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Vimwiki is what I need

Posted Mon 1 Mar, 2021.

I finished 2020 a bit tired, with a lot of things in my head, and having that feeling of forgetting something important. I guess I was losing focus on my current project (Brick Rick: Graveyard Shift, still not released; but getting there), so I thought I could move some information from my brain to external storage.

I decided to give Trello another go. Well, in reality it was more about knowing that I needed "something", and not necessarily that it had to be Trello -specially because I tried it before, and it didn't work for me-.

I checked my requirements, and vimwiki seemed a perfect match.

Vimwiki

I've been using vim for around 20 years now, I think wikis are alright (not perfect, but that's a story for another day), and Vimwiki is super easy to install and use.

But then I got a bit distracted by requirements that, turns out, I thought I had but in reality didn't mean anything:

What about backups? May be just use a remote git repo (it can be private).
What about syncing with other devices? git works fine with any device that I actually use for taking notes or writing down ideas; and that device is not my phone! :facepalm:

Trello works for a lot of people. It has good usability, takes care of the backups, syncs data between devices, and it even has an app for my phone (an app that I installed and never used, true). It is free and I had an account already, so why not giving it another go?

But there's something that doesn't work with me, or my way of getting things done. It is like it adds a lot of unnecessary "admin" to my process, and the board/cards structure are never a good fit.

And I tried hard. In fact, because I was "testing Trello", that probably helped me to get my MSX libraries released (after a year; shame!). But then, after that high, and despite having a pinned tab open for 2 months, I stopped using it.

Last night I was reading:

Simplify and Purify

And it finally "clicked". Vimwiki was the right tool for me!

It took me 20 minutes to setup a private git repo, install the plugin, and convert all my Trello cards to my personal wiki.

We will see if it sticks, but for now... it feels great!

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