# Summary

The website outlines a method called "Interstitial Journalling" using the Capacities app to enhance productivity by capturing thoughts and tasks in between work intervals without losing focus.

# Abstract

The article titled "How Capacities Can Keep You Focused — A Simple But Effective Method" discusses a productivity technique known as Interstitial Journalling, which involves writing down thoughts and tasks that come to mind during the brief periods between tasks or even between sentences. This method is facilitated by the intuitive PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) app, Capacities, which allows users to keep an interstitial journal constantly open in a side panel for quick note-taking. The author provides a personal template for the "Today" page within Capacities, which includes an agenda, daily todos, and a "Through the day" section for on-the-fly thoughts, complete with timestamps for organization. The article emphasizes the ease of integrating this method into one's workflow to avoid distraction and maintain productivity, with features like sending notes to the "Today" page via Whatsapp, ensuring that fleeting thoughts are captured efficiently.

# Opinions

- The author believes that Capacities is an "ingenious and intuitive" PKM app that can be customized to individual work habits.
- It is suggested that the ideal way to deal with distracting thoughts during work is to note them down without switching context, which is facilitated by the Capacities app.
- The "Today" page in Capacities is highlighted as a central tool for Interstitial Journalling, with the "Through the day" section being particularly useful for capturing spontaneous ideas.
- The author expresses enthusiasm about the Whatsapp integration feature, which automatically timestamps and adds entries to the "Today" page, describing it as "crazy magic."
- The ease of setting up the "Today" page in a side-panel is emphasized, with instructions provided for new users of Capacities.

Interstitial Journalling

How Capacities Can Keep You Focused — A Simple But Effective Method

Raise your productivity levels and don’t let your focus slip.

Capacities in an ingenious and intuitive PKM app. What makes it even more so is the fact you can tweak it to your own way of working.

With Capacities you can be super productive, and here’s something which will help you achieve that.

A method to avoid distraction.

When you’re working on a project, you’ll likely have a million other thoughts going through your head at the same time. Something you type will jog your memory about another task you’ve not completed yet, or your brain will helpfully drop in you’ve not bought any carrots for tonight’s meal yet.

The ideal is that we would note these things down so we don’t forget them.

But it would be really distracting to have to close down what you’re working on and open up your to-do list or whatever else. Even a quick alt-tab to a different app has the potential to shift your mind out of the flow it’s in.

So what’s the answer?

Interstitial journalling is the answer.

In other words, those bits of time you have in between tasks, and even in between sentences — where does your mind go in those moments? If it goes to the carrots, write it down, or you’ll forget. If it goes to your concluding paragraph, write it down, or you’ll forget.

Wherever it goes, write it down — and write it down in your interstitial journal.

Where do I keep my interstitial journal?

This is where Capacities can shine for you, because you can keep your interstitial journal constantly open in a side panel. It needs to be constantly open, so you can record quick, on-the-fly thoughts, and maximise your productivity.

And I use my Today page for this purpose.

Here’s a screenshot of the template I use for my Today page. It’s so simple.

As you can see, I set up my Today page with:

Agenda. I will write out, ahead of time, what I’m doing through the day and when I’m doing it. OK, you know what an agenda is. And I’ll just pull this in from my calendar app.
Daily todos. (Pulled in from my master todo list).
Through the day. This is the juicy bit — my interstitial journal. A quick /time will let me insert a timestamp, then I write down whatever I’m thinking, or a todo, or whatever else has popped into my mind.

‘Through the day’ is at the bottom for two specific reasons.

It makes it very easy for me to type there. I don’t need to find the right place, I just scroll to the bottom and there it is.
Capacities enables me to send notes to my Today page through Whatsapp. I just send a message and it magically appears — and guess where it appears? At the bottom. So it automatically gets put in my Through the day section — and the bonus is, it timestamps the entry for me as well so I don’t have to do it myself. Crazy magic!

How do I get my Today page in a side-panel?

If you’re new to Capacities, as I am, then you might not know how to get your Today page to appear in a neat little side-panel. It’s dead simple.

All you do is shift-click on where it says →Today at the top of the left panel.

There you go. Lovely.

Here’s to interstitial journalling in Capacities, and not letting those annoying carrots drag you down.