Personal Organisation
This post briefly describes how I digitally organize tasks, notes, projects, documents, passwords, and backups. The main software I use is Joplin, Microsoft To Do and Dropbox. The organisation system allows me to keep everything well-structured, easily retrievable and synchronized across all my platforms and devices.
To-Dos
I use Microsoft To Do for task management. To-dos are organized into several lists, such as:
- Private
- Work
- Recurrent
- To Read
- To Blog
- etc.
Each day, I review my lists and add the tasks that I want to complete that day to the My Day list.
Notes
I store my notes in Joplin, organized into various sub-notebooks, including:
Private
Work
Project
(see below)Journal
(see below)Administration
(see below)Knowledge
Inbox
Books
In Joplin Dropbox is configured as synchronization target for sharing my notes across devices.
I use an AutoHotkey script to quickly bring the Joplin window to the foreground or send it to the background using the Pause key. The script also triggers a synchronization.
Pause::
if WinActive("ahk_exe joplin.exe")
{
Send ^s
WinMinimize
Return
}
if not WinExist("ahk_exe joplin.exe")
{
Run C:\Users\Raymond\AppData\Local\Programs\Joplin\Joplin.exe
WinWait ahk_exe joplin.exe
}
else WinActivate ahk_exe joplin.exe
WinWaitActive ahk_exe joplin.exe
Send ^s
return
Two Joplin plugins help improve accessibility and navigation:
- Joplin DDDot: Displays a sidebar with an outline of the current note, recently opened notes, and a customizable list of favorite notes.
- PlantUML2: Renders PlantUML diagrams.
Journal/Daily Notes
I maintain a journal in Joplin, with one note per day. The daily notes are stored in the notebook Journal
in a subnotebook hierarchy named after the year and month. For example the note for 11 March 2025 is kept in 2025/03/2024-03-11
.
The Journal Joplin plugin allows me to quickly create a new note for the current day by pressing Ctrl+D, following this notebook structure.
Projects
Projects are tracked in notes in Joplin with tags to keep an overview of their status.
For each project, there is a note named after the project and containing information about
project state, links, contacts, and other relevant information in a free format. These project notes are usually stored in the Project
sub-notebook but can be located elsewhere.
Projects notes are tagged in Joplin using the following tags:
project-current
: Active projects I’m currently working onproject-finished
: Completed projectsproject-dropped
: Abandoned or obsolete projectsproject
: Potential future projectsproject-ongoing
: Long-term projects that do not have a defined end (e.g., health, language learning)
To keep track of different project types (current, finished, etc.), I use the Note Overview Joplin plugin. This plugin enables dynamic queries to generate lists of notes that meet specific criteria.
For example, to create a linked list of all current project notes:
<!-- note-overview-plugin
search: tag:project-current
fields: title
listview:
text: "{{title}}"
-->
This generates a list of clickable note titles that are tagged with project-current
.
Documents
External document that I receive are either in digital form or are immediately scanned. Important documents are then stored in Dropbox in an appropriate subfolder of the Archive
folder. For example, all tax-related documents are stored in Archive/Tax
. This folder structure evolves over time—when folders become too large, I reorganize them. Documents are typically named with the date as prefix in the format YYYYMMDD_<NAME>
, e.g., 20250111_Voorlopige_Aanslag_2023
.
In Joplin, I use a notebook named Administration
to reference some of these documents and folders in Dropbox. To link a document within a Joplin note, I create a Dropbox share link. This makes it possible to access the document from anywhere. The link remains valid even if the file is renamed or moved within Dropbox.
For security, I restrict access to shared documents so that only I can view them.
Passwords
I store all passwords and security keys in a KeePass database, which is synchronized across my devices via Dropbox.
- On Windows, I use KeePassXC, which has excellent browser plugins.
- On Android, I use KeePass2Android.
Backups
Backups are created using restic. Backup repositories are stored both on a local USB disk and in Dropbox (via rclone).