I have been trying to take notes using Evernote, Bear and Apple Notes. None of them compare to writing my notes down on paper. However, writing my notes down on paper has none of the benefits these apps have (sorting, searching, etc).
Do you take notes during work? If so, have you found a "perfect app" or way of doing it?
Black = facts. numbers, locations, new edicts, etc Blue = thoughts. musings. edge cases I think of during meetings but don't want to derail over, etc green = events (after work social, conferences, etc) red = todo
It's not perfect (ex: I usually write the details of meetings such as time/location and add a red star with "TODO: enter meeting X into calendar" but the line between a meeting an event can blur. Is an intern presentation an event or a meeting?
My main distinction is meetings are mandatory, events can be moved.
(Ex: I won't schedule a doctor's appointment during a client meeting. I would list the day there's an evening drinks session as a time I could meet the doctor)
It's not perfect, but the general idea is that the notebook is to store things until the end of the meeting - then they go into my calendar, into my todo list, or onto my whiteboard as problems to be brainstormed.
https://the-gadgeteer.com/2017/11/15/action-method-notebooks...
https://design-milk.com/ghostly-behance-action-method-notebo...
I wrote and now use https://www.lifepim.com as my primary note source, it uses a simple markdown format and is working well for me.
I'm not following exactly that system but even though it's been great change in my life to remember and organise notes, events, ideas etc.
I would rather keep paper notes honestly, but the power of digital text wins out here quickly. The ability to copy & paste URLs and terminal sessions, and to be able to project-wide search for them later when I can't remember the particular args used on a command from weeks ago.
This setup mostly works but it would be nice to have a little more of a software layer on top.
For personal notes, I like Day One setup with multiple notebooks and tags.
So I switched to little notebook with one pen that is smooth to use. For now I find (quite) easily my notes, but in the future I'll probable need an easy why to search and find notes.
Usinge Markdown might be the newt thing I'll do. It's super easy to get perfect/clean notes with it.
So you might have a try with a notebook and see if it's enought for you.
All my note are "simple", they are only ideas or TODOs. But if you want to keep some code/dev/scripts notes you should concider markdown tool.
If they’re “how-to” things, I give the files really obvious names that describe the problem being solved by the content.
If they’re to-do lists, I generally have only one per unique project and keep it to about a page (any longer and I’ll never read them all; things that are truly important will make their way into the list naturally, I don’t need “4 weeks from now” items in there).
It’s actually pretty easy to search and organize text this way, and you can use Unix tools to filter and sort them if your lines have the right info in them.
I'm still finding a rhythm (I'm a vim person), but it seems to be really useful. I like that it can handle scheduled things and automatically make notifications for me on my phone. I also like that it's just a text file, but has a ton of features that most text-based organization systems lack.
Tickets are in JIRA.
Documentation goes into Confluence.
Discussions tend to happen in e-mail.
Sometimes I remember to take the results of tickets or discussions and write them up as documentation in Confluence.
That worked really well for a couple of weeks. Then a co-worker flipped out that I had been recording his voice without his permission, and worse I was uploading the files to the cloud.
I never picked up a LiveScribe pen again.
We use this to help onboard new hires as well as to communicate better.
I have used some of the information in the book Organizing Knowledge by Patrick Lambe to help keep things accessible