I've tried for very long to find a good electronic solution. Up to and including writing my own wiki with various extensions customised to my diting style, and hunting around for every note taking app under the sun.
The problem, I find, is that nothing beats the flexibility of being able to take out multiple sheets of paper and move them around, annotate them, put them back in. It creates a flexibility in workflow no tool I've tried have managed to match.
The physical presence of the paper also makes it much easier to avoid forgetting a page exists.
I'm not happy with it, but I keep coming back to it after each desperate attempt at making something else work better.
The next slide after the 43 folders is "sync to paper", that's the bit I recall
Pens are an addicting technology. Top 5 list of various pens. https://www.penaddict.com/top-5-pens/ I also buy a cool pencil case (http://www.jetpens.com/Kokuyo-Pencil-Cases/ct/2929)
My only difference is when I was in graduate student I used OneNote with 2003 Tablet PC (Hand writing with the pen) and a external microphone. The was the single greatest tool ever created for a student. The audio was synced with your hand written notes or typed notes. I then had the college purchase a license for every student at my University I worked at OneNote and take a 1 hour class with me and a had microphones available at the Book Store. No one ever used the microphone. I got the highest review marks from students for all our Freshmen prep classes and a ton of interaction and people stopping at my office to get help but they all dropped it for one reason or another. If only computers built in a classroom position microphone in the lid of a laptop.
http://www.jetpens.com/Maruman-Mnemosyne-N163-Memo-Notepad-W...
I also found that A5 grid paper on Amazon for a little cheaper[1]. But I'm curious how well the binding holds up. Because if it holds well it'd be a great switch for me.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Midori-MD-Notebook-Grid-Paper/dp/B009...
More ephemeral things like todo lists, I only scan if I have a reason to want to keept it.
I don't think I'm doing a good job of explaining this, I'll see if I can find an example of this online and link it.
Edit: I did a quick google search and found an example that's similar to what I'm doing. This works well for me: http://lifehacker.com/mark-page-line-edges-to-organize-your-...
Evernote it is not: The sharing story is pretty BYOB, in that what you get out is an HTML (or whatever other format) document, and sharing it, whether readonly or not, is on you. There's document publishing functionality, but it requires some setup and an upstream host that can take files via FTP/SFTP/etc. Same goes for syncing, if that's something you want; Dropbox works for me, and there are many alternatives.
Your use case sounds like it would require some tooling around org-mode to achieve. If you want something that does what you need straight out of the box, it probably won't make you happy. But you asked what we use to take notes, and for me that's org-mode; the things it does well are many, some of them unique in my experience, and that makes it worth my while to invest effort in adding the occasional capability I want which doesn't exist by default.
(And for meetings where people are touchy about laptops, or realtime capture on a call, I have a clipboard and a paper tablet. But it's ephemeral; anything needing kept goes straight into an org file at the earliest opportunity.)
Long term Org mode needs a rethink to more fully realized programming + writing.
Short term it needs some work on document sharing, mobile editing, all that.
I use Org mode for large docs, google docs for quick notes, google sheets for TODOs, pad/pen google photos for quick notes and recording of those notes.
This is a mess really.
It's both, and not limited to Python. What mix of capabilities you use in a given document is up to you.
I still use Evernote for quick storage and access of images, pdfs and long-form notes as the search is great. However, their tag/notebook organisation system has annoying redundencies and is clunky in places. I would love to bin it but can't find a suitable alternative. Bear is promising but not quite there. Apple notes doesn't allow linking between notes.
It's "Workflowy that hasn't stalled out"
I've thought about maybe a Surface would be nice for that, but haven't really tried it.
I think you'll have best luck with multiple tools like you're doing now.
That said,, if I must take notes (for action items during a meeting, etc.) I'll use notion
Surface / pen only had the edge in that you can mark up a doc and send it to someone a lot faster than printing, marking and scanning
However, I'm often faster at writing with a keyboard, and I use onenote in text only mode every day
My process is a good notebook and fountain pen for deep thinking, and org mode for planning and research.
[1]https://www.amazon.com/Boogie-Board-9-7-Inch-eWriter-ST10200...
It's an infinite blank space of text in 2D. Also see the beta: https://beta.walloftext.co
I don't think you'll find a notes application that has code highlighting, but perhaps I'm wrong...
- simple to do lists
- create notes with the phone's camera (I usually do this when taking a photo of a whiteboard)
- audio recording and transcribing: I can just say my note and Google Keep will make a text out of it with an attached audio recording
- sharing: this makes my life sooo much easier. I have one note taking app I can use for business, for sharing shopping lists with my wife, house chores with my kids, etc. When Google Keep came out first it was way too simple, but I can hardly imagine my life these days without it.
ZW is speedy, portable, and extendable.
I love the idea of having different notebooks, being able to easily merge text, code, mathematics and images into one note, and make 'cookbooks' out of them.
Someone make it for Windows please.
Did have a native app (Snippets?) but I wasn't happy with it.
I might at some point, in which case I'll look up your comment, but the main reason I'm holding off is that it's quite a bit of work in a market that strikes me as rather oversaturated...
Then again sometimes the best reason to start a project is to scratch an itch, and always thinking in terms of 'useful' is a surefire way to suck all the fun out of life. Hmm...
We're a different kind of digital nomad: someone who never settles on one device, OS, or even form factor.
So in the end I wrote my own static wiki generator (QuickWiki: https://github.com/VictorBjelkholm/quickwiki). It basically takes a folder full of markdown files, automatic links to other pages and generates a static website (that looks something like this: https://victorbjelkholm.github.io/quickwiki/home/ )
Apart from that I haven't taken a note for the last 3 or 4 years. I had stacks of unsearchable notebooks with near-unintelligible scrawl in them, and rather than improving/indexing my note-taking I just gave up on it, reasoning that if I had gotten away with bad note-taking for 15 years then I could probably get away with none at all.
Turned out I was right. Without having notes as a crutch I end up concentrating harder on understanding and remembering on what people are saying. YMMV but it works well for me
Bullet journal is also worth checking,however I don't feel like we love each other.
Git + Vimwiki setup:
https://jarvistmoorefrost.wordpress.com/2014/06/25/snippet-c...
It makes it really easy to tag, organize, share and with the archive feature you can get todo list functionality.
In the worst case scenario you could export all of your notes to an easy to read format and start importing it to a new system.
I know it shouldn't affect me know as I could probably transfer notes then, but it still bothers me..
Day-to-day sketches and TODO's and little note lists: I keep a spiral note book next to my keyboard. I'm a leftie so it's upside down. I use the blue Pilot Drawing pens in various thicknesses. They dry instantly, so no ink smudges. Nice.
In addition to these I keep a day-to-day diary in .txt documents on my computer, I just open them in Sublime text or vim and make a new one every month. I try to just write four or five lines about what I've done every day as well as what I need to do tomorrow.
You can't beat computers for quick searching and Onenote is both "GUI" enough to be friendly to people I have to share with and also does all those other things you mention. (Plus a lot of other cool stuff.)
I also use Sublime/vim in a similar way you mention, although I tend to use that as "RAM" in the sense that I don't save my snippets -- if they're not important enough to document elsewhere then if something really bad were to happen where (at least in Sublime) if a non-saved tab didn't show up at start automatically "oh well". (I've never had that happen though.)
Where I'm failing lately is any kind of physical pen/paper note taking since just the feel of that is great so I've added that into my TODO's of 2017. :)
Keeps notes as markdown organised by folder on disk, delegates syncing to whatever you're already using for everything else (Dropbox, Seafile), and just provides a minimal flexible command-line interface over the top to search them, explore through them, and edit them with any editor you like.
The tool itself is tiny, but with this I get everything that EverNote used to give me, none of the lock-in or painful web UI, and I can get at it from any other device too (by just editing them in Dropbox from anywhere).
Note sharing: Dropbox already does that. Code highlighting: your editor (probably) already does that. Image uploads = putting an image in a folder. Keep it simple.
I've tried almost everything to automate paper->computer (typing rather than writing, Livescribe pen, iPad pro + apple pencil, many many devices that are now dead) and none have been as good as just a decent (not super special) pen and a notepad. I prefer an engineering pad or quadrille or in a pinch dot-grid, but really anything works as long as you don't lose it.
The trick I learned was every day or so to move them into the computer, which I do by typing them in (and simply taking a photo of drawings). I usually type in Emacs or right into Evernote. I try to do it every evening as one of my last tasks, as part of reviewing my day & looking at the next day. If it's a multi-day sketch-it-out effort I wait until the few days are over. Dictation has become good enough that I can actually read aloud the relevant parts of a bunch of sheets of paper (in the order I care about) and then quickly fix them up. This is actually the only use case for dictation I've found on my computer.
The benefits: First of all, typing them over forces you to review them, organize them slightly, and skip over the irrelevant stuff. This is really important after a design effort since you throw away what you think are truly dead paths, and all your cross-out go away. If I need one, this typing is often the base of my design document. Second: I've seen meeting notes I've taken that don't justify being typed in. In which case, why did I even go to that meeting?
Interestingly, when I was a kid my mum told me she used this technique both in school and in work, which I dismissed as a ludicrous waste of time. Only decades later when I evolved the same approach did I remember her advice.
It has a convenient Markdown editor with live previews, sorting notes by notebooks, and has web and mobile versions. The notes are stored in dropbox and your browser's local storage, also they have imports and exports for backup.
Also its completely opensource and I can be sure that theres no snooping on my notes.
What about now ? It is reliable ?
I loved it!
However, recently I've moved to linux for my daily computing needs and I have yet to find something to fill a void.
I'm using notion.so[1] for most notes and paper for hand written stuff.
It's sad that in 2016, there's no nexus type tablet running android (with updates) that has pen support :/
[0] - https://www.onenote.com/
[1] - https://www.notion.so/
I keep a paper based day planner and a notebook with my ideas, thoughts, etc in it. Recently I have been also trying to keep track using an iPad Pro and Apple Pencil using an app called Nebo. I'm not ready to switch yet. (And for that matter I have never been able to switch in 40 years).
Paper to me is long lasting. I can start something in a notebook, shelve it and then pick it up again. No need to update the OS or the app I used to create it (if it still exists).
Mostly because it just creates a bunch of .txt files, which are easy to handle (sync, backup, read via ssh, ...), and by placing them in subdirs you get a hierarchy. It is mostly for text, but it supports links, links between notes, links to files, pictures, code, lists, checkboxes, latex, gnuplot, ... and if you really need something you can create your own tool.
Simple markdown files, with a script to create a new date-stamped document for each day [1], opens it in vim, and then commits the change and pushes to a bitbucket private repo for backup, after I close vim [2].
It also includes a script for converting all documents to a nice epub ebook, for offline reading, browsing, searching etc in calibre e-reader.
Some benefits that made me go this direction, instead of, say evernote or the like:
- Offline storage
- Syncable via git (I'm keeping a backup in a private bitbucket repo)
- Easily convert to any format via pandoc
- Can edit effortlessly in my terminal-based environment (bash, tmux, vim)
- Really automateable
- ...
On the digital side I use OneNote.
If anyone is interested, this guys instagram says it all: https://www.instagram.com/desk_of_jules/
Take photo with phone. Send to whoever else needs to know, e.g. meeting minutes.
My notepad is A4 paper cut in half (yeah, A5, but company only stocks A4) with a big bull-clip in the top. When notes are no longer needed, just shred them.
For Windows and Linux, there's Cherrytree (http://www.giuspen.com/cherrytree/). I'm not using it myself, it's just something that I found when looking for Evernote alternatives. It has syntax highlighting and can handle images.
Good luck with finding a solution.
1. vimwiki in a tmux session in an XMonad scratch buffer. Pandoc for occasional PDF output.
2. Some screenshot / screencast gif scripts around byzanz and scrot.
I just recently started using it, finding it rather nice, though it still feels rather 'beta'.
Other apps I have tried and used over the years:
- http://www.mweb.im/ (markdown) - https://ulyssesapp.com/ (markdown) - http://lightpaper.42squares.in/ (markdown) - http://alternoteapp.com/ (Evernote GUI) - Many, many others
Notebooks really stands out because it has a great iOS app, syncs via Dropbox (plain files), and handles TXT/MD/HTML + Custom CSS&JS.
The Mac app is not great, but it's adequate. I frequently talk to the author and they are rewriting it to be more "Mac friendly", but that's a bit away (1 year maybe?).
For the longest time, I tried to stay true to Markdown, but as I get older, I just want things to be easier, and to look nicer, and I now prefer writing everything in WYSIWYG. Since I have custom styles, I can stick to standard structure (ie H1, p, ul, ..), which is in spirit close to Markdown (ie structure only). And I can still customize when I want complicated things (I wrote a couple special classes for some use cases).
Plus, it works with the filesystem, so you get folders, which I personally prefer to all this tagging BS. It makes it easier to have everything in one place: work stuff and personal stuff, and to keep it all neat and tidy. Also, because it's files, it's always available offline (iOS app too).
The iOS app is like a small file manager, so I also keep pictures, PDFs, and some other docs. So I always have all my important stuff on hand, no matter where I am.
Overall, I think it's a great app, which still has room to grow (better GUI on desktop, encryption, ...)
It's intended for collaboration rather than specifically for note-taking, but it looks like it addresses some of my issues with respect to flexibility for note-taking. I'm not convinced they've got the pricing and market fit perfect yet, but it looks quite interesting.
(Disclaimer: I'm having some conversations with the founder, but we've not done business)
Quiver[1]: suports markdown and syncs via Dropbox
Mindful[2]: chrome extension
[1]http://happenapps.com/#quiver [2]https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/mindful-beta/cieek...
But OneNote and ten-finger-typing makes up for that. If I need to share it, I can easily copy it in to an email, everyone can receive these without needing another account.
You might want to look into http://www.codefoster.com/codeinonenote/, a code highlighter for OneNote
- piece of paper and pen
- Clear https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/clear-tasks-reminders-to-do/... (not only as Todo App, but also to make outlines for topics)
- Sublime Editor + Markdown + (private) GitHub repository
For the rest I use Google Keep which I've found to be quite handy. Nice UI and it's available everywhere. I've already sold my soul to Google so why not let them get my notes as well.
I started a blog, using Nikola. Not perfect, but it can support markdown, rst, ipy etc, plus pretty much anything else the web can.
Not exactly a TODO list, but for publishable things, it's pretty flexible if the thought isn't private.
If there's something that I need to copy/paste later then I just have "Clipboard.txt" on my desktop. Not prettiest but it's fastest and easiest.
If I need to plan something bigger then I use Trello.
The default notes app on my Samsung until I changed phone, Private Notepad now. This is for short random notes.
Several markdown files on my laptop especially for work related stuff.
Love having the xournal files go to my personal server that I can browse through with my laptop or desktop later on, anywhere, anytime, without having to bring around binders and notebooks.
I also like that you can erase and move blocks of ink around.
Long term notes? Evernote - though I'm not happy with them. Just haven't found a replacement yet.
But I ordered Surface Pro 4 this week. So going to try OneNote on SP4 soon.
I also have a real notebook in my desk to sketch diagram and flow, I find it very effective.
This gives me some formatting as I go without being distracting.
Usually though I find a pen and paper works best.