts
Annual notice template
---
aliases: ["YYYY (FY)"]
---
## Objectives
- [ ] ==TODO==
## Particulars
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM#Outcomes|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM#Outcomes|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM#Outcomes|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]
- [[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]: ![[Work/Tracking/YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM#Outcomes|YYYY.MM – YYYY .MM]]