Text Editor Macros

It would be pretty annoying to manually type out a timestamp every time you wanted to make a journal entry. Luckily, many text editors can be extended with macros to make this automatic.

Sublime Text

I personally use Sublime Text 3 as my primary method for editing my work journal. The following steps will help you extend Sublime Text 3 to add datestamps and timestamps using a key combination.

  1. Download journal_date.py
  2. Copy journal_date.py to the Sublime Text 3 Packages directory
cp journal_date.py "$HOME/Library/Application Support/Sublime Text 3/Packages/User"
  1. Add the following to Default (OSX).sublime-keymap
[
    { "keys": ["ctrl+super+alt+n"], "command": "insert_date" },
    { "keys": ["ctrl+super+alt+m"], "command": "insert_time" }
]

This creates two hotkeys that will automatically insert datestamps and timestamps. You can change the keymap however you want to make the hotkeys convenient for you.

Jota+

Jota+ for Android enables me to add notes to my journal using a phone or tablet. I create a file in dropbox called journal-phone.txt and add regular entries to it, just like always.

Jota+ provides macros, but it calls them fixed phrases. You can create two fixed phrases for adding datestamps and timestamps:

  • datestamp: %yyyy%-%MM%-%dd%
  • timestamp: %HH%%mm%

Be sure that the fixed phrases include blank lines around the timestamp.

Other text editors

Any text editor that provides macros for the date and time is likely to support Gthnk. If you successfully set up another text editor, please create an issue that describes your process and we can add it to this document.