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Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

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51–60 of 91 posts

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#52

This might be crazy but I rarely ever take notes... I try and remember stuff. But my train of thought is usually in my position at jobs someone is requesting something from me.. I come from the operations side of things and slowly did more dev work. People hate me sometimes but I am firm believer in no ticket no work. Put in a ticket if we do not have tracking system first thing to do. They can update the ticket all…

> no ticket no work

I immediately thought of Jack Nicholson jeering, “no tickey, no laundry!”

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#53
Mostly vscode. 1 folder per ticket (epic/issue/task), multiple files per folder. Folders can be nested if needed. Files: markdown for notes, Todo+[1] for todos, plantuml for diagrams, etc I also use pen and paper for scribbling.

[1]: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=fabiospa...

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#54
post #30

Workflowy desktop app. If you haven't tried an outliner before, you should. It's as distinct a document type as text, spreadsheet, or imagefile.

I've started using this... its not bad. I just need to improve my habits around it.

I wish I could TAG things in it to give me a quick way to group things...

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#56

Joplin works well for me, I started using it as an Evernote replacement half a year ago. It's open source, has markdown, syntax highlighting for many languages, comes with a mobile and desktop app and syncs via various services, e.g. Dropbox.

+1 Mind you that the notebooks seem to be actually "categories". One notebook can be dragged into another to create trees.

Ah, haven't even tried that one yet, that's helpful to know!

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#57

Joplin works well for me, I started using it as an Evernote replacement half a year ago. It's open source, has markdown, syntax highlighting for many languages, comes with a mobile and desktop app and syncs via various services, e.g. Dropbox.

+1 for Joplin, I use it for logging my work day. I dump the information in JIRA task I work on and have highlights and other related notes in Joplin, although I wish Joplin has a native support for calendar (similar to https://zim-wiki.org).

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#58
After a long trial and error phase in the nineties I found outliners to be the best of all tools for this purpose. I successfully worked with Netmanage Ecco for about ten years and then wrote my own tool which also runs on Linux and features cross-links and other useful functions missing in Ecco. I even write specifications and do requirements management and status accounting with this tool.

Here is the link: https://github.com/rochus-keller/CrossLine/

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#59
I agree w others that notebook for in person is best due to norms.

I use Todoist for everything. I like the txt mentioned here but proper apps like todoist will remind and ping on various things as they come up or remind me which I find insanely helpful.

Siri (ugh pixel was so much better w calendar sync etc until it just died one day and I gave up on the Android vision) to help w on the go reminders and stuff I don’t want to forget.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes throughout your work day?

#60
Most 'thinking' notes are append only, and I need to use my hand for this. I can't type in the scattered way thoughts come. I used to use paper for these, then about a year ago I got a Remarkable 2 which I use exclusively. I almost never read more than a few pages back though.

Still haven't really settled on anything for more permanent notes, on a subject or something. Everything is frustrating in some sort of way. I'm liking the idea of privately hosting mediawiki. Mediawiki has extensions for music scores (using lilypond) which is quite important to me.

The only 'unknown' remaining is an easy way of creating editable diagrams/drawings on the computer. Either they're hand-drawn on the remarkable, where they're hard to change; or they're drawn on a computer, which is painful. I wish I could create a 'symlink' from a page on the remarkable to an image.

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