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How to take smart notes with Org mode

blog.jethro.dev

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Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#41

Post by mariomeissner »

rushsteve1 wrote: post #7
ssivark wrote: post #2

Jethro Kuan’s earlier posts on Org mode for planning finally made the idea click for me (maybe just the last straw on the camel’s back). I strongly recommend checking those out too. Btw, to Notion users — does anyone feel that it’s matched/surpassed Org mode in the breadth of workflows it supports?

I've actually been flip-flopping between Notion and Org-mode for months, and just the other day decided to finally organize myself all on Notion. I love Org-mode, and will likely continue to use it for various things, but I agree that Notion is the only thing that (to me) surpasses it.

For those of you using Notion, what system do you follow to organize your notes? Is anyone here actively using something similar to Zettelkasten inside Notion?

Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#43

Post by rgoulter »

animalnewbie wrote: post #40

What level of emacs knowledge does org mode require such that it is actually useful to me and can do stuff Microsoft onenote cannot?

Depends what your use-cases are.

If you want good, painless syncing between devices, and good mobile use: this would require quite some effort to get org-mode as good as OneNote's.

Org-Babel is an example of something that org can do but OneNote can't. (e.g. showing the results of code blocks in the same markup file). It would be straightforward to make use of this without very much Emacs knowledge, but the Emacs UX isn't great out of the box.

Or maybe some other feature of org-mode might be useful to have with your notes. https://orgmode.org/manual/index.html e.g. I like the org-agenda. I haven't used exporting org files into PDF or presentations, but I could see it being useful for people who use it.

You'd be fine getting on without needing to learn much Emacs (beyond a relevant tutorial for the feature), not counting aforementioned Emacs default configuration. -- I think the momentum of "I can do a bunch of different things in org" comes incrementally, rather than starting using several features of org.

Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#44

Post by unhammer »

chrisweekly wrote: post #18
shakezula wrote: post #3

> Notes aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process. – Richard Feynman I haven’t ever found a quote that described how i approach software as succinctly as this. I use a bullet journal religiously and it’s specifically because of this. Great article.

Love the quote and the idea too. Check out Roam^1 which completely changed my relationship to note-taking. 1 https://roamresearch.com

The article linked to at the very top of this comment page talks about implementing Roam in org-mode.

Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#46

Post by QuesnayJr »

zelly wrote: post #6
joegahona wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Whenever I used org-mode I started tweaking Emacs and writing macros for hours. Does this imply that it contained too many distractions for you, which pen/paper doesn’t? Genuinely curious as I’m trying to optimize my note-taking process and have never used org mode.

Yes, by default it's unusable. You have to read the docs, check out other people's configs. It becomes a whole rabbit hole when all I wanted to do was make a list.

I use org-mode heavily and the only customization I use is toggle-truncate-lines.

Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#47

Post by noelwelsh »

animalnewbie wrote: post #45

All this is good but then those notes aren't accessible on my phone

There are a few apps that support org-mode. For Android there is http://www.orgzly.com/ For iOS there is https://beorgapp.com/ I think there are a few more but those are the ones I see people talk about.

Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#48

Post by rudedogg »

jolmg wrote: post #33
geokon wrote: post #30

is asciidoc similarly powerful? I have everything in org/githubpages but I often get a bit frustrated with Emacs and its clunkiness. My issue is that orgmode has no spec and is so tightly coupled to Emacs - so ive ended up unintentionally married to the whole ecosystem.. I've been considering migrating away from org but I don't have any great alternative in mind

Asciidoc seems to be just a format. For me, the main benefits of org-mode are the Emacs keybindings to handle the docs semantically, to e.g. move the headings around, nest a whole hierarchy, archive a heading, etc. Also, the agenda view is really useful. I've been using org-mode mostly to keep day-by-day notes in files such as ~/org/diary/2020-02-15.org, which I create for a given day from a keybinding. I've been thi…

Spec for the curious: https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html

Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#49

Post by harperlee »

noelwelsh wrote: post #47
animalnewbie wrote: post #45

All this is good but then those notes aren't accessible on my phone

There are a few apps that support org-mode. For Android there is http://www.orgzly.com/ For iOS there is https://beorgapp.com/ I think there are a few more but those are the ones I see people talk about.

My problem is with the corporate firewall that inhibits me from using dropbox/box/etc. to sync notes between my mobile phone and the work laptop. Just yesterday I tried to connect through Github (which I can access, for the time being), and running a "Working Copy" (an iphone app) webdav server that shares the github repo clone in the phone with Beorg. It was completely unusable. Does anyone have an alternate suggestion, perchance?

Re: How to take smart notes with Org mode

#50

Post by woadwarrior01 »

terminaljunkid wrote: post #37

I find org mode little complicated for my taste. My note taking is some plain text files in hierarchy and vim. It works even on Android phone using termux. And I am pretty much used to it. For todo, I have a shellscript that takes an argument and open text file of that name. Works reasonably well. Plus, prefix your text files with .md and get all the formatting stuff.

Have you tried vimwiki[1]? I’ve been using it for a daily journal for the past couple of weeks and it’s been quite good. I was using it for tasks as well, but then found Taskwarrior[2] and have since moved on to using it.

[1]: https://vimwiki.github.io/ [2]: https://taskwarrior.org/

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