How do I keep my system of records of cases, materials and knowledge


Introduction

For a year now I have been keeping my system of records of cases, materials and knowledge. I can’t say exactly where the system came from. It was formed gradually with different materials and practices. The feeling that most of it is GTD, but I will not rely only on it, but will tell you how it works for me.

Why am I doing this? This allows you to look at your life a little from above. For example, I had a lazy period and I watched YouTube in the evenings. Firstly, most likely I would not even notice how much time and what videos I watched. And even if I had noticed, then within one day it would not have bothered me much: “well, I watched 2 hours of video with memes, I needed to rest.”

But when you enter data for a month and see how much time it took to watch entertainment videos, you understand that something needs to be changed. Well, or vice versa, that you did a great job and read 2 times more this month than last!

Monthly tudushki and totals

I keep my to-do list in Notion. For each month, I create a separate folder, which contains a file with each day of the month and a separate file with totals.

I divide tasks for each day into “personal” and “work”. For work tasks, most often everything is clear, because at work there is a separate planning, and with personal ones you have to plan separately.

I also set tasks from my calendar, such as “going to the bank”. I deliver the rest of the tasks from the backlog according to the sensations and the approximate estimate in my head. I also add unplanned tasks as they appear, so that in the future I can remember what I did on that day.

If I don’t have time to complete a task and reschedule it for the next day, I don’t delete it, but leave it with an unchecked box. This helps to keep track of priorities, because if I have been rescheduling a task for 5 days, then either I should throw it out altogether, or make it the very first one tomorrow, pushing the rest of the tasks in priority.

At the end of the month, I go through the days and summarize the month. It helps to look at the progress for the month at a glance.

After compiling the results, I send the month’s folder to the archive so that I can refer to it in the future.

Backlinks are an important part of the backlinks. They allow you to watch when I was doing business. I use backlinks for everything, except for one-time (except if there is an entry in the backlog) and daily events.

To use backlinks, you need to create a case page. This for me is the backlog table, which I will talk about later. Next, in the to-do list item, we begin to enter “[[”andyouwillseeawindowwithsuggestedpagesandsearchforthemItremainstochoosethepageyouneed[[”иувасоткроетсяокноспредложеннымистраницамиипоискапонимОсталосьвыбратьнужнуювамстраницу

Case backlog in Notion

In order to talk about the backlog, you need to introduce the concept of “incoming”. Inbox is any incoming information that needs to be processed and something done with it. For example, the title of an interesting book, some kind of Wishlist and a plan for a new project fit into one place and then redistributed to what they refer to.

I add personal thoughts to a separate page in Notion, for links I use a channel in Telegram.

Most often, I parse “incoming” almost immediately after they appear. And if I have only one “inbox”, then there are many distribution places:

  • Backlog table in Notion. This includes tasks from areas that are of interest to me in the near future. I highlighted the word tasks because the items in this folder are worded as tasks. If I have a link with a list of game design books, then I will write “Disassemble game design books” and attach the link. A link without context will lead to the fact that you will forget what is there and at least spend time following the link and remember the context, and at most just score. Such tasks can be linked in dushka through backlinks.

  • Table “Someday” in Notion. This includes tasks from areas that are interesting to me, but I definitely won’t start them in the near future.

  • Listings in Notion by area: video, books, games.

This is how I process the information that comes to me, and what I do with it, I will tell later.

Lists: books, games, etc.

I keep separate lists for videos, books, and games. In fact, these are the usual lists of works that I would like to get acquainted with.

Why do I keep a list of videos? The main reason for me is stopping the reaction to start the video. For myself, I made a rule not to watch the video until I add it to the list. And such a rule helps not to watch most of the entertainment content, because, firstly, I’m too lazy to add a video to the list to watch it, and secondly, even if I added a video, more interesting videos that you can watch are immediately visible in the table Now.

As for the list of books, at some point I accumulated a lot of books that I want to read, but I didn’t save time to read. As a result, I came to the conclusion that there is a list of books that I want to read this year and I choose only from them, and I add new interesting books to a separate list from which I will form a new list next year.

Obsidian

In addition to information about cases, you need to keep useful information and thoughts somewhere else. For this I use Obsidian and Zettelkasten. Here I will not go deep, there are a lot of articles and videos on this topic. I will only talk about the basic rules that I use.

Basically, I don’t immediately add something to Obsidian. First, the information that interests me goes to a separate channel in Telegram in the form of a message or a screenshot. I’ll be putting this on Obsidian over time to see if I need this information further or if it impressed me just in the moment.

If I decide to add something, then I write briefly and in my own words. There are rare cases when I can rewrite the whole word for word, for example, in cases of interesting definitions. Most often, I immediately drive in the whole idea in the title so that there is no need to open a note.

Just like in Notion, I actively use backlinks. They work on the same principle through “[[”TheseconnectionshelpwhenyouaccumulateinformationandyoucanseetheconnectionsonthegraphsandwheretheyleadIt’snotjustthatinmanyarticlesdedicatedtoZettelkastentheysaythatyoufirstneedtoputalotofinformationintoitandthenitwillbegintobearfruit[[”ЭтисвязипомогаюткогдауваснакапливаетсяинформацияинаграфахможновидетьсвязиикчемуониведутНепростотаквомногихстатьяхпосвященныхZettelkastenговорятчтонужносначалазаложитьвнегомногоинформацииитогдаонначнетдаватьплоды

Tracking

I used to track many areas: time on the computer, time on the phone, steps, sleep, nutrition, mood and finances.

But somehow it didn’t work out with nutrition, I constantly forgot to note how much I ate. The mood was tired of filling in, because there was no correlation with the reasons. Finances fell off, because the ability to pay for purchases with a bank card and the laziness to start spending cash manually disappeared.

As a result, for the current year, I redid my tracker, leaving only time calculations, the number of steps and the quality of sleep.

I keep all my records in Google Sheets, entering data from apps about once a week.

When searching for applications, my main criteria were my minimal participation in data entry and free. I tested different apps and came up with a list of the ones that I feel most comfortable using.

Huawei Health. The app is free, but you need a fitness bracelet 😄. Collects my steps and sleep data. Manual data entry is not required, the main thing is not to forget to synchronize the fitness bracelet with the application, otherwise the data will be lost.

Toggl. There is a premium subscription, but the free functionality is enough for me. In this application, I track the time spent at the computer. There is a solution for automatic time tracking, but I haven’t tested it and I enter the data manually. In fact, all I do is start the countdown, enter the description of the task that I am doing and attach it to the category.

stay free. There is also a premium version, but the free one is enough for the eyes. I use this app to track time on my smartphone and tablet. It registers all applications perfectly, but counts only screen time, which is not always convenient, for example, when listening to audiobooks.

What does all this give me?

I started this as a personal experiment. I went through thoughts about the uselessness of these systems, thoughts about praising the consideration of everything and everything, and eventually came to the fact that I use only what is important to me at the current stage of life.

I used to be afraid to make a mistake and choose the wrong system, but now I know that there is no “correct” system. I built my system by analyzing, making mistakes, rebuilding, and discarding things I didn’t need.

This article is not written for you to copy my system and use it thoughtlessly, but for you to pick up something that hooked you personally and use it with understanding.

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