I realise there is a lot of talk around cloud outliners these days, notably Workflowy and Dynalist. I’m still a traditionalist though, and I like using locally installed software.

I’ve written up my use case for OmniOutliner as a daily journal in case anybody is interested.

https://www.canion.me/omnioutliner-as-a-daybook

Typo in the thread title - oops!

I found this really helpful, thank you for posting it!

I'm in the midst of actually *reading* GTD for the first time and finding a lot of very useful information in it. I'm very interested in using OmniOutliner as a "folder stack" like you've done. Is that file available generally or can you put it on your site for download?

Drewster wrote:

I realise there is a lot of talk around cloud outliners these days,
notably Workflowy and Dynalist. I’m still a traditionalist though,
and I like using locally installed software.

I’ve written up my use case for OmniOutliner as a daily journal in
case anybody is interested.

https://www.canion.me/omnioutliner-as-a-daybook

I used OO for a journal, at least briefly. I distrust special purpose apps - or, at least, I prefer using an app where my data is recoverable outside the application. OO didn't bother me there because of OPML and other export options, but I wanted a more general purpose stash bin.

What I ended up with is a Devonthink database for my journal. A group for the year, a group for each month within the year, and a rich text file for the days I remember to make entries.

I made a template file, as a convenience, named %year%-%month%-%day% %weekday% journal.rtf.

Today's file from that template ended up being automatically named 2019-3-25 Monday.rtf. Inside the rtf file, I've got headers for The day (personal ravings), Errands, and Work.

It's somewhat industrial looking for a journal, but it lets me use tagging, searching, and I can store anything I want with the day. Pictures, audio, whatever.

You have to be a little careful with Devonthink's automatic file naming. The date functions are permanent, but if you use the enclosing group name as part of a file name, the file will get a static name based on how it first appeared. If you drag it to a new group, the group portion of the displayed file name (not the actual file name) will change to reflect the new enclosing group.

Thank you @drewster -- interesting post on your blog. I frequently use OO5 for capturing notes on iOS (with columns for metadata) that I want to import to Tinderbox. Your journaling idea would complement that use case, so I will give it a go.

I gave DevonThink a real try for this purpose, but it was just too clunky. Yes, it offers more power and allows for data to be sliced and diced. But I found that I just wasn't using it. So it didn't matter what features it offered if I didn't use it.

At least I've found with OO, I've just been able to keep the file open and quickly add entries without friction.

I love DevonThink though, so encourage anybody to try using it for this purpose.

I've created an empty OmniOutliner Journal file if others are interested in trying it.

This link should work: https://www.dropbox.com/s/y78siftpn6awno8/Daily%20Journal%20Template.zip?dl=0

Thanks for the file...

and for anyone who prefers dates as day/month/year I converted it:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/vtsaq3fbor3bnfm/Daily%20Journal%20Template-uk.zip?dl=0

Gary

Thanks for posting the converted version. As an Australian, your modified format is my preferred format as well!

I started using Drafts again and have changed some workflow from TaskPaper to DevonThink since the release of DT3 beta. Drafts has a nice action that appends to an iCloud journal and I have been using it frequently. I have thought about adding additional actions for different types of journal entries.

Then I just index the journals in DevonThink for reference.