Just glanced at the calendar within Agenda to remind myself what events I have coming up today. Had a slight panic seeing the calendar empty when I knew I had some meetings.
A bit of investigation reveals something I hadn’t noticed - the date shown on the calendar seems to be the datestamp of the active note.
To my mind this is counter-intuitive. The calendar should tell me what’s happening, today by default, and on the date I pick on other occassions. The datestamp of the current note is irrelevant to the calendar; if I want the know the datestamp it’s quite clear in the notes title bar.
The related sidebar (hence the name) shows info that is related to the selected note, like other notes with the same tags or people, or in this case the events on the same day(s) as the event of the selected note. This helps you remember what else went on again last tuesday, or what else you have to keep in mind next wednesday for example. It helps you place the note in its context. Only If there is no selected note we default to today to bring you back in the current context.
That makes sense. But it highlights a bit of a conflict around the dating of notes. Seems to me there are two different reasons why a note might be dated:
the note is directly associated with a particular event in ones calendar, eg a meeting or conference etc. The datestamp serves the purpose of linking the note to that event, with a hyperlink from the calendar
the datestamp records the date on which a note was created. The purpose then is to provide some kind of record of the sequence of events in that project.
But many of the notes I’m working on not associated with a particular event, and I edit and revise the note over several days or longer, as my ideas develop and things change. Here a ‘created’ and ‘modified’ date would be helpful. I’m reluctant to have the note undated, because then I lose the benefits of ‘2’ above.