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How I Create My Time Line / Events List


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I thought I would just share a new habit (process) I've picked up with EN. It is about how I add Notes about events in my life and my family member's lives. As I have tracked doctor's appointments for 3 other family members, milestones in my grandkids lives, and a variety of other events for a few years now, this new habit has speeded up the process.
 
I need to give credit to Jamie Todd Rubin for this idea/approach. He is an EN Ambassador. For 2-3 years, he has been writing about how he uses EN. You can see a list of his blog entries at http://www.jamierubin.net/going-paperless. He is also a professional writer, so his EN articles are very clear. - - - His concept for "events" was to perceive a lot of what we put into EN as building up a "time line".
 
Here's how. I first constructed a Tag named "K=Timeline". The "K" is merely a prefix for a group of Tags I use in EN that defines what "kind" of Note it is. Before I started, I had scanned a lot of my EN Notes. I saw that I already had a lot that were events and they were spread out amongst several different Notebooks, where I wanted to keep them. So, an EN Tag was the obvious way to go.
 
I anticipated that the vast majority of time I will be out of the house when I want to add a Note to my time line. I'd be carrying my iPhone and using the iOS version of EN. As you well know, in that case, an advantage of EN is that it will pick up location information as to where I was when I created the Note.
 
When I add a Note about an event, I find that I typically just enter information (a short sentence) into the "Title" that describes what happens and the name of the key person involved. I don't even take time to specific a Notebook or to add the Tag. EN automatically puts the Note into my default Notebook, "In-Box", and assigns the current date, time, and location information. It is all very simple and fast. --- On a rare occasion, I might add some details to the body of the Note or take a camera shot, but in my boring life, I don't think that is going to happen much.
 
At the end of the day, when I am typically home, I sit down at my Windows laptop, go to EN, switch to "list" view, and check my "In-Box". I spot the event Notes and quickly assign them to a Notebook by dragging their titles over the top of the Notebook name in the left, vertical column. Then as a batch of Notes, I assign the Tag "K=Timeline" to them.
 
Just as a "gee whiz", I also set up a recipe in IFTTT to send a description of the day's weather to my "In-Box" each day and add it to my event time line, too.
 
Now, when I want to know "when" something happened, I just click on the Tag and add a keyword to the EN search box. (A downside of this process is that I have become my wife’s Administrative Assistant when it comes to her wanting to know “When did we……?”)
 
If I happen to want to add a Note for an event that occurred in the past, I make sure I change the EN "Created Date" to be the actual date of the event.
 
I hope you find this little process to be useful.
 
 
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On March 20, 2016 at 5:43 AM, Analyst444 said:

If I happen to want to add a Note for an event that occurred in the past, I make sure I change the EN "Created Date" to be the actual date of the event.

Prepare for a long discussion abouut the appropriateness of changing this field.
This was discussed at  -date-tag-a-note-or-change-the-date-of-a-note
Its not even an option on some platforms.

I usually add the relevant date to the title. You have to give careful thought to how you sort your notes - my default sort is by update date, but after filtering I switch to title sequence.
If you put it at the beginning of the title, you can sort your list by title and get your notes in date sequence, although I prefer a more sectioned sort. like Meetings - 2016/05/01

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On 3/20/2016 at 7:55 AM, DTLow said:

Prepare for a long discussion abouut the appropriateness of changing this field.

No need for such a discussion.  It's already been done, and really it's mostly just one person who is complaining about others who change the dates.
 

On 3/20/2016 at 7:55 AM, DTLow said:

I usually add the relevant date to the title
If you put it at the beginning of the title, you can sort your list by title.

But then you lose the ability to sort by a descriptive title, and you open yourself up to typos.

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On 3/20/2016 at 7:43 AM, Analyst444 said:

I first constructed a Tag named "K=Timeline". The "K" is merely a prefix for a group of Tags I use in EN that defines what "kind" of Note it is.

I do something similar.  I have tags for:

  • HIST.Fam
  • HIST.My
  • Peo.Fam.<FirstnameL>   where <FirstnameL> is the firstname and initial of last name

I assign one or more of these tags as needed.  This allows me to filter the note list to all of my family history, or to specific family members. 
I can then sort by:

  • Created Date -- to see events/documents in chronological order of when they actually happened
  • Title -- to see common event types grouped, or to see notes in a specific order
  • Updated/Modified Date -- to see when I last updated the note to add/correct info.

I also set undated Reminders to identify major events that will appear at the top of the Note List.

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