Obsidian adding tables
I've bounced between Notion, Obsidian and Google Docs for various means of controlling and organizing my digital stuff. I left Notion because it wasn't a format that enabled easy migration. And I am a fan of Markdown (the backend of this blog utilizes markdown), so the idea of this integration with Obsidian is very interesting and I'll definitely be checking it out.
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My Browser "Startup" Folders
This blog post refers to Magic: The Gathering. As noted, it is also now my job. So while I deeply love the game, I always want to alert folks I also have a bias.
Last weekend, I talked about my Firefox plugins. This weekend, I want to share how I use the browser, and one of the big step forwards for me.
In the 1990s, when dial-up internet was still in its infancy, my family was connected and (like today) my favorite game ever, Magic: The Gathering, gave me a very good reason to be online. I had discovered IRC, Internet Relay Chat. And specifically, I had found #mtg on "Efnet." It was a chatroom that could have up to 100 people in it on busy days. It was the virtual hangout for us. And that hangout, made it so I came home from school, and I got on the family computer, and I hung out for hours each day.
Remember, this was the origins of the Internet. This was back when kids were sent out of the house by default. Though that era rapidly came to a close. And this was the era when Internet access was metered. So, when one month I took the family over our 100 hours of online time in a month, it was a big deal and one I got into a bit of trouble when the parents saw my online time in a quantifiable way.
I share this tidbit from my past to show that my Internet addiction started early. My grandmother smoked her first cigarette when she was like 7. I started being online when I was 14.
These days, I wouldn't be shocked to learn I had weeks where I spent 100 hours a WEEK online, between work and home. Basically in my life, I have always been online. And it's been because of what is now my employer: Magic: The Gathering.
This entire story is to highlight how serious I take being online. I live in the browser window. Firefox is my workshop.
I used to agonize over finding the most productive or efficient start page for my browser. During Yahoo's heyday, had a feature which let you setup a custom start page on their site. Embedding weather, news, bookmarks, etc. Start pages have gone out of vogue, but I still want to be efficient and online as quick as possible.
I have a handful of pinned tabs which I keep always open in the browser:
- Gmail
- Google Calendar
- This blog
- RSS Reader for news and articles
- Wallabag saved articles
- Bluesky & Mastodon both have ones
But those are all personal stuff for me and not for work. Unfortunately, Firefox doesn't let you customize start pages by the tab container (one of the extensions I talked about last week). My solution is instead to maintain "Startup" bookmark folders. One folder for personal, one for work. I bookmark the tabs I want into each folder.
For work, I won't tell you what tabs I use, but I have settled on 3 tabs which I keep in the Work startup folder.
So if I need to start my Work browser system, I open a new tab with the 'Work' container in the browser. So all of those tabs are using work related logins and cookies, etc. Then I can right click on the 'Startup' folder and open all of the bookmarks into their tabs, and boom - I'm off to the races.
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My Efficiency Matrix
Facebook reminded me that I first shared my simple template for an Eisenhower matrix on it. Which is wild to think because it is still my primary way of being organized for work. Interestingly, I don't use it for my home organization.
This is my current implementation:
The original version took the whole sheet of paper and quartered it into the above sections. After a while I found I needed space for general notes so I shortened the boxes, mostly on the bottom two as they are the least used. Since I don't manage anyone these days, the lower left is now for remembering emails to send or things to communicate to others (when I managed people, it was about items to delegate or follow up on with others.) The bottom right is now just general "actonable" stuff, which, honestly is used pretty infrequently. The bottom half of the page is what I use for general non-actionable meeting notes or thoughts.
The bubbles are my latest "innovation." Before, I would generally draw boxes to be checked off, now I use the bubbles. Filling one bubble shows I started on a thing. Two bubbles means I "finished" a thing.
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After the Covid years, and while my job is still hybrid (though I choose to predominately work in the office) - I remade my trusty daily work organizer. A 3-ring binder with single day-sheets. Each sheet is basically split in half, the top half of the page is what I had been always called an Eisenhower Matrix, but which others simply call a Priority Matrix. The bottom half is blank, reserved for additional notes from the day. I've tried various digital "Priority Matrix" tools, but I've never found happiness with them. I don't know what it is.
I tried using OneNote throughout Covid, when everything went virtual. It's good as far as a data archive and organizer goes, but it just never clicked with me for using it for my daily organization during a work day. So I might use it for taking full notes of a meeting, but in terms of capturing tasks and action items, etc. Nope, no good.
In addition to that, I've come to realize is that while yes, digital only notes are useful and in many cases faster, as a consumate data consumer and multitasker, if I am sitting with both hands on my keyboard and mouse then I am going to be multitasking. And, in some meetings, that is fine, but for others I need to force myself to focus. Minimize other windows, silence notifications, ignore email, etc.
Using my physical notebook helps me disengage from multitasking on the computer. Work stuff is shifting and that is what triggered me to remake the binder.
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Revamping my Code Project Tracking
A few years ago, I set up simple project boards in my Notion. This allowed me to track issues with my various coding projects, and make reminders for improvements or new feature ideas.
This morning, after waking up abnormally early, I sat down and revamped how it works. Previously, they were a number of individual tables. It worked fine, but the biggest issue was when I created a new project I had to go and literally manually recreate the structure for each new project to track its own tickets. Again, not a huge issue since I add scant few projects. But, it annoyed me.
So, today, I redid the system to contain it all into a single larger table that I can then filter, or group, by project. I am also hoping this will allow me to do some smarter filtering and prioritization for coding.
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New Project Idea - Scrib
I make frequent use of Google's Keep as my place for short easy notes. I also sometimes use Samsung Notes, as a by product of my writing on my phone (Note 9), but those are almost entirely scribbles as I lay in bed and want to write an idea down.
I want a note taking tool which lets me grab random thoughts and save them. They might be quotes, or ideas, or reminders. They might often be half-baked.
This idea actually came as I am rethinking my personal organization and figuring out how best to build it.
Goals
- Be able to scribble a note within two clicks on my phone.
- Make the referencing of these notes more useful
#2 is where both Keep and Samsung's notes tool falls down. They are just the digital equivalent of yellow sticky notes. I want to have it be smarter at organizing notes by date, as well as by identifying keywords. If the word 'D&D' appears in multiple notes, then I want that word linked to a page which pulls all notes which use that word. I'd like to do it even for phrases, but am not sure how taxing that is processing wise.
I'm going to keep doodling on a design for the project, and then I'll add it to my coding roadmap.
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