I have dabbled with several different work journals, digital tools, and other things to keep track of what I’ve been doing for my own information and for reporting out as needed. For a while, I used Microsoft OneNote, but I grew tired of it. Sometime last year, I picked up the open source Obsidian, after someone recommended it on Kevin Sonney’s Productivity Alchemy podcast. (Come back, Kevin! We miss the pod!)
Obsidian uses markdown formatting, which took me a minute to get used to, and there are a ton of plugins for various uses. I haven’t found a need for any of them yet, but I expect as I think of more use cases, that will change. My main need was to have one place to keep all my meeting notes, to-dos, and completed tasks. This is something Obsidian does pretty well without any add-ons.
Meeting Notes
I have some regular standing meetings that I didn’t want to be creating a new note for every time, so instead I have one note with headers for the dates of the meetings, and I keep them in reverse chronological order so that the newest is on top. For more one-off or less frequent meetings, I will create a separate note page for them. Everything gets filed into four folders under the meetings folder: Library, University, Consortia, or Vendors.
To-Dos
I have a to-do folder with several notes under it. Three of them are permanent, and then I add notes for specific collections/acquisitions purchases or projects. The permanent notes are: a list of tasks I need to follow up on from meetings, ongoing collections decisions list (usually generated from a request for a trial or price quote), and my annual goals. I added that last one because I often forget what it was I said I was going to do that year, and it’s helpful to have it in a place I look at daily. The ongoing collections decision list came about when I was getting overwhelmed with tracking where we were on various things, especially near the end of the fiscal year. It’s something I review before the monthly collections meeting with the liaisons.
When I get a request for a large purchase with enough steps that I can’t rely on my email inbox to track it, I will create a note in this folder with the details. A recent example of this came from our rare books and special collections librarian, who wanted to place orders with about a half a dozen booksellers we did not already have in the university system. As you might imagine, this takes a lot more steps and keeping track of those steps versus simply placing an order with our main book supplier. Having a note with details about what we are ordering, from whom, and where that order is in the process has been very helpful.
I also create note files to keep track of the queue of ebooks we want to order from publishers that only do custom bundles of a minimum number or collections. Since we rarely need to buy the whole collection, this is the closest we can get to title-by-title purchases, and it can take a while to get to that minimum.
Completed Tasks
One aspect of this is a folder where I put those project/purchase notes into when they are done, and mainly it’s for reference for my future self when inevitably I get a question about them.
The other thing I’ve been attempting lately is a modified bullet journal method of planning my day and keeping track of what I accomplished. I create a note each month with a reverse chronological order of days within it. Under each date, I have some checkboxes for the things I plan to do that day, and then I add bullet points for the things that I end up doing that were outside of that plan. I have found this to be helpful in keeping me focused on days when I struggle, and if I don’t finish a task, it gets copied into the next day’s list. I also link to the meeting notes of any meetings I have that day, which is one of the more “advanced” features of Obsidian beyond organizing notes and lists.
An additional aspect of my daily notes is that it helps me identify the things I want to share in the weekly accomplishments email that goes out to all library staff from every department. Most of what I do doesn’t go on that list, but having it all lined out helps me see what could be informative/useful for other areas of the library.