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  • 30 days of Logseq

    It's been years since I've been so excited about software.

    While I can’t recall how I stumbled onto Logseq, I absolutely can say it came into my life at the perfect time. I have been trying to write more, build healthier routines, and give better structure to all the information I intake on a daily basis. Logseq has made much of this almost effortless.

    Simple yet flexible

    Logseq is nothing more than a markdown editor with superpowers. It parses through references and metadata to build out a sort of personal wiki, which can give the user total liberty on how to organize information. Data is structured in outlines as blocks, which may feel familiar to Notion users, and the overall functionality is akin to Roam Research.

    The default landing page for the app is a list of daily journals, a brilliant way to differentiate personal happenings and sharable knowledge. Both draw on life experiences and interests but this really helps make sense of what goes where.

    Grow any idea

    Every single idea can have a home in Logseq. From the bit of knowledge learned in a meaningful activity to the totally random daydream turned project idea. There’s virtually no overhead in storing more information, and no resistance in pruning things down.

    Thoughts proliferate as the foundational ideas begin to settle. When asked about information on a subject I’m knowledgeable in, I can (one day) respond with a hyperlink. I can refer in my own writings, be it in the wiki itself or a blog, without having to add more context.

    What I’ve been logging

    Habits and routines: years of trying different apps having their spin on habit building, only to be bombarded with guilt inducing notifications that lead to disengagement, and ultimately data loss and app deletion. Every journal entry I have starts with the habits I’d like to build that day, and there’s no harm in adjusting them over time. Best of all, no nagging reminders.

    Todo items, not lists: similar to habit apps, todo list app offer countless bells and whistles to dress up checkboxes, though all seem to have a fatal design flaw. In having a space fully dedicated to uncompleted tasks, a power user with dozens, maybe hundreds of tasks will end up with a huge list of things that haven’t been done. This can work against the user and lead to deleting the app and having to start over. In contrast, Logseq merely offers checkboxes as a block type, to which they can situate in any other meaningful context.

    Questions for appointments: doctors, interviewers, landscaping consultations, friends— all interesting people I may sporadically think about leading up to our meetings. Too often I’ve tried to recall great questions I once had, only to be lost when they’re needed more. No more.

    Health records: as my lower back and the rest of my body slowly starts following apart, I dream of a singular place that notes my medications, ailments, and experiences with medical professionals. I regularly have to scramble through years old email confirmations to rebuild my medical history as part of my new patient onboarding. While I can’t overhaul the broken American healthcare system, I can at least jot down these data points for not just myself but immediate family.

    Local cafes: in efforts to get out of the house and explore the greater Salt Lake area, I’ve been going to new work spots at least once a week. Surely I can use an existing platform that aggregates local reviews, but there’s far less pressure to privately and briefly note my first impressions.

    Personal stats

    Screen time:

    Week # Desktop Mobile
    25 14h 15m 12m
    26 12h 50m 1h 43m
    27 18h 46m 19m
    28 29h 46m 7m
    29 24h 57m 39m
    Total 100h 34m 3h

    Journals: 34 entries, 8594 words

    Pages: 116 entries, 7080 words

    Tasks: 85 to do, 103 done

    Methodology

    Quirks

    There’s been one mildly annoying bug when linking through pages in short bursts. The context menu sometimes needs to be closed out of and reentered to display the correct list of autocomplete options. For now I find this totally acceptable as the product is not even in its official version 1.0 release. If it truly irks me I could try to fix it myself as it is entirely open source.

    Future plans

    Logseq has a powerful query system for aggregating all sorts of data. My needs are still pretty basic now but there’s comfort in being able to further scale out my thoughts without added overhead.

    Much of this website’s content, including the past three blogs, have been entirely drafted and written in Logseq. There’s a manual step of copying the markdown content into my statically generated website’s repository that I’d like to automate.

    Finally, a much more futurist idea that I pondered. The general notion of personal wikis, second brains, Zettelkasten, digital gardens, etc. is to materialize one’s thoughts, interests, and findings of what they care about most. Writing in such a personal way can also capture one’s inflections and inner voice. Is it absurd to think in several decades one can have a sentient AI based purely on their self-made second brain? Can we somehow live immortally as a collection of ideas and reflections?

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