Notes against note-taking systems

This point is so good and so important:

"Getting lost in your knowledge management system is a fantastic way to avoid creating things. Or calling that friend you’re estranged from. Or doing anything else even mildly threatening. It’s also a fantastic way to convince yourself that unpreparedness is what’s between you and creative work. If you believe you’re unprepared, know that you will never transmute into the perfectly prepared person that you think exists in the future."

I think we conflate two types of note-taking:

  1. List-style notes of things we need to remember

  2. School-style notes of information and ideas

I think the former requires a tool, but nothing particularly sophisticated - Apple Notes for example with its search indexing is fine

I think the latter we write only to stimulate our brain to process information and learn better.

I think there is a discrepancy where a lot of tools attempt to make Type 2 notes more "convenient", i.e. to trying to somehow make them an extension of our brain, but the truth is that it's like hacking a hard drive to work as fast as a CPU register -- retrieving and working with information is always going to be orders of magnitude slower than working through your thoughts in your brain.

Any article that pretends to know what the right way of taking notes (say, "This is known as a commonplace book, and it is about how detailed your note-taking system should be unless you plan on thinking more elaborately than Leonardo da Vinci." in this article) is missing the point.

People think differently, people have different purposes and goals, people have different constraints on their time, their memory, their field. Can you procrastinate on note-taking? Sure. So can you on writing, and publishing, and building an audience, and writing papers, and doing the dishes.

Can people have a fantastic creative output by just opening a blank page and jotting down their thoughts? Sure. Can other people write great books with an elaborate notetaking system? Of course. There are plenty of people out there with terrific, obsessive note-taking and reference systems, Kubrick being one of the prime examples.

As someone with what looks from the outside to be an overarchitected note-taking system ( https://publish.obsidian.md/manuel ), it is a system that works great for me, and it is a system that makes me more creative and helps me discover ideas I would have never been able to articulate without. I used linear sketchbooks where I would write and draw whatever for years, filling hundreds of notebooks, and it came nowhere near my obsidian setup in terms of output and effectiveness.

This is strange. Lately, I've had a number of people in different situations (especially at work) tell me of similar efforts pushing back on organized process or.. organized anything, including note-taking, task tracking and more. Is there some kind of attempt at a mental revolution here or is this some kind of response to people being overloaded and not wanting to carry the mental burden/weight/let it go?

I almost feel like this should not even be a topic. Using tools to help organize thoughts - why do we care if it helps people? - not all brains work the same. What is wrong about organizing one's thoughts and spending time doing so??

I can see the argument that one can get lost in a meta-loop of sorts, but that's probably true of anything when you take into account procrastination - or certain brain types - that are prone to loops. For some people loops feel good, right? I say this as somebody who is lightly on the spectrum.

Even the pushback against knowledge management as a practice is perplexing - there was a time where Peter Drucker, for example, thought knowledge work would someday be all there was left to do.

That said, I can't help but wonder if there really is something bigger/some kind of trend going on here and I can't quite put my finger on it. Is this something evolutionary? Are we trying to evolve/seek a better way as an organism?

Is anybody else seeing/feeling the same trend?

I mostly endorse this, but as I recently wrote in reply to something else [1], I also have found great value in writing things down to get them out of my head. In that case I was more talking about blog-post type things, but it includes notes for work and such.

So what I sometimes do is a hybrid model: I take the notes, thus satisfying my brain that the thing is no longer something it needs to chew on... and then basically discard the notes. Not quite literally, I don't literally chuck them in the trash. I might keep them around for a while in case I do need something out of them. But they don't contribute to my "to do" list, metaphorical or literal, much at all.

Yes. Every once in a long while, something falls through the cracks that I should have picked up. But the reality is that for me, YMMV, this approach is a huge net positive. I am able to constantly re-evaluate what's important right now without a lot of mental baggage, and usually, when I'm in the moment deciding what's important in this moment, I'm vastly more accurate in my assessment than I would have been trying to prognosticate a month ago.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32984424

From neuroscience perspective, it is the Anticipation of the task that releases dopamine, not the "Doing" of the task, hence the appeal of all the productivity porn.

And as a corollary, it could be the Anticipation of difficulty in tackling a daunting task that makes you avoid it, rather than the actual difficulty in tackling.

So, the best way to getting into the flow state and getting things done (pun intended) is to force yourself to just do it.

My note-taking system, basically the same since college:

1. Write down every nontrivial observation in a flat text file.

2. When that file gets longer than a few pages, transcribe it into a new file while leaving out or combining or rephrasing everything that now seems trivial.

3. Repeat until you've either memorized everything or don't need the info anymore, then delete the notes.

In retrospect this is similar to spaced repetition, but with a subjective "this feels trivial now" interval instead of a fixed interval.

I've been using Obsidian for a year or so now. I only take notes for meetings / planning agendas for meetings ahead of time - I also have the notes automatically committed to git on the hour. I actually got inspired to do this by James Comey's well documented use of contemporaneous notes. I don't know why I'm not important - in fact, what I need to look for in obsidian is the concept of having notes `expire` after a bit. In anycase, all these articles about note taking are always about how they work (or don't) work for the individual author of said article. It doesn't mean it's the right solution for you. Take what does work for you and abandon the rest without giving it a second thought. This comment included.

I've been journalling computer ideas out in the open since 2013 using GitHub as README.md files.

I create a new GitHub repository when I get to 100-300 entries. I number the entries with markdown headings and a title that captures the thought.

The reason I create a new repository is that I try only announce my idea repositories when they're complete. I want people to come back and not miss entries I add throughout the week.

I am up to 450+ entries purely by writing whatever idea comes to mind. I do not have a process. I add to the end of the journal.

Why do I recommend this approach? The journal and notes can be modified on any device that has a web browser since you can use the GitHub web interface on Android, Windows, Mac and Linux.

GitHub has a hidden feature of a table of contents on the top left of the README.md so you can jump to different ideas. GitHub also creates named anchors for markdown headings so you can link between ideas. I do this to refer to previous ideas.

IntelliJ also has a markdown editor so I also use that.

The more you journal and write the more inspiration you shall have. The more you try the more you get. So I strongly recommend my approach, just get something on the page and stop worrying if it shall be perfect. The value comes from writing and rereading and editing your thoughts.

One benefit from using GitHub is that you don't need to learn how to create a post each time you come to write so it can become a habit.

See my profile for links.

I take notes of (almost) everything I work on. What links I went to, screenshot or snippets of relevant information, current thought. The structure is simple, a folder for the project, and one .md file per day.

It helps me think by writing thing down, free brain memory space and reduces browser tabs number. It gives me an history of what I tried put earlier to solve my issue. It also give me something to say if anybody ask what I have been doing these past weeks or months (employer, recruiter). Finally, if I ever get a similar bug, I have a good chance to find some help from my past self with ctrl-shift-f. I write my notes with webstorm.

I find writing things down in a notepad (that I barely ever look at again) helps with retention and reduces it looping in my brain as much (relieving it to think about and process new things). Anything more complex than that (e.g. notion) is probably overkill/productivity reducing.

I believe there's a sweet spot between note-taking as a procrastination cope and adding actual value. As in, storing important insights that might trigger more insights in a different context(future).

The value of note-taking is undeniable, it's like a new "layer" after the neocortex where your memories are not exponentially decaying by the lack of usage. So utilization is not the sole factor for recall.

If done well note-taking be be considered "externalized cognition" where you instead of holding everything in your brain and treat as a storage + compute. You just compute. Anything important will be there in your notes. This allows you to have more "mental energy" to actually draw connections between things instead of struggling to remember them. It's like the beta version of neura-link or other intelligence-augmenting technologies.

I'm working on such a thing right now [1] It's like roam(outliner) but also have a HTML(plain text, stable) Engine for you to build more things inside of it.

[1] https://github.com/ilse-langnar/notebook

> I am waiting for any evidence that our most provocative thinkers and writers are those who rely on elaborate, systematic note-taking systems.

How about this?

> My notebooks aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process. (Richard Feynman)

Did I over-engineer my note-taking process? From the outside, probably. But I've tweaked my system overtime so I spent less time fiddling with it and more time writing and producing creative work.

I take lots of notes using Obsidian and organize the notes by tagging with keywords. Overtime, the notes clutter the entire system and I find it difficult to keep track of the notes. Instead of abandoning this particular tool — moving from one tool to the next deludes us into thinking its a tooling problem — I decided to track some key metrics[0] around my note taking system, the metrics serving as a feedback loop.

Ultimately, my goal of note taking is not to take notes: it's to publish writing. To that end, I've designed a note taking system that I consider to be as simple as it can be.

[0] https://digitalorganizationdad.substack.com/p/sparse-keyword...

As an avid note-taker, I don't think any of this is un-true. I'll just say for myself I do it because I find note-taking genuinely enjoyable and meditative. I agree that if you're trying to optimize the professional "ROI" of note-taking you'll find the returns fade away pretty quickly. But I do it because it's fun, not because of the supposed ROI.

Yes. Love this.

Here's the observation I've made in getting lost in these rabbit holes:

Remember what the computer is good at vs what the human is good at. People like us get drawn to systems that try to replicate what the human is good at, but we're so much better that many of these things are pointless.

Specifically, I'm thinking about note-taking systems that, for example, generate fancy looking dependency graphs. They may have some use, but your human brains is WAY better at this task of "making immediate connections between disparate ideas."

Chapin isn't against note taking. Chapin is arguing that any note taking system should be kept simple so administering it does not becomes a clever way to distract yourself instead of doing real work. Note taking could be procrastinating, in other words.

I get the point. Larry David of Curb Your Enthusiasm and Seinfeld keeps a small paper journal in his pocket for jotting down notes. An extreme example of note taking is probably the guy who spends all his time trying to photograph and video tape his vacation to the point that he isn't actually "present" to enjoy his own vacation.

tldr: Be careful your note taking doesn't interrupt and degrade your creative "flow" and resulting output

For the last year or so I've been using GitHub gists to record notes on various procedures in markdown to fill in the gaps between projects that have their own repos and markdown doc. Most of my casual notes get jotted down in Google Keep, but if they're involved enough I either put them in a markdown file on Drive or in a Google doc.

Over the years I've tried a bunch of different proprietary notetaking apps, including OneNote and Evernote. Migrating off those is always a pain, and I've got the ugly conversion scripts to prove it (each of which became useless thereafter with some change by the publisher). I started out 30 years ago with paper notebooks, that I'd still be on now but for the siren's song of searchability offered by electronic systems.

While the OP's prose is fine, I can't say I identify with most of his points. Notetaking for me has always been a way to record and organize information for future reference, not a means of procrastination. Same for technical documentation. But maybe that's because I've always been a tech at heart, and not an artist.

I used Joplin, an open source note-taking app that works with any nextCloud/ownCloud/WebDAV server, notably your own self-hosted ones.

I also like it simply because I have an Android, iOS, macOS, Linux, and Windows; Joplin has clients for nearly everything.

No more sync issue. And the data is all MINE, mine only.

We need to have a conversation about how most of these tools are about coping with anxiety, stress and information hoarding rather than handling complex work. I sometimes mess around Trello more than I do real work but at least I've stopped introducing new tools into my life.

This is so so accurate. I've published two (academic) books, with a third soon, and a ton of articles, and I've hardly ever gone back to my notes... whereas "channeling what’s in the air at this very second" has led to tenure at a fancy university

I feel like its really trendy to bash note taking apps nowadays.

I get it, theyre a dime a dozen and yeah spending hours on hours configuring multiple of them is probably a waste of time.

But why not take advantage of some of the nice software thats out the for this sort of thing? I wouldnt write down or rememeber half the stuff that I do if I hadnt invested a few hours into finding something id actually use. I doubt people are actually forgoing their creative passions or falling behind in their sprints to tweak note taking apps

Here's my simple (unix) note taking system: https://github.com/Aperocky/diaryman/blob/master/diaryman.sh

Whenever I type `diary` in the terminal, it opens vim on a text file that corresponds to today. All of the diary files are nicely ordered in directory structure that goes $DIARY_ROOT/$year/$month/$day.md

It worked very well for me over years.

This doesn't make much sense. If your notes are just going to inform something that is low stakes that will not be reviewed by anyone for accuracy, then it's perfectly serviceable advice. For the vast numbers of note-reliant professionals who need to be able to cite accurately to sources, this advice is childish.

Do you need someone else's system? No, and I didn't even know that this "problem" existed before reading this. The advice ought to be amended to encourage readers to build their own note-taking systems that make sense for them in context. Another useful nugget of advice is to tailor the note-taking style for the task. A freestyle method is certainly appropriate to support an off-the-cuff speech to colleagues, but isn't appropriate for academic or legal research.

The notion that structure is somehow bad is also not salient when the body of research becomes very large. If you are working with research from 100 different books or drafting a legal argument that cites 50 different cases, statutes, and other sources, then it really helps to have some structure in your notes so that it is easy to browse and search through them. When a mistake due to sloppy notes is on your ass and will have bad results for everyone relying on you, then making it "like play" rather than "like work" will only have catastrophic results.

Very interesting.

I'm very much struggling with some thoughts about life at the moment.

I often keep thinking about how to be 'awesome', how I want to grow, improve, be more interesting, be better at such and such. In fact this is likely why I am on Hacker news, to find insights and articles to help with this, which it can be one of the best places for.

As a result, I then often write down a lot of quotes, things from articles, ideas, questions etc, which end up in my productivity system or note taking app.

I try to write down a lot of my thoughts, work through then, find different questions to ask etc, but although I am very drawn to this because I don't know what else to do, I am not sure how useful it has been.

It's overwhelming me, because I just go round in circles and I still don't really know what to do and things still don't really make a lot of sense to me. I also think I it's making me boring, because i'm spending more time in the system and i'm being more systematic, i'm not doing anything that exciting.

But i don't really know what is the solution, if I just abandon all of that, I won't be very organised, as i'm terrible at this naturally and I feel like i'll just let my life drift by, i'll wake up in the morning, not sure of what to do, so i'll just succumb to wasting time online.

I'll have a think about this, but I think something to consider would be a way to cut back on all of this, but first i'd have to find something that makes more sense to me.

I think this is kind of a special case of a much more general idea: tools can be useful, but fetishizing tools is not. Note-taking is a tool, and can be useful. For example, I just referred back to some notes I wrote about a paper I am currently working on, and lo, I was reminded of something that I had to do for it that I had forgotten. Then I did that thing. Those notes were a useful tool. Good. On the other hand, I have sometimes wasted an hour or several reading about peoples ideas of how their notes should be organized, with the idle idea that I might become better organized as a result, only to find that I have made no progress on the work I wanted to do, and my note-taking was no more effective than before. I was fetishizing the tool.

Now, this doesn't mean you should never put any effort into your tools. A good tool can save you a lot of work in the long run, even if it took some effort to get it there. And it won't always be clear in advance what toolwork is going to actually make your tools more useful.

Edit to add one more thing: it's also worth noting that working on your tools can be pleasurable, and so doing it for its own sake doesn't need to be a bad thing. But if that is what you are doing, you shouldn't be thinking about it as productive work.

I not sure if the brain is really able to distinguish between what is important and what is not in a world where there is heavy competition to hijack people's brains.

I'm having some trouble understanding what note-taking systems the author is attacking. There are some hints:

> Getting lost in your knowledge management system is a fantastic way to avoid creating things.

> All of the above applies to reading books about note-taking, taking courses about note-taking, and watching videos about note-taking.

> I am waiting for any evidence that our most provocative thinkers and writers are those who rely on elaborate, systematic note-taking systems. I am seeing evidence that people taught knowledge management for its own sake produce unexciting work.

It sounds like Mr. Chapin is referring to formalized techniques or processes for format and organization of notes. But he doesn't give any examples, and I'm not familiar with the ones he hints at - I've never watched any YouTube videos on note taking or read any books on organizing your thoughts.

When I was in college, I took detailed notes in paper notebooks, and still do so occasionally when I'm sitting in a lecture. Otherwise, I send narrative emails to myself, write more business-style notes in Microsoft OneNote, or doodle in a small memo pad. It's clear to me that this is not what he means by a "note-taking system," but what is?

the point about salience is important, but people differ in the quality of their memory

stephen king used to be anti notebook ('writer's notebook best way to immortalize bad ideas'), then later in life was like 'oh my memory is no longer good, I write things down now'

jk rowling (skilled in her craft if not public relations) has file cabinets full of organized creativity -- calendars for the days of the year, vast collections of ideas for names

my sense is that most visual artists have sketches and prototypes (including da vinci), but this is 0% my area. I suppose you can argue that a sketch is 'the thing' and not notes for the thing

2mm squared graph paper (A4) and a decent biro.

I write the date at the top right of each page (in ISO format as god intended) and when I'm done with the page it goes on the pile.

That's as complicated a note taking system as I've ever needed, if I need to find something I just flip the stack looking at the dates until I find what I want - requires no structure beyond that - in the very rare case I can't remember the date even roughly I have to go through the whole stack but that's rare since I normally have a date on an email, ticket/slack conversation to get me in the ballpark.

Nike said: "Just do it".

I think it's about finding the balance. There's no simple rule to tell us how much effort we should spend planning. It is important to realize that, that it is possible to spend too much time planning.

But just because we can't say what exactly is the optimal amount of planning for each project or task, doesn't mean we shouldn't do it. It just means that most likely we are doing either too much planning, or too little planning. That's just the way life is.

Yet we hear stories of famous music stars using said note taking systems and touting such things as the reason for their success in song Writing, from my generation Steve Tyler for example.

I think it's a natural process that applies to things beyond just taking notes. (1) Do things (2) notice/suspect/fear that your instinctive approach isn't good enough (3) introduce system (4) realize ways that the overhead of the system is too much (5) pare back or abandon the system (6) hopefully continue with life knowing more about yourself

I wrote a little reply on that[1]. I don't think that a tool is ever to blame. Sure, some tools suck and can be a source of distraction. But human beings need tools to capture creativity and transport them into real life.

[1]: https://papierplan.de/blog/on-notes-against-notetaking-syste...

I'm not smart enough to understand what I just read, but I've been using OneDrive for years. I have a notes file for each week, and tag each thing I write down. I also have a traveling notes file, for projects that are new, in progress, and expiring.

Accessible from Win, Mac, Linux, iOS and Android. Nothing to install or maintain.

When bored I might open the third week of March 2018 and see what I was interested in, and my mindset.

IMO note taking is not for every one - and I am one of them. I've tried various ways to take notes but most of them time it doesn't work.

I fully agree with this article and that’s why I have a note taking system. I recognise I have my best ideas spontaneously but a solid note taking system is what helps me pull specific details of what I am trying to do from my past experiences. That being said, it took tons of time before I settled on something that worked for me and I could say: No more optimising. Work time, let’s go.

Different people understand different things when talking about notes and note-taking.

I use a self hosted Trilium Notes instance for organizing tidbits of information like todos for work/home, lists of products for a planned purchase, tiny bash / PowerShell scripts that do a particular task that I don't do often enough, links to stuff I want to eventually read and so on.

Pick up to four note-taking apps and compare them for their many functional capabilities.

https://www.noteapps.info/apps/compare?note_app=joplin%2Bnot...

You’re welcome.

I just need a way to both have a thinking note taking system, while also not letting todo items get lost.

My best thinking note system is just a notepad for handwriting, but todo items disappear very quickly in there, which is not ideal (but sometimes it's good, that things naturally slide out if they are less important.)

I for one am thankful for the people who get trapped in the productivity rat race. Without them I wouldn’t have the tools that I use 1% of to take my notes. sunglasses

Google Notebook was the last notebook tool that I adored. I've tried so many tools and systems since then and I end up reverting back to plain text files.

> When something can be like work or like play, never make it work.

So true!

I use a text file to take notes. It works perfect.

The commonplace book is a very valuable concept.

Weird to fetishize any productivity 'system'. Just do your work.

Everything in this article in relation to note taking just detracts from it. The article starts off with a poweful and well-articulated message, to which the remarks on the the somewhat banal topic of note do not contribute much. "Here I have all this insight; let's put it to use in the ho-hum topic of note taking".

Excessively meticulous note taking, and the subsequent organization of the material, is just one example of how some people hope to activate the barrier potential to initiate creativity. For someone else it might be something else; e.g. the coder might look for the best editor, with the perfect font, the nicest syntax coloring scheme. Or hop between languages on a weekly basis. The Future Me which writes the Great Program is doing so in the most suited language, with the best tools, in the nicest looking environment.

Another example might be the rock guitar player who is constantly tweaking the equipment. Swapping pickups, or else adjusting the height of pole pieces. Tweaking amp settings looking for the nicest tone. Shopping online for "stomp boxes". Comparing the tone of instrument cables. If all that stuff falls into place, the Great Tune will write itself.

Tha early point in the article about what is naturally interesting rather forced is a separate point that stands apart. Here, I think the author is off, or at least makes an incomplete point. Because the fact is that to excel in certain endavors, we have to bite the bullet and do grunt work that goes against our natural interest.

In fact, in the examples I gave, it may be the person's natural interest that is actually causing the problem. the coder is naturally interested in trying editors and languages, and customizing the environment. Actually learning how design and implement is hard work that requires forcing oneself.

What's going on is that the real preparedness which is necessary is hard work, so the person substitutes a phony, ineffective preparedness that is easy to slide into, and feels like doing something because it's fun on its own.

It may well the case that "[M]ost heart-stopping writing comes from synthesizing the previously unarticulated in the moment" but that doesn't generalize to every type of worthwhile endeavor. And even the previously unarticulated will stay that way inside someone who hasn't practiced writing by throwing themselves into it for years. Being able to seize that hitherto unarticulated benefits from the right kind of preparedness.

Chapin writes, "Consider how you may be limiting yourself by focusing on the presentation of factual insight as the core of your work". What if the presentation of factual insight in an excellent way is the definition of one's work? There is work like that, and it is work in which one can procrastinate in and avoid getting better at by pursuing ineffective substitutes that feel like preparation toward making progress.

I agree with the author in not being a fan of huge note-taking systems.

The areas I have found notes useful are short term to-do lists, and notes that store links to things I want to read/buy/etc.

Anything more than that and the operational overhead becomes too annoying to deal with for me

Don't conflate procrastination with note taking systems.

> systems

exactly.

let your own organization and system just spring up on its own

first instinct after the fourth bullet point was to save this to my Notion smdh...

"Just write it anywhere with as light structure as possible" works just fine with modern search methods

"A directory with a bunch of markdown files" is pretty portable too and there are few apps making that a bit easier.

I do divide "just a random notes" from "cheatsheets I use for stuff I use rarely enough to not remember" but that's about most organization. Just a descriptive title and working search function is enough