Portfolio: Journaling by Day and Week

The third in a series introducing Portfolio, a comprehensive system for notetaking in Obsidian.

Setting Context

As stated in the subtitle, I am involved in a series describing Portfolio — in nerdy detail — an evolving, comprehensive system for notetaking in Obsidian. The portfolio is, first and foremost, heavily reliant on Obsidian, and this is not a primer on that notetaking platform. If you are not well-versed in Obsidian’s many capabilities, I recommend you read about that before jumping into Portfolio’s features and arcana.

In earlier posts, I described the basic motivations for Obsidian. I gave a detailed example of importing an article, annotating it, and fitting it into Portfolio’s ‘knowledge base’ (see Portfolio: How Notetaking Becomes Knowledge and Portfolio: A Knowledge Base Built on Files).

In this installment, I will focus on Portfolio's journaling elements, which form the system's heart.

(In an earlier post, I stated that I would cover Portfolio work management in this post, but I have shifted the order since it flows better this way.)

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Daily Notes

I use the Obsidian core plugin, Daily Notes, as an essential element of notetaking. I adhere to the model of interstitial notetaking discussed by others here and here. As usual, since I am a scruffy, I am more relaxed in how I apply it.

I hold with the core motivation of interstitial, which is to timestamp entries in a daily journal, transitioning from one activity to another, capturing what was accomplished and what new work is planned.

Simple Entries

Here’s an interstitial entry of the simplest sort in a daily note:

The header is created by a Mac app, Text Blaze assistant, based on the snippet `//h`. I often add more information to the header itself, but not here. And the entry’s content is simply a sentence, indicating that I am switching context back to working on this very article. No annotations, no links, no images, just text.

Complex Entries

Entries can be much more complex. Here’s a common form in my journaling: an entry involving material I’ve clipped using the Obsidian Web Clipper.

At the top, again, is a timestamp heading, although in this case, it includes a project reference. The entry itself is a combination of text and links of various sorts. Here’s the source:

source of a complex entry

A number of links. On the heading, a reference to a project — ‘[[•read closely]]’ — which I use to keep track of things I need to, well, read closely. If I open the ‘•read closely’ note, I would see the Rich Foot information: all the backlinks to that taxon.

I can use the string “•read closely” in searches, as in this case:

It’s clear I have some reading to do!

The content of the entry is made up of three blocks: an initial block of text, a transclusion from the Ezra Klein article, and a closing block of text. Returning to the ‘source of a complex entry’ image above the first block include two references to people taxa, like ‘[[@Ezra Klein|Ezra Klein]]`. Note that in general, I only have to type something like ‘[[Ez’ and the appropriate alias pops up:

The transclusion is tricky, and note that I did not type that out. While annotating the Ezra Klein article, that last thing I do is select the title heading and control-click to ‘copy heading embed’:

I return to the daily note and paste that into the entry.

The final block is meant to remind me that I might want to add more comments to the Bluesky thread I started, when I get back to the Klein article. At some point, I will finish reading the piece and either check the task off, or delete the `[[•read closely]] reference. Probably the latter, because the task is more closely related to the ‘[[stoweboyd.io]]’ project, where I’ll likely write a post about the Klein interview of David Shor. Then I would check the task off. (I will be digging deep into task and work management in a later post.)

Serial Entries

I often create entries on ideas I am formulating in series, like this:

Over the last few months, I’ve made a dozen or so entries of this sort: notes about ideas or modifications for the portfolio system. I can find them through a basic search or an embedded search. I might collate them at various points into a larger document and put that in my journal. I will revisit that thought when we dig into projects and ‘endeavors’ in the work management post, which is coming soon. Here’s a note with an embedded query that searches for all open tasks with a ‘[[•portfolio]]’ annotation:

Similarly, I could create a simple or embedded search for all journal entries that include ‘[[•portfolio]]’, and pull those that are of interest into a new note, and write a blog post, for example.

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Looking Back: Yesterday

In an earlier Workings piece, You Have To Look Back To Move Forward, I wrote about using a daily retrospective each morning, to reflect on what I accomplished (and didn’t) the day before. I dedicate a section near the top of my Daily Note to serve that function:

I usually think about yesterday early in the morning while drinking my coffee. Other people are oriented toward a daily retrospective before stopping work. I have found that doesn’t work for me; I wind up distracted or called away by personal matters, like cooking dinner.

Typically, my morning ‘yesterday/today’ session leads to 20 - 30 items or tasks written or transcluded and takes 10-15 minutes.

Then, I fall into the ‘notes’ section and the day's work.

Weekly Notes

I intentionally concealed a section of my Daily Note. Just above the ‘yesterday/today’ section I transclude the Weekly Note (this includes my actual Weekly Note):

As you can see, I start the Weekly Note with a retrospective on the prior week, and then high-level plans for this week. The WN is just a click away if I want to add something, and it’s in my face when I open each day’s note.

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Past the paywall are the templates for Daily Notes and Weekly Notes.