It felt like a huge relief to get names put on things I had been experiencing for most my life. It helped me pull apart a “me” and a “challenge I have.”
Before, it was all “me,” and I had a guilt around why I struggled so much in certain areas where so many didn’t, and why I seemed so hard to help. But with a name to apply to these struggles, now the “me” was the part that had just been trying to cope with challenges many other people didn’t have to worry about.
This is much better for feelings of self-worth. I can reasonably think “well, they too might be acting this way if their brain was kicking up shit like mine tends to do.”
It also helps me understand my history and why I may have done things I did. I believe this more the longer I’m on medication. With a clearer head I start to drop coping mechanisms that no longer serve me, and I have a longer time line to notice what actually works for me - for all areas of life that everyone deals with. I guess… Like, it’s not all just mental chaos now, I can actually pin down cause and effect. Like, I like a regular bed time because I like being able to concentrate the next day. In the past I would have no idea how an irregular sleep schedule might affect me because my ability to concentrate was constantly in flux with no discernable cause.
Of course, the help you get is better too once everyone knows what they’re dealing with.
I call what I’m doing “time journalling,” but that might not be the correct term. Every day I get a new note, I have a keyboard shortcut that puts in the time, and I write what I’m doing. I also have a template for meetings. I use a global shortcut to bring up this note no matter what desktop I’m in, so I always have a note taking surface an ‘F10’ away.
Next, I have “work tracking” notes. In my example below is “LRSF 2024”. So any time I’m working on that I just link to it from my daily note and for the most part, that note just exists so I can scroll through all the work I’ve done on that project using the “Linked mentions” section.
I also have some tags like “PersonalComputing” if it’s related to making something on my computer work, or another tag if it’s a fun/interesting story I might want to remember.
The overhead of this system feels a bit high, but, I have been sticking with it since December or so. I’d say it has been most useful for answering questions like “What happened this day?” I have been able to find things related to work by linking to work tracking notes, but, I’m not sure how that’s going to scale as time goes on.
Actually, a second thing I’m not sure about - I haven’t been very good about integrating information I want to keep accessible long-term in with my other notes. It used to be if I figured something out about ‘ibus’ (for example), I’d add it to some “Linux desktop” note. I’m more likely now to just let it live in my daily notes. On the one hand, I might be more likely to write things down because there isn’t the friction of going to find the right note and worrying about formatting. On the other hand, it seems likely this information will get harder to find if it all lives in date-titled notes.
Anyway, so that’s all my “work” vault. I do something similar for a “Journalling” vault, but I’m not as happy with that setup.
A late addition: I also like using check boxes for things I need to get back to - it’s super fast to do and lets me get back to it later. You can search for unchecked check boxes, so at my weekly review I have a saved search that shows me all the things I thought I should do. Then I either do them or move them to my to-do app. This way I know if there’s an unchecked check box in my “DailyLog” folder, it needs attention.