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I'm always curious on how you guys use your note taking apps? I tried multiple (obsidian, notion, logseq ecc..) but always struggled to find a real use/need for them outside of work.

Am I missing something on going straight to applying my knowledge, after having found a solution to whatever problem I'm facing from a variety of sources, and not writing down many notes outside code comments/README.md ecc..? E.g: I'm currently building a mobile app with flutter, would you guys suggest that I log what I'm learning, even considering it's pretty basic stuff due to the fact that it's my first encounter with flutter/dart?

Now that I think about it, writing notes during the process could perhaps help me have more material for my blog posts

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I basically live in my notes all day. I have two main categories:

1. General knowledge: Anything I want to be able to look up again, for me mainly how to do certain tasks in software, which is things like keyboard bindings, steps to achieve a result (e.g., something like "remove the background from a photo"), and flags for a command line program. I also add more abstract things, like computer science, and music theory concepts, but I find these concepts are usually easier to recall from memory once you know them (I've read before that memory works like a web, so if you're attaching new concepts to existing concepts, they'll be easier to remember), so I don't have many notes like that.

2. Projects: Tasks related to a project, and things I've learned along the way. For example, if I'm diagnosing a bug, maybe I found an important code snippet, so I'll cut and paste it to the project file. Also useful commands, e.g., if there's a single test I'm working on, I'll save the command to run just that test in isolation.

The general principle here is I usually find it easy to remember if I've ever done something before, but hard to remember exactly how to do it. (Research indicates that if something doesn't fit into the web, then if you don't do it enough, you won't remember it, so the notes compensate for that.)

I find this helps me stay in flow because just looking something up quickly from my notes is much less disruptive than searching to find it again (or trying to think to reconstruct it). If you don't mind searching again later for something you know you once figured out, you probably don't need notes, but if that drives you crazy, like it does for me, than notes are helpful. For me, it feels like I'm constantly expanding the number of things I can do easily without having to depend on my memory, which I know from experience is fallible for these tasks.

It's similar for context switching between projects, when switching tasks, being able to look at your note for a project, and being able to see both exactly where you left off, and documentation of everything you've learned so far, makes it easier to move forward again.

I've found its helpful to divide notes into two separate categories: notes & logs. Anything that is not a log is a note. This includes recipes, people, tools, reading list, etc.

Logs are meant to serve as a labnote book. Each entry is saved in a daily journal & with a date and simple description header. What I'm doing, why, how its going, checklist, etc. Basically a dumping ground for everything I could possibly have a use for re-using later. This help eliminates entire categories of notes(e.g. call with mechanic), and give you a chance to leverage smaller notes with backlinks to the individual experiences using it. The effort to keep notes evergreen is very difficult when the content keeps changing.

Cool!

Can you expand a bit on how that simplifies the "call with mechanic"?

I like how the very act of writing it out led you to draw a new conclusion. Very meta.

Zettelkasten. It's an incredibly simple idea. Obsidian, Logseq, Roamresearch, Org-Roam - they all are based on that simple idea.

I used to spend a lot of time, thinking how should I organize my notes? Tried many different methods - categorizing them; grouping them by dates - years, months, days; putting them in multiple files and folders; using a single file with many (collapsible) headings, etc.

After switching to Zettelkasten method (I use Org-Roam), I realized - whenever I write any note, the only question that I really need to ask: "in what context should I re-discover this stuff later?".

A practical example: I would be discussing a session-related security vulnerability with my teammate, let's call them Jimmy. I would start a note with a meaningful title. Then add links to [[Jimmy]] [[session]] [[vulnerabilities]]. For simplicity, let's assume I already have these nodes in my system. 'Jimmy' is a node that has all the info about my teammate, their role, their contact info, etc. The node may also have its own tags, e.g., [[front-end-team]].

Now, months later, whenever a similar thing comes up, I wouldn't be scratching my head thinking "haven't I discussed that with Jimmy last year in October? Let me go through my October notes...". No, I would open Jimmy's node then lookup for all the backlinks and surely, I would find the relevant notes. I may even forget that I spoke to Jimmy, then I would find the notes through other nodes - [[front-end-team]] [[vulnerabilities]] [[session]].

I don't. Use note taking apps, that is.

I tried Org mode and used it for a year or two. I liked its integration of notes and task tracking. The Org Agenda works well. Ultimately I found it a bit chaotic to have tasks scattered amongst text files though. I acknowledge that I probably could have made Org work for this and my current solution (Omnifocus) is better in some ways, worse in others.

For the notes though, I just write plain text notes using Windows Notepad or Mac TextEdit and I put them in an appropriate folder. I have various folders - some for "projects" and others for "reference". I like the folders because I can put other things in them, such as PDFs, emails, spreadsheets, etc. Sometimes I have a single text file for a project that has chronological notes; other times, it's appropriate to add additional files to capture particular ideas, lists, etc.

The note-taking apps don't wind up doing much for me.

> I just write plain text notes ... and I put them in an appropriate folder

So I guess that means you hardly reuse any of those notes at all? I just can't really imagine the process of having to fish for some creative ideas from those buckets.

I use them every single day. Because I maintain the folder hierarchy, I remember how to descend the folders to find what I need.

Years of experience has taught me that relying on loose tagging webs and searching mechanisms and fancy tools does not work for me, not for notes, not for emails, not for anything else. I organize things into nested hierarchies. This takes maintenance, but so does maintaining tag webs and using the tools to maintain and mine them.

For something that espouses some of these principles (though I do not use this system):

https://johnnydecimal.com

Writing down the simple stuff can be nice if you want to:

* Stop doing stuff in that field for months and have previously processed notes to reload in your head when you come back.

* Give feedback to maintainers on what worked/what didn't when you entered their ecosystem.

* Communicate to newbies how you overcome X problem when learning Y. Not everyone may have your particular insight. You could roll it into a blog post or other communications.

* Provide stepping stones for you to relate other frameworks and languages back to what you've already seen and know, to solve challenges in different domains.

I find that most more specific ideas for using the data come at random periods throughout my life. The questions are usually non-obvious when just staring at the data. I write them down as little notes themselves and come back to them when I have interest/motivation.

I use it for:

* Reminders

* Checklists

* Idea collation

* Fleshing out and prioritizing personal tasks

* Reference notes - e.g. passport number, tax numbers, frequent flier numbers, anything else I might want to input into a form one day.

* Calendar

* As a place to draft emails/letters/documents.

There's so much crossover between all of these things that it helps to keep them all together.

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