A quick tour of my Tinderbox Daybook
I’ve been keeping a “Daybook” using Tinderbox since at least 2008. My Daybook is basically a collection of outlines and notes. Here’s a quick overview.
The main sections are:
- Daybook - This is a daily log/journal, organized by month
- Meal Log - I log what I eat, when, the type of meal, and a quality score
- Media Log - I record books read and movies watched
- Weight log - Most days I enter my weight.
At the end of each month I export the Daybook outline for the month as Markdown, which I also then convert to PDF and print. From there it gets punched and put into a 3-ring binder.
Tinderbox outline
There’s a simple dashboard “Map” view showing aggregate metrics.
Tinderbox Dashboard
Tinderbox lets me add any metadata I want to notes. For example, the Media Log contains the following:
- StartDate - When I started a book or watched a film
- EndDate - When I finished a book or film
- Rating - I rate things on a scale with 1 (I didn’t care for it), 2 (It was fine), and 3 (I enjoyed it)
- Media Type - Currently this is either Book or Movie. I thought would include Podcast and TV but have not done that
- URL - Usually a link to Goodreads or Letterboxd
- Authors - Book author
- BookTitle - Full title of the book
- PublicationYear - Year of release
- ISBN - for books
- Genre - Fiction or Non-fiction
Tinderbox Media Log
Outline titles can show not only the note’s title, but any other metadata as well.
Outline metadata
Outline metadata
The thing about all this is that with minimal input, I can get all sorts of interesting output and insights. I’ve tried other ways of keeping a Daybook like this but nothing has come close to the utility and flexibility of Tinderbox.