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Comment by joe8756438 | Hacker News Reader

The best way to deal with fleeting notes is a pen and paper.

The next best solution is Tap [0] (disclaimer: I am the founder).

I had a few revelations related to these kinds of notes:

In order for them to get collected, they need to be collectable from anywhere (if not pen and paper: email, sms, browser, whatever).

The note system should accommodate many different types of information: links, tasks, events, transactional information, formulas, etc. Plain-text doesn't work because over time you'll develop more and more sophisticated systems. Without a standard notation system you will lose the ability to process and analyze your notes and the information they contain.

[0]. https://www.tatatap.com

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The best method for fleeting notes is literally whatever you have closest to your fingers in the moment you need to capture something. It's silly to suggest it is "best" to capture a fleeting thought with pen/paper if you're holding your phone and the pen/paper is in the other room. This is bad advice.

I'm going to disagree. All of my fleeting notes go in 1 place so I can look at them all later. Having them in my phone, notebook, napkin in the kitchen, etc etc is not ideal. I'm certainly not going to forgot what I need to write down if I just need to go to the other room and grab my notepad.

Let's say that, ultimately, it's personal. I have no problem whatsoever taking fleeting notes in a variety of places. As do many other people I know who run this game. But, others I know also feel the need to have a single entry point. To each their own.

Step 1: Carry a small stack of index cards with you at all times. You can stuff these into a binder, into a notebook, in your satchel or purse. Have stacks at your desk / kitchen / in the car / airplane / submarine / starship / Tardis / ...

Step 2: When an idea occurs or noteable fact appears, write it down.

Step 3: File that card with others in a single central storage location.

Fleeting notes still happen. They end up in one place.

I agree, with the caveat that whatever you use also needs to get funneled into the box at some point. So a cocktail napkin is fine, unless you forget to take it with you. Having a limited set of places that you know you have notes makes this easier.

Yeah things like the inbox used by Getting Things Done productivity system handles that need, whether a physical inbox, or an email inbox, or a note to self IM channel, or even a page on a note taking program.

Setting systems aside, if you define and use a queue, you don't lose things when ideas and information page out of the wetware's RAM (l3 cache?)

Pen and paper is the "best". Not for everyone, everywhere. But, for most people most places.

There is nothing as cheap and fast as a pen and paper. That said there are huge drawbacks to pen and paper.

For one thing, in order to use those fleeting notes in a systematic way they need to be organized. And in many cases will need some standard notation system. It could be as simple as writing "todo" at the top of a post it note.

Randomly scribbling stuff on scraps of paper here and there might work for somebody, but even a little system will go a long way.

Obviously once you start using a computer a whole new world opens up.

In my practice I focus on the types of things I need to capture, I make sure I can capture them all using the same tools and also that they end up in the same place.

After I've got them collected, some just stay where they are. Others get processed according to their purpose. For example: I have my tasks emailed to me every morning and my reading list emailed to me on the weekend.

>"for most people most places."

This is, to say the least, not something you are able to speak to with certainty.

As someone who has been note-taking in a variety of formats, via a variety of mediums for the better part of my 40+ years on this planet, I can assure you, the system that works best is the one that works best for the individual. Universalizing something as intimate and personal as idea capture is, again, silly. I have been a writer my whole life, friends with writers most of that time, a graduate of two writing degrees at two different schools, and a teacher of writing. If you think you've somehow unlocked "best practices" when it comes to note-taking, you're way out of the convo. There ain't one.

Regarding what works best for the individual: I completely agree!

Sorry, I wasn't clear. I'm not suggesting there is any universal solution to note-taking. In fact, my work is all about enabling people to build different systems.

I'm curious whether more notes are taken by hand than typed or otherwise. But, this is much less interesting to me than what is done with the things that were written.

> There is nothing as cheap and fast as a pen and paper.

Talking. Simply talking is much faster than pen and paper.

I tried writing. I'm bad at it. And even though I tried, I never improved. I'm a slow typist, no advanced keyboard, spellchecking, auto-correction, or editor with extraordinary features helped me get better.

My handwriting is awful. If I try to write in a manner that I can understand it later - makes me way too slow. If I write fast enough - I can't decode my scribbles later.

Recently, I installed a nice audio recorder app on my smartphone. And now, I would just talk and record my thoughts. Files are set to immediately sync to the cloud and stored outside my phone. My next step is to set up a speech-to-text engine to transcribe them.

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