I capture all my predictable work items in icalendar-encoded files
that I mostly author by hand in emacs. I use evolution for a
conventional calendar view on my computer. I adb push to my phone
and use icsx5 to import so I can view
events there as well.
I’ve also been working on a
project to produce a
printable view that’s reasonably mature at this point. It accepts
VEVENT, VJOURNAL, and VTODO entries and groups them by day,
month, or year. Todo items are rendered as lists so I have a little
circle to fill in when I’ve completed the work. I display both the
title and description for all types, with the description processed as
Markdown. So for instance a VJOURNAL with a weekly recurrence, a
title like “This Week”, and a description like * \n* \n will appear
every week in the printout as a blank list for jotting down two items
not captured in my calendars.
I’ve been using the daily grouping so far to produce a weekly
“checklist”. Every few weeks or so I hack on my RRULEs based on
what’s working for me. For instance I bake a loaf of sourdough every
week so I have events for feeding the starter, mixing the dough, then
baking. I set each of those to recur on subsequent days of the week so
they all magically fall into place then I shifted the start days
around until I found my ideal baking day. I also have an entry for
changing the bed sheets every week, and another for washing the
washing machine scheduled for the same day of week at a slower
frequency. Capturing everything that needs to be done (with some
editorializing on granularity) and evolving their recurrences is the
fundamental way I synchronize independent work, leaning on icalendar
for expressiveness like this recurrence for planting the garden on the
Saturday before Memorial Day weekend:
The workflow doesn’t require the bespoke tooling since I can see all
my maintenance items alongside my meetings using any application that
can render icalendar. That was key to getting moving, but having the
print out lets me feel more productive. I knock out all the routine
stuff throughout the day and find that “if I have time” becomes “what
do I want to do with this time”.
There are tools in the project for generating events for solstices and
equinoxes as well as sunrises and sunsets. I include all of those in
my printed daily view but exclude the sunrises and sunsets from
evolution by capturing them in separate files. I also separate
routine/noisy tasks like “change the bed sheets” from holidays and
operational work like “plant the garden” or “change the water filters”
so those become more visible.
I capture all my predictable work items in icalendar-encoded files that I mostly author by hand in emacs. I use
evolutionfor a conventional calendar view on my computer. Iadb pushto my phone and use icsx5 to import so I can view events there as well.I’ve also been working on a project to produce a printable view that’s reasonably mature at this point. It accepts
VEVENT,VJOURNAL, andVTODOentries and groups them by day, month, or year. Todo items are rendered as lists so I have a little circle to fill in when I’ve completed the work. I display both the title and description for all types, with the description processed as Markdown. So for instance aVJOURNALwith a weekly recurrence, a title like “This Week”, and a description like* \n* \nwill appear every week in the printout as a blank list for jotting down two items not captured in my calendars.I’ve been using the daily grouping so far to produce a weekly “checklist”. Every few weeks or so I hack on my
RRULEs based on what’s working for me. For instance I bake a loaf of sourdough every week so I have events for feeding the starter, mixing the dough, then baking. I set each of those to recur on subsequent days of the week so they all magically fall into place then I shifted the start days around until I found my ideal baking day. I also have an entry for changing the bed sheets every week, and another for washing the washing machine scheduled for the same day of week at a slower frequency. Capturing everything that needs to be done (with some editorializing on granularity) and evolving their recurrences is the fundamental way I synchronize independent work, leaning on icalendar for expressiveness like this recurrence for planting the garden on the Saturday before Memorial Day weekend:RRULE:FREQ=YEARLY;BYMONTH=5;BYDAY=SA;BYMONTHDAY=16,17,18,19,20,21,22The workflow doesn’t require the bespoke tooling since I can see all my maintenance items alongside my meetings using any application that can render icalendar. That was key to getting moving, but having the print out lets me feel more productive. I knock out all the routine stuff throughout the day and find that “if I have time” becomes “what do I want to do with this time”.
There are tools in the project for generating events for solstices and equinoxes as well as sunrises and sunsets. I include all of those in my printed daily view but exclude the sunrises and sunsets from
evolutionby capturing them in separate files. I also separate routine/noisy tasks like “change the bed sheets” from holidays and operational work like “plant the garden” or “change the water filters” so those become more visible.