Core Plugin: Daily Journal

I use the Core Daily Journal plugin every day.

This gives you a new button in the left gutter. Click on it and you get a blank, optionally templated, file named with today’s date, for taking notes for well, today. No matter what file you’re in, clicking that button will take you back to this file.

The plugin allows for an optional template, stored in a file as a note. I find this invaluable for jump starting my day.

I use the date format of YYYY.MM.DD, which helps with sorting when looking for a day’s note outside of Obsidian - say, on mobile or via the file system.

As of this writing, my template looks like this:

# Exercise

# Calendar

# Work

---
#dailynotes

I like logging my daily exercise. So that’s obvious. I tend to exercise first thing in the morning, so when I open this note, I log the workouts right away.

The “Work” section is for stuff I did today that needs some context - beyond, say, what’s in my personal task manager. I often will have items here like “wrote some for the blog” or “talked to neighbor about the fence” just to tickle my brain when I come back to this file.

The “Calendar” section is full of entries of the meetings I know I’m going to have, or if spontaneous ones happen, I add them, too. They look like this:

# Calendar

## 1100a Talk with [[Andy Nelson]]

## 0230p 1-1 with [[Kyle]]

I will take bulleted list notes in these sections during the meeting if possible. And anything that I need to dump out of my brain after the meeting, I’ll flesh out the section.

I talk about linking to people in Obsidian 1-1’s.