How I write Daily Notes differently

Last updated Dec 11, 2024

Many are writing Daily Notes. I tried several times, but it never stuck. I think it’s because it’s too much work and too cluttered. For a look at my Daily Notes, there are some critical questions about gratitude. It lets me focus on yesterday’s todos and what I want to achieve tomorrow.

But I think it’s just too much work that I add on every day. I might add valuable things to my daily notes, but I feel like that information gets lost in many small daily notes instead of being used as a source for smaller, connected ideas. I could always create notes after or while typing and directly move the journaling notes there. But then, why am I doing it all together?

I noticed that daily todo’s and planning for me worked best on paper. When I see it on my desk and think about the task, I’m fully offline, which helps me already to think more clearly. If I am finished, I can check it off, and at the end of the day, I have feedback and see that I solved all tasks for today or directly what I need to do for tomorrow.

Also, I didn’t like the clutter effect. You flush your valuable notes with invaluable notes, creating a new one daily.

If Digital

What I have discovered again lately: If I want to do it digitally, I do a weekly one, always at the same time. This way, the questions don’t get too repetitive, and I can use that weekly (a daily that I do once a week) for planning my whole week.

Instead, I use “Thoughts On Journal” notes. So, I might have Thoughts On-note on my dad, priorities, jobs, work-life balance, regrets, and many more. So whenever I want to journal, I put it directly in the most related.

A list of my thoughts on notes in my Vault.

In there, I have headers that relate to daily notes. So, in a way, I’m still doing daily notes, but I’m doing it the other way around. Instead of opening today’s notes, I open related Thoughts On-note that already existed. And link it back to the “date”, without creating the daily note or date file. But I still have the history or can track everything back to the day. If something happens on the same day, I have several notes pointing to that day. Also, I add the created day to each of my notes anyway; I also have that connection of when I made a new idea on which day, too. More on My Obsidian Note-Taking Workflow if that interests you.

Sometimes, I randomly want to ramble, and it does not fit any existing (though that is rare), then I just put it to the closest note, or if something is new, I create a new note with the title ... (Thoughts On) as seen above.

I store the discussion under the person’s note and have a header for “Meetups” where I then have chronological the latest meetups, and if I like, I add some pointers and important things I want to remember. I might even connect something if it makes sense. The note would look like this:

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# My Topic Thoughts on

## [[2024-08-03]]
Today I thought about my work-life balance, and that I work too much. .... 


## [[2024-02-01]]
I want to work only 80%, because I have time for doing more [[Creativity|creative]] things, leading to more happiness.

This way, I have only a few notes, and even better, when I read through them, I have the complete history on a particular topic, as with daily notes spread around, you’ll never read them anyway as they are so intertwined.

I got this approach from Derek Sivers; see Benefits of a daily diary and topic journals.

I noticed that I do the same with meeting notes and various journals. I have one DevJournal for work, which includes what I do every day, but it is separated by headers (weeks and days) and simple bullet points.

But even more important to me, I use the same approach with friends and people I meet. I open their note (with the person’s name) and add a dedicated section, e.g., Meetups or discussions and protocol, which are the most important things I want to remember.

This looks like this:

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# Persons name

who this person is, and how I met him. Maybe who he/she is married to, if they have kids, I put their names as I always forget them.


## Meetups

### [[2024-08-03]]
We ate at .. in Bern. He told me that he had a new company, but it didn't work out with his co-worker.

He bought a new keyboard.

### [[2024-07-03]]

Two years ago we met up again, we talked about ...

Instead of cranking everything into a daily note and pulling them together with Dataview, I write them directly to the person.

This has the same benefit as the Thoughts On Journal, which I have within one note—the complete overview of a person and the last conversations we had with topics that were important to me.

I liked Andy’s reply where he likes Daily notes fertile for ideas and thoughts that span in a broad manner rather that in depth manner. Meaning in Daily notes he can be more horizontaly, thinking about anything that comes to mind as in Thoughts On notes you go vertically, deep into one topic while maybe blocking other ideas that come to mind.

Also similar to Work Log Definition and My Logs.

What I learned too, is that for gratitude and reflections, it works best if Ic does that on a yearly cadence, but with a very long and excessive 🔃 Reflection Template. This way I can easily compare with last year and don’t tend to write the same over and over again, which happened when I asked for what I was grateful for yesterday as only so much can happen during a “normal day”.

This was a short brain dump when browsing Reddit on Uses of the daily note, and it inspired me to write my methodic down. Also, this benefits me even more as my vault gets bigger.

Origin: Uses of the daily note : r/ObsidianMD
References: Obsidian, My Obsidian Note-Taking Workflow
Created 2024-08-05