Ron
Ron

Narrate Your Work
Dave Winer invented this useful idea, writing about it on 9 August 2009 and many times after that. He mentioned that @brentsimmons was narrating his work with Twitter. I use a document in Dropbox Paper that is always open in my far left browser tab.

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sumudu
sumudu

@Ron Intersting. so What'd do you Exactly do with the Dropbox paper? do you type in everything you do?

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dixonge
dixonge

@Ron Do you perceive this as a frequent update of 'here's what I'm doing now' ? Would this be similar to a work log/research log?

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Ron
Ron

@sumudu I created a text doc titled DAILY LOGGER of COMPLETED ACTIONS in reverse chronological order, date & day of the week in bold at the top of each day. Then as I get stuff done, I enter each one on a separate line, often embedding links that Paper makes it easy to create, for some of the stuff, to make it easy to find later. e.g. I will record this conversion on its on line, with a link to its URL here. I record anything that is a worthy task that was completed, like a completed tax return, an issue researched for a client, a useful errand completed, etc. But it could also be a notation of a brilliant epiphany I had, or a brilliant email I sent to a friend. At the end of the day, I can tell whether I had a good day, by scanning down the entries. I can keyword search for things later, if I need to know when I did something. At year-end I will review the file and compile a timeline of important milestones completed during that year. Ten years later I'll be able to search that file and instantly find out when we bought our house, or moved to this neighborhood, or met someone who has become a good friend, and so on. It is the most useful tool I now use every single day and it takes very little effort to create & use it. And of course Paper instantly syncs every change I make to all my devices.

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Ron
Ron

@donblanco No, what I have just finished doing an instant ago, not what I'm doing now. A boost in morale comes from getting useful stuff DONE. Dones go in this file. I don't limit it to just my work, it's for anything in my life that is worthy of being noted. Recording it gives some acknowledgement that I got something done, which then frees my attention to go onto what is next. See my reply to @sumudu for some more details.

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Ron
Ron

@sumudu @donblanco Of course in my reply, when my fingers typed conversion, my mind was saying conversation, the fingers being short by only two letters. As my mother once said to me, "Don't listen to what I say. Listen to what I mean!" At the time that sounded both preposterous and hilarious, but here I am quoting her sixty years later. Sometimes life's little lessons bubble up from a loooong time ago.

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In reply to
sumudu
sumudu

@Ron Many Thanks for detailed reply. I like the idea. Is it fair to say, it's kind of a Journal ? Are the entries time-stamped also? How often do you look and refer to past entries? If it's kind of a journal any reason that you havent consider using an app like DayOne or Journey?

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amit
amit

@Ron So well said Ron- you keep enlightening us all with these tidbits of inspirations. Worthy of a quote! 👏🏽😊

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Ron
Ron

@sumudu Yes, I think one could describe it as a daily journal or diary, but very specific in what it records: dones and only dones, no day dreaming, plans for the future, doodling, tiny sketches or strong feelings jotted down. I could use a Tekukor A5, but I prefer the clarity and order of the computer text, with easy formatting (occasional bold, header for each day) and embedded LINKS. I have DayOne, but never use it for this. I think of DayOne as a mostly closed box where I put things, heavily formatted by others, with regular updates, an app! I don't want someone else deciding how to format my stuff. What I use for this is simple text, always open, always available in a moment, instantly synced to multiple devices, very simple but powerful. Paper creates a time stamp every time there is a change to the document as a whole, but I've never looked into how or whether those would be useful to me or not. The date/day I manually put at the beginning of each day is the only time-stamp I care about. And 95% of the time each entry is on only ONE line, nothing long winded, but right to the point of what got done!

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Ron
Ron

@amit I can see my mother glowing with her little smile of satisfaction with her own cleverness and how her son has grown! :-)

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chrisaldrich
chrisaldrich

@Ron @sumudu @donblanco I've been using my personal website much like this for a long time. Some of my philosophy goes back to commonplace books from the 15th century and before. Naturally a lot of it is hidden on the back end of my site and only viewable to me, but it's there, searchable, and I own it without heavy reliance on another service disappearing.

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Ron
Ron

@c Excellent! I think the key being it's searchable, you own it and you don't rely on a service that might disappear. It's the same for me. I also think it helps a lot that we have devised what works for us to keep track of what matters to us. We're not trying to follow a system written up by another who has supposedly figured out what is best for us. We have found on our own what is best for each of us. If I need rules, I make them up as I go along.

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Ron
Ron

@stream.jeremycherfas.net I’m not using Twitter either. I use Dropbox Paper to write a line of text for every completed task. At first the tasks were mostly work related, but now they can be a good thread on Micro.blog & Paper allows an embedded link to that thread.

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Ron
Ron

@stream.jeremycherfas.net One advantage of using Paper this way is that I can then do a search in Paper to find the thread later on. So much is happening that I decided I needed a way to find things. I might also organize threads in Winer’s outliner, Little Organizer 2.

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stream.jeremycherfas.net
stream.jeremycherfas.net

@Ron I don't follow Dave Winer religiously, so I don't know whether he revisited his predictions for what Twitter was or would become. I do know that @brentsimmons stopped narrating his work there less than a year after he started. YMMV.

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frankm
frankm

@Ron Conceptually what are doing like bullet journaling. My method is similar but I use Noteplanner, which is an iOS app that creates a new text file for each day and can search across all those files. The downside is that the files are stored on iCloud so I don’t have easy access via apps on other platforms.

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Ron
Ron

@frankm I use my document in Paper with my PC in Chrome, with my Chromebook and with the Paper app on my Android phone, auto synced by Dropbox. Often it is the first tool I open at the start of a day. It has become an essential tool for me whenever I am working & now when using Micro.blog.

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Ron
Ron

@frankm What I do is much simpler than bullet journaling, I think, more like a simple chronological diary. I do put a date/day header in bold at the start of every new day. Cross platform was important to me & I understand your concern about that with your tool.

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