Daily Documents

Daily Documents are automatically generated documents for content tied to a specific date, or for content that doesn’t fit anywhere else.

Soren Bjornstad avatar
Written by Soren Bjornstad
Updated over a week ago

A Daily Document is a special document tied to a specific calendar date.

Today's daily document is a convenient way to write down what you need to do or have completed on a particular day. It's also a great place to start taking notes if you're not immediately sure where to put something. For instance, if you're on the phone and suddenly need to write something down, you can open the daily document and start typing. If you later decide those notes need to be part of your permanent knowledge base and will get lost if left in that day's document, you can easily move them.

You can also quickly add Rem References to Daily Documents by typing !!. Since RemNote adds backlinks for these, you'll be able to see everywhere you've talked about a particular date right on the Daily Document's page.

Today’s Daily Document

To start working on today’s Daily Document, open the sidebar and click “Today’s Note”. Alternatively, press Alt+D (Opt+D on a Mac). This opens the Daily Document for the current date, creating it if it doesn't yet exist.

Referencing a Daily Document

You can create a Rem Reference to any Daily Document by typing !!, followed by the date in question, then pressing Enter. For example, !!November 27th, 2020. In addition to exact dates, RemNote recognizes most natural-language descriptions of dates. For example, you can type “in three weeks” or “next Tuesday”. If you press Enter without typing anything after !!, today's date will be selected.

If you don't know the exact date you want to reference, you can also use the mouse to select from the calendar that pops up when you type !!.

Once you've created the reference, you can click on it to open the Daily Document and start editing it. If you don’t want to navigate away from your current page, hold down Shift while clicking to open it in a new pane.

Accessing all Daily Documents

From within any Daily Document page: At the top of every Daily Document, the toolbar will include a section showing the dates immediately before and after the open Daily Document. A little further to the right is a calendar icon; clicking here will allow you to quickly select any date.

From the global search: Typing any date into Ctrl+P search (Cmd+P on a Mac), or using natural language (e.g., “1 year ago”) will find the Daily Document associated with that date, if one exists.

Applying a template to Daily Documents

You may want to add the same content to new daily documents every day. You can accomplish this by adding a template to the Daily Document power-up. You can then apply it by clicking on the Daily Document tag under the daily document’s title and choosing a template, or set the template to auto-apply to automatically add it on every day’s document! Check out the link above for more information on templates.

Suggested uses for Daily Documents

Daily Documents are an incredibly flexible tool for RemNote users. Whether you use RemNote for your studies, research, work, or any and all of the above, here are some ideas for how to get the most out of Daily Documents.

Daily Docs for students

  • Today's Daily Document can be an excellent place to take notes throughout the day or to link as a reference to course notes you take elsewhere in your notes.

  • You can even create a template for your schedule for each day, tracking class times, and locations.

  • Add questions to ask in class and other helpful details/reminders ahead of time, which you will see when preparing to take notes for the day.

  • Whenever you get an assignment, open or reference the daily doc for that day, write it in and make it a to-do! This will keep you from forgetting and act as a helpful reminder.

Daily Docs for researchers

  • Daily Docs are great for jotting down ideas as they come to you throughout the day, don’t forget to go through them later!

  • If you are working on a thesis or other long-term project, create Daily Documents for intermittent deadlines, meetings with advisers, etc, to help you incrementalize.

  • Use Daily Document references to track relevant timelines or prior research publication dates.

Daily Docs in the workplace

  • Make your Daily Documents into a scheduler, keeping track of meetings, deadlines, obligations, and calls.

  • After a meeting or call is over, you can add the notes from it straight to the daily doc under that meeting/call for maximum traceability and accountability.

  • You can use your daily doc as a notepad when you quickly need to take notes after a random call, impromptu hallway meeting, or spike of inspiration, go back later to move them or connect them to appropriate places in your Knowledge base.

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