Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?
There's plenty of threads here that talk about what tool works best for notes. I want to know what kind of notes are you taking down and how you're organizing your thought.
I'm journaling/free-writing to get extended/detailed ideas down that I've had, which consists of a bunch of text files in a directory that sometimes end up combined in subdirectories, often refer to each other, and are frequently appended to/refined.
But the main thing I'm doing note-wise is that first I read a thing through once, trying to carefully understand, but not necessarily commit to memory, everything before I move on. Then I read through it a second time trying to phrase every fact I encounter as question-answer pairs that go into a spreadsheet to be imported into an Anki subdeck for that thing.
This works in a similar way live (like meetings and phone calls), but I'm taking notes with paper and pencil, and later extracting the facts from them for Anki.
Things of only temporary importance get lumped into an "ephemeral" subdeck, where cards get suspended/deleted with extreme prejudice.
I do an hour to an hour and a half of Anki every morning. Might sound like a lot, but half of it is Spanish, and at least 15-20 minutes of it is done while shitting, so it's not like I would have been doing something else.
If I don't get up to an hour/hour-and-a-half, I add new cards to review until I get there. I also add new cards to review at other times of the day if I'm bored and want to kill five minutes.
I've been told this is similar to the Cornell Method, but with a lot more review.
YMMV: I use something called low-key Anki where the only buttons used are "Again" and "Good."
> and at least 15-20 minutes of it is done while shitting
One of things I understood too late is what a proper shit takes 2-3 minutes at worst, I just used that time to be alone with my things and thoughts.
YMMV, of course.
... yes.
Of course in the previous comment I talk about a... proper shit, when everything works. But again, different folks have a differnt needs.
Becoming a parent is what finally made me realize how wise it is to tack a couple extra minutes on your poo-time.
My main requirement is that it should be very easy to start writing the note. This means not many decisions to make first (deeply nested directories or tags), and not being bound to a certain application or having an internet connection.
Plain text is great because it's small, portable, and I like being able to use grep against my note directory to find things.
basic structure:
- One file per year for a basic daily log in (log/2022.md) this is where I do at least half of my notetaking and journaling.
- a few GTD files in the top level, in.md, next.md, somedaymaybe.md
- a projects directory, prj/, which has a sub directory for various projects, these can be small stuff that take weeks, or longer things
- a list directory, lst/, which has lists of thing, example: books to read, groceries to buy, etc.
- a reference directory, ref/, for storing things that I'd like to remember but aren't active projects or notes that I expect to add to often (those should be projects or just go in log/), example: a recipe
I've been doing this for a few months now and I am liking it quite a bit and expect to stick with it. The biggest headache is getting syncthing to work with ios so that I can reliably have my notes on my phone, open to suggestions on that.
I basically only use the daily log since I'm too lazy to aggregate stuff into weekly or index views. You can incorporate aspects like a habit tracker or mood tracker matrices into the journal to see how well you're performing against goals like exercise and how you're feeling over time. It might also be useful to track which activities make you feel energized vs fatigued, and use that to help determine what you enjoy doing.
As a side-effect, the bullet journal becomes a memento documenting what you experienced and did over a certain period of time, and can be useful for reflection and reprioritization.
I also write electronic notes in plaintext/markdown which I type up on my computer and put into a Github-wiki-like web interface. I check these into git for versioning and to be able to diff notes over time. These notes are either log-formatted (append-only dated entries of something that changes over time), or I might reprocess and refine them over time into https://notes.andymatuschak.org/Evergreen_notes which essentially becomes a personal knowledgebase.
Syncing is also what I'm after and all my devices have EN: macs at home and work, my spare windows laptop, tablets and smarphones (Android). Principle: if its for my personal consumption, I usually put it in my EN, but work stuff are in GDocs/GDrive for shareability. I also limit putting in my notes any sensitive info and credentials, at the very least, for sanity and security purposes, as I have a KeyPassXC for that. I also don't use Evernote specific groupsharing/tasks/other features; it's just the sync-all-my-notes-across-my devices. Syncing works best in their desktop apps for the most part, but buggy in Android (dups, conflicts). Paying $2+USD/mo for this so im not complaining. But it could be better.
Nowadays I create one note per day. I feel like I take a lot of notes – 500-4,000 words a day.
What balloons the size is I often find myself more in a transcription mode when I'm having critical conversations or interviewing people. Remote work makes this easier.
I've also developed a small number of short-hand annotations. eg. "(" for my inline thoughts, "[" for questions or topics I want to get to in a meeting.
Every evening I journal about / document my day and set up basic todos for the next day (takes about 15 minutes). During this time I also review my Quick Notes page and file things away as necessary (e.g. Todos, notes about something I researched, calendar events, summary of an interesting conversation I had with a stranger, etc get put where they need to go).
As far as note-taking when I'm learning something, I do something like the Cornell method where I write notes as questions and then write the answers underneath or to the side. When I review the notes, I try to answer the question first and check my answer against my notes. This format also makes it really easy to throw things in Anki.
Each day, I scribble ideas and take notes about my discoveries as part of my daily note. It's just an outline at that point (most of the time).
At the end of each week, during my weekly review, I extract the content of my daily notes into separate notes, keeping a link there to respect my traceability principle.
When I extract the content, I use the Zettelkasten method and split content between literature notes and permanent notes. I wrote about this method in [3] and described my own organization in [4].
[1]: https://dsebastien.net/blog/2021-10-07-periodic-journaling-p... [2]: https://dsebastien.net/_next/image?url=%2Fstatic%2Fimages%2F... [3]: https://dsebastien.net/blog/2022-05-01-zettelkasten-method [4]: https://dsebastien.net/blog/2021-12-03-personal-knowledge-ma...
A home, I keep a diary, one file per month, lightly formatted text (not Markdown) edited with vim with a nightly script that converts parts of the text into a set of web pages and drops them into an in-house Wiki. That's the Wiki I wrote close to 20 years ago that's a holding pen for pages on pretty much any subject that interests me. A hand-written NLP/NER pipeline munges the pages looking for interesting material and generates indexes that get added into the Wiki as well. The pipeline still needs a lot of work, because right now it's more "interest" than production ready.
The wiki is hugely useful for material clipped from web pages and emails as well as notes that I write myself. Documentation for any of the software I've written for myself and still use is there as are several hundred old Usenet threads. There's a big list of media that I want to view/read/consume at some point, and more gets added than gets marked off.
I'm still looking for the perfect PIM (and yes, I do know there's no such thing), and the search generates notes as well. If I ever find it, it's going to replace Joplin (like the UI but not the need for a database), Dendron (like flat files but not the UI), Drafts (like the virtual notebooks built from tags but find the UI clumsy) and of course the wiki I wrote.
ps: It also helps me with the process of going from brainstorming to writing for others. It can export notes to text outline form using indentation (can import from those also, though not as smoothly as I would like, it does work) or export to a legal-numbered outline (1.1.2, 1.1.3, ...). Also exports to simple html which is how I generate my web sites.
Also: I have been using this about daily for over 10 years and it is extremely helpful to me in a variety of ways, in daily use. Helps me keep track of long-term purpose, short-term todos, everything in between, and more.
I also use it for my personal journal, and it can show logs of activity by date range which i sometimes use a rougher/informal personal journal or reference.
1. Ability for a tree-like organization of notes. It can be as simple as some directories in your OS with text files and subdirectories. Or a cool app with Notebooks and Sub-notebooks etc. It doesn't matter.
2. Ability to search everything at once. It can be a grep command or a an app with text search functionality. It doesn't matter again. Strive to have easily searchable titles and content in the notes (What "easily" means here, depends on your search preferences and habits).
3. Ability to effortlessly synchronize your notes to different hosts. Maybe you'll put your simple directories and subdirectories of text files in Dropbox or something. Maybe you'll use a paid or open-source application with a mobile app or a web client etc.
I explain the thought process here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31799695 but it isn't important as those basic rules above.
[EDIT] Uh, so I addressed the how I organize my notes (I basically don't—the value added by organizing them is too low to be worth the effort) but as for the "what": mostly I use notes to capture ideas I don't want to forget. If I'm out and about, or pretty much any time I'm not at my desktop, that's usually some little thought that popped into my head that I'll forget if I don't get it down now (so, that's why I end up back in Notes when I try notebooks or whatever instead—I always have my phone, but sometimes forget a notebook, so I end up with notes both places, at which point it's better to just drop the notebook).
At my workstation, I tend to take notes on things like complex command-line invocations, or else use them as a kind of archive for my paste buffer (for things I may want to copy-paste again in a few days, or months, that may not end up in the shell history where I happen to need them, or weren't anything shell-related to begin with). I will sometimes sketch out e.g. system designs in a notebook, but those get turned into real digital documents before long, if they matter (they don't go in my notes).
* To search my notes I can pull + grep the files.
* To view a specific day's notes in my browser, github renders the file with images and everything.
* To upload images, I can paste from my clipboard into the notes using github's editor; they upload and link the images for me.
I tried using Notion but it costs money and isn't portable. Roam is similar. Unigraph is a similar tool that isn't publicly available yet but worth checking out if you like those tools.
Logseq is the closest thing to what I wanted, but you have to use their app and I like being able to add notes from any computer in just a browser. For work I keep my notes in a single Google Doc, which works surprisingly well, but doesn't work for my personal notes since I want them to be easily backed up and portable.
> "what kind of notes"
I take several kinds of 'notes'. I like to draw, so I have a sketch book. I have several different formats. Small notebook for drawing from life, including watercolor sketches. Medium size notebook for 'visual ideas' or organizational ideas (patterns of thought and their visualizations).
When I'm designing something I always use black pen & markers on letter size loose leaf paper. This way I can later scan these notes if something turns out to be very useful.
When I'm researching a philosophical topic I often make a text document for each book I'm reading. At the top goes a summary of the book and my interest. The next half are verbatim quotes. I find for my interest in philosophy a direct quote is more useful for my writing. I will follow the quote often with questions or my responses to those ideas. I also make a point of listing new words and their definitions if provided.
If I'm trying to learn a technical/programming topic the kinds of notes don't matter too much since I'm trying to get into code asap or something that I'm enabled to do by the research. Outlines are useful.
> "organizing your thought"
Not easily answered on the face of it, and highly dependent on the subject matter. If you asked me last month or next week I might have a different answer, but I think for me everything starts with a blank piece of paper and a pen and then becomes code or text files.
I'm not in school currently. Memorization for tests is not an objective, and so my methodologies reflect this fact. YMMV
Good luck.
Check it out at https://obsidian.md/
The key for me was Daily notes (see Periodic Notes plugin) + Tasks. It allows me to write freely while using todo-like bullet lists to remember the upcoming tasks.
I'm planning for more extensive use but one step at a time...
reMarkable for scribbles and ebook highlights (which can't sync anywhere)
Pocket for a black hole of bookmarks
1Password for serious important document storage
Notion for corporate collaboration
Apple Notes for grocery lists and on-the-go thoughts
Roam Research for when I want to actually store and remember things
I noticed that I were creating .txt file "new file 1" "new file 2" on desktop. To write down some small things or clear up some commands for command line.
So I realized I will need such a file basically every day and now instead of creating such file ad-hoc, I create one in the morning. When I need to remember something or copy-adjust-paste I do it in that file.
Some days are left empty some days have hundreds of lines.
I don't organize it besides "archiving" each month/year.
Since it is all in single directory I just use VS Code on it and search with it. But I am not tagging or anything just searching plain text, old commands, names of servers functions I might have adjusted. Most of the stuff I can click around for last 7 days and find what I needed.
For stuff like technical instructions, template snippets (either code or text), and the like, that all goes into a file on the computer, just like a lot of y'all are doing. Basically, if it's something I'd ever feel the need to copy/paste somewhere, it goes in a file.
Pretty much every aspect of note-taking is a deeply personal choice based on what you are doing, what the subject is, and what you want the notes to represent in the end. And probably changes over time, of course. You can learn about tools and methodologies but at the end of the day, these are just options to make your note-taking possibly more efficient, they don't help you take better notes, that only comes with experience.
IME you can't be "taught" how to take effective notes any more than you were "taught" to walk or function in society. You just figure it out after a while.
> IME you can't be "taught" how to take effective notes any more than you were "taught" to walk or function in society. You just figure it out after a while.
Nowadays parents get their children diagnosed "on the spectrum", this both excuses the lack of ability to function in society and also provides benefits. Nobody is expected to figure it out any more, in fact in some circles it seems fashionable to either be "on the spectrum" or to have a child "on the spectrum".
You don't have to post or read anything here.
One take away from this thread is to try going all in making my notes into anki format as i take them. Currently my workflow has the anki creation separately and I never get around to converting the notes.
I also wish that I could narrow myself down to 1 tool, rather than todoist, googledocs, and anki it would be freeing(and more effective) to only use anki
Now that I think about this, creating the anki on the fly will force me to actively read and might improve the note quality in general.
https://coverclock.blogspot.com/2008/07/daily-organization.h...
I've tried so many systems over the past two and a half decades. I only picked up org-mode last year, for the decade before that it was Markdown in VIM... I absolutely live in VIM.
I love having just plain text files, not a day goes by that I'm not grepping or finding or seding or occasionally even awking through them. I moved from Markdown to org-mode for the collapsible sections, like an outliner. Yes, there are some VIM addons that can do collapsing, but honestly org-mode does it better and I can slowly add other nice org-mode features as I need them. I do have Evil installed, though. The only thing Emacs really is missing out of the box is a decent text editor. ))
- short-term notes are written on paper. I use that when I need to remember something very soon (the same day at most) or when I need to clarify my ideas, so there’s lots of boxes and arrows
- mid-term notes (1 to 2 weeks) I’m still figuring out a system. It’ll be my todo list so I usually write it down in Apple Notes (but it doesn’t support code), or in Obsidian (but it feels wonky, I don’t like how it feels) or in Notion (good so far except for the crappy arrows that show up even on pages without children)
- long term notes are my knowledge base. I try to curate and classify them the best I can in Notion.
Much of what I'm taking notes on are things I am learning for my job and self improvement. How I use that knowledge, how they might relate to a project I am working on, how they relate to my core values, life goals, or priorities.
I feel strongly that I start with a quote or summary of what I learned. Then I reword it and summarize it in my own words, then I link it to other things I know that resonate with that idea or thought or nugget. Then I look at how to use it in my current projects.
These notes usually consist out of code I want to save for a bit to study it further, bits of CSS I've fiddled with in Developer Tools and still need to implement, or some notes I've written down during the occasional phone call I have. I use it as a second brain, because I can't remember all that stuff anymore now that I'm about to hit 40.
I sync the flat files with keybase e2e encrypted git via termux command.
I try to make note taking "pipelines" also - trying to ensure I dont just dump notes on a pile and forget about them but that there is a process/habit/location for me to pick all notes up again later for use. I rearrange/reorg the notes with a view to this pretty regularly.
I shove them all in an archive folder once Im done with them.
- I have a Gitlab project in which I make issues + update wikis frequently. Issues are for concrete ideas/tasks. Wikis are for collecting ideas / bookmarks / etc.
- I have a few notebooks with various purposes. One's for practical sketches / problem solving (like math). One is for ideas for the various games I have in my head. One is for visual art.
- I also have a gamedev folder in my iPhone notes just in case. I've started using it less since I can just use Gitlab on my phone.
- saved in git
- transformed by pandoc (and some filters)
- for text, trees, list/table data, local and global URLs/references
- using dead-simple tags
But above all: don't use anything to organize your thoughts
You will not figure things out better using outlines or mind-maps or blog entries or ontologies or equations or chats.
Think your thoughts until they are compressed from mud to diamonds.
Then their structure and media will be clear, and the unending task of conveying them to others can begin. You'll find organization is driven not by author but by audience.
As for me I've got a note for random thoughts, acts as a dumping ground, and other notes titled by categories for organising into later.
The thing with note taking is it's so reflective of how people think, so it's not always easy to adapt exactly to what others suggest. But still worth looking at and getting ideas.
Joplin for work/learning related stuff (organized by topic). For any topic that I work on, I create a page with links, notes, snippets of code …etc.
1) Describe some task that needs to be completed.
2) Describe a set of steps needed to complete some task.
3) Summarize a topic at a higher level.
If I need to write something more descriptive and/or with complex visuals, I usually think of it as writing documentation as opposed to note taking, and use tools such as jupyter notebooks
- There's a table of contents.
- There are prerequisites for each section (links to other sections within the notes).
- There's a terminology section at the bottom has short definitions for all the new terms I should remember (software automatically links each usage of a term to its entry in the terminology section).
Fleshed our notes go in Tinderbox. 4-5 times a week I’ll journal or condense my thoughts. Not very consistent though - some weeks it’s 1-2 times. Other weeks I write daily or multiple times a day.
How often do you refer to your old notes?
For myself, I find the act of taking notes to be worthwhile because writing forces me to think in a way that can be clarifying. But, I tend to never look at my notes once taken.
Syncs automatically across devices.
Super easy to share content from each web page or app directly with notes.
Has folders and tags to organize stuff.
They always add new features - like smart folders.
I keep all the random notes there and also write longer essays that I publish on my site.
So everything is in one place.
Zotero for stuff collected from browser.
It just works, everywhere in Apple Ecosystem.
If some idea is really important, it will come again, and again, and I will have to start doing something about it. Otherwise, it is better to forget it. Just writing something down is the best way for me to never get back to it, I have a lot of ideas written down in Evernote like this, I call it my “cemetery of ideas”.
I have very intricate systems for reminders, documents and events (I have to set up 3-4 reminders before any event, otherwise I’ll happily ignore it). But writing down plain notes never did any good to me.
(tl;dr ADHD sucks)
My only notes are very simple stuff like doctor appointments, taxes, etc...
Everything goes in there, in chronological order. In the morning I write the date at the top of a page, check my calendar, email, and Slack, and jot down some to-dos for the day.
After that anything goes - meeting notes, brainstorming, quick research, etc. It's not terribly organized or fancy - it doesn't need to be. I just write things down in the order they come up during the day.
Anything that needs to be shared or collaborated with others goes into a Google Doc or some digital form, I take a bit of time to convert my quick notes to something meaningful that will make sense to someone else.
I very rarely need to reference notes older than a couple of weeks. If I do, it usually doesn't take that long to find based on rough date - I have a stack with my old notebooks in a drawer.
I also use BBEdit with a million unsaved documents (well, 175 right now). I use it more as a scratch pad than actual note taking - drafting a longer message or email, manipulating some text I'm moving around, and so on. Nothing that needs to be persisted for long.
Personal projects and ideas?
School notes?
Recording what goes on at a work meeting?
The specifics depend on what I'm doing, but still I find that I return to the same structural patterns a lot, I developed what I call a "Unified Experiencing Template":
I use this for notetaking, organizing new learning projects, hobbies, and other contexts.
The Current Position section generally encourages me to move items from the log up into a more structured position of understanding or momentum. This also helps to work around the trap--subjective taxonomy or journal format? You can end up with both and in a lot of cases that's really what I'm looking for.
I have a script that parses files for +crp to help me keep up with whatever I'm working on / thinking about.
I also take notes in the to-do list zone using my Task BATL format (profile) using elements like time estimation, so this format shows up in my notes really often:
- FF xsc (5m)
- F-x xsc Hydrate (1m)
- F-x xsc Eat a pop-tart (1m)
- F-x xsc Go for a hike (3m, get camera ready)
- VV xsc (15m)
- V-/_ xsc Watch some more of the film you checked out on Hoopla (15m)
- TT _sc (?)
- T-/_ _sc Email to schedule the call for Monday
- T-/_ _sc Plan next 2-3 steps for backup changes
The xsc / _sc indicates whether I've got the next step's time estimated and/or schedule blocked out for the item.
Other note-taking stuff...if I'm taking notes, the format, amount, and organization method also depends on the output-format's (speaker's, presenter's, book's, etc.) psychology and how it relates to my intake-psychology, but that's getting into weird stuff.
If I'm in a hurry I take notes on paper in shorthand or on a digital device in shorthand. l cg f cr would be "oil change for car" etc. My handwriting for this is kind of a mix of Teeline, Gregg, Ford, Japanese, and some of my own stuff.
I also found that sometimes what's needed is just the "expression of information" similar to the expression of feelings. Saving the notes is not so important. What's important is getting it out. So at these times I'll journal by writing shorthand on my lap while sitting, chest while hiking (holding my shoulder bag strap) etc. Similar to Ted Nelson's anywhere-keyboard but without the keyboard. And the notetaking product of this is more like an idea, resolution, or summed-up organization of things.