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

Very similar to what I have done. It's very powerful to have a lot of notes in one system like Evernote. Mine goes back to 2006. Likewise, I don't use it for document collaboration or any of the sharing functions – just personal notes synced.

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.

I've been trying out a bullet journaling (basically an enhanced TODO list system), I think it helps with organization, clarity/prioritization, and building habits: https://archive.ph/cTOzT (the video doesn't work, but the prose and images should all be there)

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.

I'll ask a bit of a follow-on question which is:

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.

I have a very structured proces that has grown up over time, using OneModel (aka OM) software I wrote (AGPL; URL and some more info in my profile). I often capture thoughts using voice notes on my phone, then roughly daily I commit those to the OM notes in the right place so that I will come across them again at the most convenient time for me -- they go in the calendar, topic notes, long-term planning, todo list, in-progress-ideas notes, staging of tasks I haven't prioritized yet, etc. Then daily, I review each of those areas and update the plan for the day before starting on it. My daily routine of processing those things, then using them, has been very helpful to me, not just for staying organized, but deciding & remembering what to focus on in my practicing/improving of habits next, periodic reviews (some of which are also in Anki), etc.

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.

Ask a benign question about note-taking and recieve a "kids these days", "back in my day", "everyone wants to be a victim" bullshit. The discourse on this site is certainly lacking.