Friend of the email list, Hiro, wrote in with a few follow up questions to my post about my daily notes.
He ran through some scenarios & wondered how I'd capture them in the daily note. Thought I'd share my answers with everyone!
- Your partner/housemate asks you to get a few grocery items by 5 PM today before her cooking.
Since it'll be done today, it's fair game to go in the daily note. I don't restrict my daily note to ONLY 3-4 items. I just start the day with 3-4 items that are most important to get done.
If it becomes clear that I have too many things in my daily note to accomplish today, then I have the difficult (but important) decision of what to eliminate. Rather than leaving things to fall through the cracks, I actively try to decide what I won't be able to do.
- You came across a Python code block that you need to research and will likely take a couple of hours to process.
This gets into the question of just-in-case vs just-in-time research. As much as possible, I prefer the latter. With some exceptions for learning about broad topics, I typically do research when I need it to solve a given task.
Research things "just in case" and you'll end up wasting a lot of time. Researching "just in time" means you can add it to your daily note as one of the day's tasks.
- You got an email that you must reply to (work-related, from your boss/client), but it will likely take half an hour to look up something online.
I don't typically put emails on my daily note. Instead, I just triage my inbox & reply in batches as part of normal day-to-day operations.
I'm a fan of inbox zero, so it's very easy to know when I've looked at everything & what I still need to respond to.
Final note
The daily note isn't the perfect system for everyone! I'm not suggesting you should use the daily note or even that it's a particularly good way to organize.
It's just the system that works for me.
Thanks, Hiro, for the questions!