Folio: Days, Weeks, Months

Frame rate and frameworks underpin daily, weekly, and monthly work routines.

Jul 12, 2024

In Folio: How Notetaking Becomes Knowledge, I introduced the basics of my Folio system which has created greater leverage for me as a writer, consultant, and researcher than simply adopting Obsidian, its many moving parts, and a handful of plugins. Over the years of my use of Obsidian (and many other competing tools) I have developed patterns of use and organization that help me in my work and sense-making.

In this installment in the Folio series, I will explore some of the time dimensions of Folio. As I wrote in the preceding post — Folio: How Notetaking Becomes Knowledge — This has several complementary elements:

The ultrastructure of Folio is based on what I call frame rate and frameworks.
By frame rate I am referring to the time dimension of notetaking. For example, Folio relies quite heavily on flows like daily, weekly, and monthly notes to manage projects of various durations. These notes are managed in specific folders organized my timestamps. (Today’s daily note is titled `2024-05-17`, and is found in the folder `/00 journal/2024 daily notes`. The creation of daily notes is handled by the Periodical Notes plugin, but could be located elsewhere and managed through other means.)

My work is based on several time frames, and the most obvious aspects of that are daily, weekly, and monthly notes. Let me describe that procedurally, rather than structurally, or what I do rather than how things are organized. But as we shall see, that doesn’t mean there is a lack of organization.

Daily Notes

Each day (unless I am traveling or unwell) I create a daily note using the Daily Note plugin. My Daily Note template has several sections, but I’ve changed it many times based on constant tinkering. The specific parts are less important than the central concept of daily journaling, interstitially. More about that next. The sections:

A reminders section, with a/ events from Google Calendar for today and tomorrow if any (using Daily iCalendar plugin), and b/ a search for tasks with a timestamp for today or tomorrow.
A transclusion of the weekly note, which I have implemented as a kanban with a column for each day, a plans column, and an outcome column. I add to these columns during the day, and often shift things undone to new days or other weeks.
A diary section, which is organized around a few thoughts about the previous day. I have found it difficult to summarize accomplishments at the end of the day, so I do it first thing in the AM.
The notes section is an interstitial journal in which I log ideas, things I am reading and writing, steps taken in projects, and the like.

Here’s a reminders section from a future (and not very busy) day:

Note that I rely on the Make.md plugin’s Edit capabilities for true transclusion (see True Transclusion in Obsidian) so the embedded this week kanban is rendered as a kanban, and can be scrolled like a kanban.

The source code (I’ve blocked the URL for my google calendar):

The query code searches for incomplete tasks with the template-provided dates for today and tomorrow. (In principle, I would rather have reminders appear in the weekly kanban, but the kanban plugin doesn’t support embedded queries, since code blocks must start at the first character of a line.)

Here’s a recent diary section from this week. I really liked Bear:

Note that the •work futures part of what did I work on yesterday is a reference to a project note. The source is this: ‘[[•work futures]]’. That allows me to search for references to my work futures project, an on-going and very consuming project for me.

I can open that ‘[[•work futures]]’ note file and turn on backlinks to find all back references. (And in Folio, the great majority of projects have their own kanbans, as well. We will explore that in a later post.) Here’s the most recent backlinks for ‘[[•work futures]]’:

I both add references in my diary and daily notes and add plans and tasks to the work futures kanban, in a fairly scruffy way. The important thing is that I can find things when I need to, alternating between backlinks to projects (and other elements of the Folio knowledge base) and searches like this: ‘block:"[[~France]]" "[[•on the radar]]"‘, which finds all blocks that reference the location France and the project on the radar anywhere they occur together in a block (a stoweboyd.io post I am working on right now).

The notes section of my daily notes is a series of timestamped entries, which are largely links to note files I have created, links to outside sources of information, and ideas that have occurred during the day. Here’s a screenshot of a recent notes section:

Share Workings

Weekly Notes

Folio weekly notes are kanbans. I create one every Monday by clicking on the week column in the calendar from the Calendar plugin, and I transfer things undone from the previous week if I’m still planning to do them. I sketch out plans for the week in the plans column, and every day (normally) I add, complete, move, or delete tasks from the kanban. Completed tasks are archived to the bottom of the kanban. At the end of the week (or start of the next one), I summarize how I did against my plans.

I am a bit scruffy, so these tasks are minimal, but could be transclusions to other project notes. However, they are more of a scrathpad, more transient than the tasks I add to project notes.

Importantly, I don’t duplicate the interstitial entries of each daily note in the weekly kanban: that would be make-work. The daily notes unfold based on my meanderings, influenced by what I read and find, while the entries in the weekly notes are my aspirations for the day: early morning, looking forward.

Monthly Notes

Monthly notes are also implemented as a kanban, but of only two columns: plans and outcomes.

Here’s an example of a monthly kanban. I generally have four or five ambitions for the month, such as goals for an ongoing project, like the example above for `[[•workings]]`. During the month I may add, complete, move, or delete tasks from the kanban, and at the end of the month I reflect on what was accomplished (or not) and perhaps carry over unfinished goals to the next month.

Yearly?

I confess that I don’t find — or haven’t yet — taken on yearly notes. Although I do some things annually — like writing a poem at the start or end of the year — I haven’t adopted yearly planning or retrospectives. Perhaps at the end of 2024?

Just for fun, here’s a poem I wrote at the start of 2016:

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