Bullet journaling in Markdown
I like bullet journaling, since it has enough information for me to glance over a page and have an idea of what is going on.
The idea is simple enough that it can be implemented in Markdown. Therefore, this blog will include information on regards of how I implement this idea and some inspirations.
Setup
I'm implementing this in Neovim using the marksman LSP
(since it's what I know and like).
Formatting
I translate rapid logging bullets as follows:
- [ ]; Task equivalent to "•"- [x]; Done task, equivalent to "X"- [-]; Canceled task, equivalent to "-"- [>]; Deferred task, equivalent to "<"- [<]; Carry over task, equivalent to ">"*...*; Event, equivalent to "O" (I use it conjunction to the#meetingtag, more on that later)-; Notes, equivalent to "-"=; Feelings (rarely use them, but are useful for rants from time to time)
Additionally, we have signifiers that can be translated to Markdown as follows:
#<tag>is used to tag each task (key for this method)- bold text for priority (equivalent to *")
- italics for inspirations (equivalent to "!")
#exploretag for exploration (equivalent to "eye")
Improvements thanks to being in a computer
Since this is my "digital notes", I make use of quality-of-life improvements that come from it being digital media.
I use at least one tags ALWAYS and it's to categorize my notes.
I have 4 main note types:
#idea(for original content),#reference(for literature, mainly) ,#journal(to track what I'm doing; here is where I use the aforementioned Markdown bullet journal) and#moc(Map-of-contents, basically a manually drawn indexes).I use
sortto… well… sort bullet points. This gives my notes a cleaner structure.In Neovim, you can simply select the code to sort and press
:sortI also have backlogs with tasks I have jotted down to do at some moment.
I generate this from time to time to compile all the tasks that are "open" (
- [ ]), since this means this where not properly taken care of (either by doing this, deferring, carrying over, or simply removing)Heavily customized Neovim config that makes using all of this easy.
Outside the scope of this blog post, but investing time on developing tools that fit the needs you want is fun and crucial to make using them second nature.