Keeping a Logbook

Here’s an old link. On Keeping a Logbook by Austin Kleon:

But more importantly, keeping a simple list of who/what/where means I write down events that seem mundane at the time, but later on help paint a better portrait of the day, or even become more significant over time. By “sticking to the facts” I don’t pre-judge what was important or what wasn’t, I just write it down.

I do this in a few places. I write in a bullet journal every day. I knock tasks off with Things 3. I collect links for this blog. But there’s nowhere where all of these things get collected.

I’m building a machine.

in iOS13, there’s a greatly expanded set of automations in the shortcuts app. It may enable me to make a logbook of all the things I do on my phone. And since my phone is my primary computer, it’ll go a long way to automatically log my day. Here’s some of the things I’m trying to build:

an export of the Things 3 logbook
whenever I play a game
when I buy a game
when I wake up/go to work/eat/etc.
calendar events
how long and how well I slept
what I read and watched
what I said on social media and this blog.

Apps I’ll be using

iOS Shortcuts
IFTTT
Day One
Airtable
Dropbox

These posts will be called “Logbook [date]”. I don’t know if these are things I’ll actually publish openly or not. Maybe the first few. We’ll see how it goes.