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Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use?

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Re: Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use?

#13

Post by beatgammit »

I've been playing with emacs org mode, and it's nice. I use Orgzly on my phone and have my devices sync with Syncthing and it has been mostly okay.

I'm still finding a rhythm (I'm a vim person), but it seems to be really useful. I like that it can handle scheduled things and automatically make notifications for me on my phone. I also like that it's just a text file, but has a ton of features that most text-based organization systems lack.

Re: Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use?

#16

Post by piocho »

Like you, I tried several tools for taking notes (work or personnal). However, I didn't succeed using them during a long time.

So I switched to little notebook with one pen that is smooth to use. For now I find (quite) easily my notes, but in the future I'll probable need an easy why to search and find notes.

Usinge Markdown might be the newt thing I'll do. It's super easy to get perfect/clean notes with it.

So you might have a try with a notebook and see if it's enought for you.

All my note are "simple", they are only ideas or TODOs. But if you want to keep some code/dev/scripts notes you should concider markdown tool.

Re: Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use?

#17

Post by tedmiston »

I keep a notes folder full of markdown files, one per project or high-level topic to constitute an "engineer's notebook". Then within each file, I add an h2 for each day I work on that project.

I would rather keep paper notes honestly, but the power of digital text wins out here quickly. The ability to copy & paste URLs and terminal sessions, and to be able to project-wide search for them later when I can't remember the particular args used on a command from weeks ago.

This setup mostly works but it would be nice to have a little more of a software layer on top.

For personal notes, I like Day One setup with multiple notebooks and tags.

Re: Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use?

#18

Post by tedmiston »

clubm8 wrote: post #9

A 4 color pen + cheap amazonbasics moleskine knockoff Black = facts. numbers, locations, new edicts, etc Blue = thoughts. musings. edge cases I think of during meetings but don't want to derail over, etc green = events (after work social, conferences, etc) red = todo It's not perfect (ex: I usually write the details of meetings such as time/location and add a red star with "TODO: enter meeting X into calendar" but th…

You might appreciate the Action Method notetaking format that separates next actions from just the notes themselves.

https://the-gadgeteer.com/2017/11/15/action-method-notebooks...

https://design-milk.com/ghostly-behance-action-method-notebo...

Re: Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use?

#19

Post by tmaly »

For work related info, I have my team take notes in structured pages in Confluence.

We use this to help onboard new hires as well as to communicate better.

I have used some of the information in the book Organizing Knowledge by Patrick Lambe to help keep things accessible

Re: Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use?

#20

Post by tomjen3 »

arduinomancer wrote: post #12

I use the built in notes in outlook. The feature is a actually pretty bad and glitches out a lot on me but I find its one less window to keep open since you're usually constantly reading emails as a developer anyway.

Oh man, I would hate to be in a place where I would constantly be reading e-mail.
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