Workflow and Script for merging DAILY Reflections Journal

[Titus 10]

Hi guys,

I'm going to start daily reflections on Evernote soon, but have a few questions as follows:

 

Assuming I have 4 questions that I need to ask myself,

1. What did I do well today?

2. What can I improve on?

3. What are the top 3 tasks to work on tomorrow?

4. What is my mood rating? (1-10)

 

How do I structure the template such that it is easy to merge all entries (say 2 years' worth of daily entries) into an excel spreadsheet, or any other format, for me to do further data analysis? 

Separately, Evernote does not allow me to set recurring reminders, which links to a NEW note that allows me to quickly jot down my 4 answers. Which will be the most straightforward way to achieve this portion? 

 

[gazumped 11,656]

Hi.  This is one of those "How do you get down off an Elephant?*" questions.

I'd store a URL link in Evernote to an online Jotform form,  and an Airtable database.  Both have freemium service levels and you could add in an unstructured field to add a narrative if you wanted.

Jotform will give you a web address for a form which you can customise like this: (from an ongoing project of mine...)

Each of those bespoke fields is mapped to an Airtable spreadsheet,  which has most of the formula and display capabilities of Excel crossed with relational databases and KanBan layouts.

So you could analyse your own categories whilst still adding new project categories 'on the fly' as necessary.  The outputs can even be autodisplayed on an analysis dashboard for real time viewing.

- Or,  on a Mac,  you can probably script the whole thing;  but I'll leave it to others to comment on that...

NB:  In this project Evernote gets to hold the links so you can find them easily,  but takes no other active part**.  (Sorry,  Evernote...)

* You don't: you get down off a duck.  (I never understood that properly,  but hey...)

** (EDIT) Except... you can set it up to receive an email confirmation of each new entry so I guess that email could get routed into Evernote for an individual day record...  YMMV.

[DTLow 5,736]

9 hours ago, Titus said:

How do I structure the template such that it is easy to merge all entries (say 2 years' worth of daily entries) into an excel spreadsheet, or any other format, for me to do further data analysis? 

As per @gazumped, you could work directly  in a spreadsheet instead of Evernote.

I use scripting on a Mac to parse note contents and export to a spreadsheet.  
Its quite flexible, just use clear guidelines to identify the entries, for example delimit with [   ]
My use cases are
- receipts exported to a spreadsheet for budget and expense reports
- tasks exported to a spreadsheet for a gantt chart view

>>Separately, Evernote does not allow me to set recurring reminders, which links to a NEW note that allows me to quickly jot down my 4 answers. Which will be the most straightforward way to achieve this portion? 

I use scripting on a Mac to create a new journal note each morning.  This includes a reminder

An IFTTT script will generate a reminder email each morning.  
This could include a link to a enex export file which creates a note when opened.  Or a link to a spreadsheet.

There are work-arounds for recurring Evernote reminders

• manual reset each day
• automatic reset using third party Filterize
• automatic reset using scripting on a Mac