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Using Roam Research for managing my busy life - Daily Notes Page and Tasks

Alexander Rink

Nov 4, 2023

This post is part of a series of articles explaining how I use Roam Research to manage my work, side projects, and private life. While the basic ideas will be freely available, additional background information and unique customizations will only be available to paying subscribers.

In my last article, I explained the ontology I have established for my personal knowledge management system. This time, we will dig deeper into how I work with the Daily Notes Page and Tasks.

The importance of the Daily Note Page (DNP)

Have you ever wondered when you had a particular idea, found a bookmark, or heard about that fantastic concert?

This is why all my notes start on the Daily Notes Page (DNP). No excuses. It is the easiest way to create a temporal context.

Every block on this page is automatically linked to the current date. It's an essential step in my journey to reducing cognitive load and serves the principle of evolutionary continuity.

I use a simple template (apply it by pressing ;;) where I differentiate three main categories:

Meetings: All my 1:1s, dailies, weeklies, topic-specific decisions, discussions, and information sessions are recorded there.

Log: My thoughts, ideas, and things I don't want to forget (but don't have an immediate action scheduled) go under Log.

Tasks: Tasks that come into my mind and are not bound to a meeting or a log entry will be put here. If they arise within another context, I will note them down there, reducing friction and increasing context. I also have a link to my central “Task Overview” containing due, due soon, overdue, and unplanned todos.

Two ways of creating log entries

Let's assume I listened to the beautiful album “Schubert: Die Nacht” and want to remember that.

There are two ways I usually log items like that:

By creating a log entry with a wiki link for the item

Just within a log entry

I use wiki links when I assume I want to refer back to it on other days, in different contexts, or add more details.

Log entries can quickly get messy when too much information is noted.

The choice of methods also determines where I do the tagging. When I make just a log record, I obviously have to tag it there with all important keywords.

If I create a dedicated page, I will do the tagging there. I do this without leaving the DNP by Shift-Clicking on the entry and opening it in the right sidebar.

I then add the best matching template (album, in this case). You can find more details about the ontology I use here.

All my object templates contain the status #draft, so I can quickly return later when I have more time to add details.

I can then add all the metadata I find helpful.

Editing the detailed information within the right sidebar

When I search for that album I heard some time ago with that beautiful cello, I have various ways to find it. I would probably start on the page for the main class I want to see, album in this case. I can use the linked references filter to search for "Cello":

I also could start my search on the "Cello" or "playlist” page. Multiple ways to find my content are an essential part of my Graceful Degradation principle. When I want to know when I heard this album, I can either go to its dedicated page and search the backlinks for dates or (in the case of the short log entry) I already see it in the backlinks when searching for the album as shown above. I can also go to my playlist page and search for the album title in the linked references.

A robust approach to task management

Tasks are the most crucial part of my personal knowledge management system. They are my "action items." Whenever I want to ensure that I take the following action, I‘ll make it a task. Remember to talk with Laura about "Design Patterns"? Remember to finish the draft? Remember to read that article about asteroid mining? All will be tasks.

I have a straightforward semantic approach to tasks. They become a TODO in Roam Research by pressing CMD+Enter. This has quickly burned into my muscle memory - even when taking notes during a stressful meeting.

If I want to schedule tasks, I enter a #due tag and the next date where I want to be actively reminded of these tasks into the same line. This ensures that things like my Task overview work efficiently.

Various tasks I want to take the following action on

What happens when I add a due date is this: The tasks will be actively “promoted” to the corresponding date by putting them in the linked references of that day:

But we get some more benefits because we now have items that are readily identifiable within queries. That allows us to build a beautiful task overview page with queries and some CSS (which I will release for my paying subscribers soon):

I usually have these four categories. Tasks that are due today, overdue tasks (they have #due tag, but all assigned dates are in the past), tasks that are due soon (within the next week), and finally, tasks without a due date. Being part of my Graceful Degradation principle, the last category is my "last resort” for actionable items - all I have to do is press CMD+Enter to put it into this.

I usually put the Task Overview pinned in my right sidebar. One significant advantage of having a dedicated Task Overview page instead of adding the queries to the Daily Notes templates is that you only need the queries once, which will dramatically enhance performance if you have reactive queries enabled. You can find a demo of these queries on my sample graph.

If I finish a task, I press CMD+Enter again, changing the item to DONE. If I want to reschedule it or change the description, I can do this by just clicking on the item. If I want to make some notes regarding this task, I make a log entry with a block reference (right-click on the bullet of the task you want to reference and select "Copy block ref").

You can now insert this reference into your Log and indent your notes below it:

If you open up that task, you can find its note history with the corresponding date within the backlinks:

Lovely. Next time, I'll tell you how I plan and record meetings.

I hope you enjoyed the article. Let me know in the comments if you think I missed an important aspect that bothers you when building your own personal knowledge management system.

If you like my work, consider supporting it by becoming a paid subscriber, giving you access to additional articles, unique customizations, and direct support.