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Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

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Re: Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

#21

Post by ozim »

txt file per day with a pinch of markdown.

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.

Re: Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

#22

Post by fiveg »

I keep my life notes in plain text in a directory called "notes", usually formatted with markdown. I rarely render the markdown but I still find it useful for structuring my notes. I also incorporate a very lean take on getting things done (GTD). I host it on github and sync it between devices with syncthing.

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.

Re: Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

#24

Post by atemerev »

I have too many ideas and too few resources to actually implement them. So I deliberately do not write down my ideas, otherwise I will be distracted easily (I have heavy ADHD and it is very difficult for me to prioritize between ideas to work on).

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)

Re: Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

#25

Post by pessimizer »

I'm not strictly taking notes any more.

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."

Re: Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

#27

Post by pid-1 »

atemerev wrote: post #24

I have too many ideas and too few resources to actually implement them. So I deliberately do not write down my ideas, otherwise I will be distracted easily (I have heavy ADHD and it is very difficult for me to prioritize between ideas to work on). 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 somet…

I've found taking noted just makes me anxious - they don't help me to learn anything nor are revisited later.

My only notes are very simple stuff like doctor appointments, taxes, etc...

Re: Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

#28

Post by robotburrito »

For a bit I was using vimwiki. I really liked it, however, getting it to work with images was a huge pain in the butt. So lately I have been using Obsidian. It allows me to use vim mode, paste images, and also write notes in md format.

Check it out at https://obsidian.md/

Re: Ask HN: What's your note-taking methodology?

#29

Post by paraph1n »

WheelsAtLarge wrote: post #26

Notebook and pen. No app can beat it for long term notes. If you need to take photos of the pages and save those on a note taking app such as Evernote.

OP specifically stated they aren't asking about what tools you use, but rather "what kind of notes are you taking down and how you're organizing your thought"
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