daily

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Generating dates for Obsidian periodic notes

Nick Milo’s weekly newsletter mentioned using a base template when creating a new note that contains related and created properties. He properly shows <% tp.file.creation_date() %>, but it made me realize that sometimes I use tp.file.creation_date, but elsewhere I use tp.date.now.

However, the latter will not generate the correct date when it’s created on a different day). So I reviewed my usage across my existing periodic note templates, and need to make them consistent and correct.

Be careful how you create dates using templates with the Templater plugin. This is critical when creating new periodic notes in Obsidian.

Templater dates

There is a subtle difference between two ways to create dates—tp.date() uses the current date, whereas tp.file.creation_date() uses the file date.

Let’s consider what would happen if today were 2024-01-19 (Fri) and I clicked on a future day like tomorrow (2024-01-20) in the calendar pane of the inspector. It would create a new Daily Note with a Markdown document with the name 2024-01-20.md under Calendar/Notes/2024/01 folder. However, if you click on Get Info for this file in Finder, it shows the Created date as January 19, 2024 at 2:13 PM, and the Modified date is the same.

YAML Properties

Looking at the YAML front matter, the created property appears like this:

---
up:
  - '[[2024-W03]]`
related:
created: "2023/01/2024-01-20"
tags:
  - note/periodic/daily
---

Note Title

However, the generated note title like this, which creates a Markdown header 1 (without the hash format prefix):

# Daily Note - Fri, Jan 19.

Back/Forward Links

Also, currently my existing template shows the previous/next days (or maybe back/forward) like this:

<< [[2024-01-18|Yesterday]] | [[2024-01-20|Tomorrow]] >>

Although the created property is correct, my note title and the previous/next days are wrong!

They were using tp.date.yesterday() and tp.date.tomorrow(), which seemed to make sense when I first created my daily template. That worked fine when creating this daily on that same day, like I do with my Daily Startup shortcut that runs automatically every morning at 6 am.

But when I create a Daily Note for some other day in the past or future, this approach generates an incorrect date since the current date is being used instead of the target date for the new file being created.

Solution

For that to work properly, I must use tp.file.creation_date() instead of tp.date.now().

So I should use the following for the note title:

<% tp.file.creation_date("DDD MMM D")%>

so I get “Sat Jan 20”, not “Fri Jan 19”.

Likewise, I need to be using this snippet in the template to generate the proper previous and next days around the new daily note.

<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", -1, tp.file.title, "YYYY-MM-DD")%>

<% tp.date.now("YYYY-MM-DD", 1, tp.file.title, "YYYY-MM-DD")%>

So that might appear something like this:

[[2024-01-19]] < Today > [[2024-01-21]]

or maybe:

<< [[2024-01-19]] | [[2024-01-21]] >>

If I wanted to see these displayed in relative terms, I could use this variation:

<< [[2024-01-19]]|Yesterday | [[2024-01-21]]|Tomorrow >>

These MUST be based on the name of the periodic note file itself, regardless of when it’s created (for back/forward links), instead of the current date.

Daily Reviews

This is especially important when creating my plan for tomorrow during my review at the end of each day since I will want to create a new daily note for tomorrow which I would initialize with stuff that I need or want to do tomorrow. Although it would be created on today for tomorrow, it has to be generated so it uses tomorrow’s date (not today).

Perhaps, during my Daily Startup when creating the Daily Note, I should also create one for the following date as well. However, that would still require that the template being used generates the dates properly.

Weekly Reviews

The same approach needs to be followed for other periodic notes: weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly. In the weekly case, calendar week numbers get especially tricky, since the standard week starts on Sunday, whereas ISO week number begins on Monday. I know I have to account for this in my Shortcuts that create my weekly notes.

I prefer to use Monday to start my weeks, so the weekends appear at the end. Therefore, you need to use the correct week number if generating weekly notes such as 2024-W03 for Jan 15–21 (starting on Mon).

Summary

Remember, there are subtle differences that are signficant:

  • Current date: <% tp.date.now() %>
  • File date: <% tp.file.creation_date() %>

In the meantime, I’m going through my periodic templates to get them cleaned up, consistent, and correct.

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ACE Calendar: Horizons

With the new year, I have thought about the periodic practices and workflows in my PKM system.

Periodic Notes

I use the ACE organizational framework for Atlas, Calendar, and Efforts in my Obsidian Ideaverse vault. I place all time-based information within the Calendar folder, which includes all my periodic notes (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly).

I also have corresponding periodic templates in my Atlas folder under Utilities/Templates/Periodic, and I create these notes with a consistent structure that provides an appropriate scaffolding for use during each period.

Time Horizons

Marie Poulin describes in her email newsletter and [X] messages how she does annual planning based on intentions and themes across multiple periodic horizons: day, week, month, quarter, year, and lifetime.

This is interesting because it reminds me of the emphasis on values, touchstone, and intentions that Karen Hume addressed in your TION (shun) expert sessions during LYT Workshop: Intention, Attention, Reflection, and Incubation, as well as Meaningful Connections in the LYT Conference 2023.

These are related as represented in this sequence:

Values ➡️ Intention ➡️ Goals  ➡️ Workflow

Also, it reminded me of Nick Milo’s recent session on You in Review, where he stressed using themes rather than traditional goals for yearly planning.

Although Marie uses Notion, I thought it might be helpful to explore how I might include some of these ideas into the key apps of my PKM system environment: Obsidian (notes), OmniFocus (tasks), and Fantastical (calendar).

Shortcuts with Actions for Obsidian

I have been exploring integration between these apps with the help of Shortcuts and Actions for Obsidian. Also, I keep revisiting my periodic practices and workflows to refine how I can provide a better foundation. For example, it’s extremely important to have solid planning and review habits for each day, week, month, month, quarter, and year; so this fits nicely within that same framework, and it seems worthwhile to see if I can provide a similar “horizons” perspective for myself.

Action Steps

These are my initial ideas about what steps I need to take to make this approach work for me.

1. Periodic Templates: First, I need to work on my templates (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and yearly) so they provide the structural framework for each period.

2. Planing & Review Process: Next, it’s necessary to standardize my habits for my planning and review processes for each period, which are needed at each level.

3. Workflow Shortcuts Then, it’s very important to establish workflows and shortcuts that transition between these periods. For example, how do I leverage daily notes for my weekly notes, and likewise with weekly to monthly, monthly to quarterly, quarterly to yearly, and yearly to lifetime?

4. Horizon Summary: I would like to embed my planning and review practices for each period, since these are important for every level with a different focus and perspective. Each periodic template should include planning and review sections. It might be helpful to have these planning and review highlights reflected in the horizons summary.

So this appears somewhat like a table, with the major columns being Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year, Life. There are rows across them that include Plan and Review, as well as Focus, and Highlights. In fact, it’s actually a three-dimensional “cube” since there are multiple instances of each period: 365 days, 52 weeks, 12 months, 4 quarters, and 78 years (current lifetime).

6. Horizon Dashboard: Finally, there needs to be an effective way to summarize and highlight these time horizons in a dashboard style. This will enable me to see at a glance the highlights for each period every day.

Horizon Note

Initially, I think I will focus on showing this in a single Horizons note with H2 headings for the main time horizons containing links for highlights of each period. This shows her example, but I need to adjust this based on my approach. Then I can try using it to see how this works, determine whether it’s effective, and refine for incremental improvements.

Monday, Jan 15, 2024

– Single most important task of the day
– Daily practices
– Moods
– Gratitude
– Wins/Challenges

Week 3, Jan 15–21

– One most important outcome of the week (task)

Jan 2024

– Project focus
– One most important outcome for the month (goal)

Q1, Jan–Mar 2024

– Skill focus
– Main goal

2024

– Theme
– Intention
– Vision

Lifetime

– TBD

She displays these side-by-side in a multi-column format, using nice image backgrounds at the top of each horizon overlaid with a white title. Underneath, she shows the list of links for each horizon. This is very nice, and I might see how it might develop to have a similar dashboard view after I work out the details for each horizon.

Horizon Process

In her X thread, she described the following process that she also covers in her course.

– Yearly
– Set intentions, themes, etc.

– Quarterly
– Identify 1-3 goals per quarter
– Break them down into projects
– Assign them to months
– REVIEW

– Month:
– Choose focus project(s)
– REVIEW

– Weekly:
– Decide on the most important project tasks
– REVIEW

– Daily:
– Do the important work each day
– REVIEW

This also relates to my health logs, which need to be integrated into this workflow with these horizons. Of course, I would focus on efforts, rather than projects.

OmniFocus tasks

Recently, I began revamping my OmniFocus 4 system based on the same ACE framework: Atlas, Calendar, Efforts. For example, all my periodic routines, rituals, and reviews are now under the Calendar folder. All my templates and checklists are under Atlas. And my efforts (projects), tasks, and action lists are inside my Efforts folder.

Having a consistent ACE framework across my key PKM application environments offers a common mental model for working in each space. Also, it enables more effective connections and workflow transitions between them.

Arc browser & website

As I have described briefly before, I organize my Arc browser spaces based on the same ACE organization framework, including my efforts, as well as ARC ideation workflow.

I reorganized my website around my major efforts, and this similar framework helps when creating outputs from my PKM system.

Shortcuts

Also, I have now organized my shortcuts into a folder structure that also reflects my ACE framework and efforts. For example, I organize by Atlas, Calendar, and Efforts and that helps me develop and manage shortcuts that support each area of my PKM system. Since the Shortcuts app doesn’t provide nested folders, I use capital folder names for the major spaces, and place those folders under them (pseudo-nesting).

For example, I have shortcuts in CALENDAR for Morning (like Daily Startup), Periodic Notes (like Daily, Weekly, Monthly, Quarterly, and Yearly), Journals (like General, Morning Thoughts, LYT Gong), Logs (like Diabetes, Meals, Glucose, Insulin, Exercise), and Evening. There are shortcuts for EFFORTS like Health, Photos, Music, Blog, etc.

Note

These are just my preliminary thoughts, so I need to develop this idea further to see where it goes. However, I think it offers a lot of promise. Any feedback or suggestions would be helpful.