4 Macros for Entering “Running” Notes
My days include a constant bombardment of tidbits of information. Instant messages, IRC chats, e-mails, and phone calls. It can be hard to stay focused on the task at hand when interruptions ensue. The trick, I’ve found, is to have a system in place that allows these kinds of interruptions to be dealt with as quickly as possible, before my train of thought gets too far derailed.
My system is simply this: I keep an editor window open all day long, always on the same “scratchpad” file. I like to use TextPad with a plain ASCII file that I call “C:\data\misc\_ScratchPad.txt”, but it could just as easily be a Word document, or a personal wiki, or some kind of a brainstorming/notetaking program. To help me keep these notes in TextPad, I devised 4 simple macros that help immensely, which I’ll describe in a moment.
Whenever something comes in that I want to remember, or that I will eventually need to act on, but I’m not prepared to act on it immediately, I will copy it and paste it into this scratchpad document. It might be the URL for a web page that somebody recommended, or a piece of information that pertains to my next project, or a support question, or an invitation to tea with the Queen, what have you. Let’s call these random pieces of information “tidbits.” It works best for me if tidbits are processed LIFO (last in, first out), so I always add new ones to the top of the file (Ctrl+Home), but FIFO could be worked just as easily (Ctrl+End).
Aside: Sometimes a tidbit comes about when I interrupt myself. For example, I might start to compose an e-mail to an associate and realize that I’m going into too much detail. So, I will cut out the extraneous detail but past it into the scratchpad document so that it’s available later when providing that detail will be more appropriate.
Macro #1: The first macro places a dividing line between tidbits.
I have this macro assigned to the Ctrl+Hyphen key (Ctrl+-).
[Home] ----- [Enter]
That’s the Home key, followed by five dashes, followed by the Enter key. (By making the Home key part of the macro, it means that the cursor can be anywhere on a line when I press Ctrl+-, and the dividing line will be inserted above the current line but not break up the line at the cursor.)
So, whenever I have a new tidbit to paste in, the sequence is: Ctrl+Home (to get to the top of the file, if the cursor is not already there), Ctrl+- (to start off with a new dividing line), then Ctrl+V (to paste in the tidbit).
Macro #2: The next macro adds a “TODO:” prefix to the current line. Obviously, I use this to label action items. At the end of the day, if I am in a hurry and I don’t have time to process the entire scratchpad file, then I will at least do a search on “TODO:” and pick out the action items.
I have this macro assigned to the Ctrl+Semicolon key (Ctrl+;). (Originally, I had it assigned to the colon key, because of the colon in “TODO:”, but I got tired of holding down both control and shift, so I changed it to semicolon which is unshifted.)
[Home] TODO: [Home]
That’s the Home key, followed by “TODO:”, followed by a space, followed by the Home key again.
Macro #3: The third macro adds a “PEND:” prefix to the current line. This is for when the tidbit that I’m recording pertains to something that hasn’t happened yet (i.e. it’s pending). Perhaps, it’s a bit of information that I’ll need for a project that hasn’t started yet, or an action item that has to wait for somebody to get back to me first. I went ahead and assigned this macro to the Ctrl+Colon key (Ctrl+:), since I wasn’t using it for the TODO macro anymore.
[Home] PEND: [Home]
This is exactly the same as the TODO macro, except for the letters “PEND”. One reason I abbreviated it to four letters will become clear in a second.
Macro #4: The last macro changes either a “TODO:” prefix or a “PEND:” prefix to say “DONE:”. Now, normally, whenever I’m done with a tidbit I simply delete it, but sometimes I’m only 99% done with something. For example, I might need to report that doneness somewhere, such as in a status report. Or, I might need a reminder to myself that I left off on a certain step in a multi step process, but then, when I’m done with the whole thing I will delete the entire tidbit.
I have this macro assigned to the Ctrl+Slash key (Ctrl+/), slash being representative of striking out the item.
[Home] [Delete] [Delete] [Delete] [Delete] DONE [Home]
That’s the Home key, followed by the Delete key four times, followed by “DONE”, followed by the Home key again. So, the first four characters of the line, whatever they are, get replaced with the word “DONE”.
Tip #1: Whenever I want to search the file for action items (”TODO:”) or pending items (”PEND:”), I will use the TextPad feature to mark all occurrences. Not only does this place a blue triangle in the gutter to highlight each line, but it allows me to do things like copying all bookmarked lines to the clipboard, paste them into a separate (new, temporary) document, print that temporary document, and then run off to a meeting with the printout.
Tip #2: Of course, these macros can help with entering “running” notes of any sort. You might prefer to work with different files for different purposes, as opposed to everything going into the same scratchpad document. For example, I have a second file that I use to keep track of ideas, research, and partial drafts for future blog postings. Mostly, however, everything just automatically goes into the scratchpad file without me having to stop and think first. This shoot first, ask questions later approach is the main reason this technique works for me. Not only does it get me back to whatever I was working on previously that much faster, but I never have to worry about things falling through the cracks.
Tip #3: I have a shortcut in the quick launch area of my Windows task bar for my scratchpad document, which always comes up in TextPad, because I have TextPad associated with that filename extension. Furthermore, TextPad has a nice feature that allows you to deny multiple instances from running at the same time. This means that if TextPad is already open on the scratchpad file (which it usually is), TextPad will beep at me and set focus to the existing editing session, rather than opening a new one.
Tip #4: I lied earlier when I said the name of my scratchpad file is “C:\data\misc\_ScratchPad.txt”. It’s actually “C:\data\misc\_ScratchPad.html” (i.e. it ends with .html). Quite often, my tidbits contain HTML tags. By claiming that the scratchpad file is an HTML document, even though it isn’t, I get to take advantage of TextPad’s syntax highlighting.
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