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Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

eugeneyan.com

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Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#191

Post by chrisweekly »

codingdave wrote: post #155
erikig wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon or Frequency Illusion is the phenomenon where something you recently learned suddenly appears everywhere

That is certainly a thing. But on HN, we really do have topical trends. When an article gets popular, and piques our interest, people keep researching it. And finding related topics and articles, and those also get posted. We also see it impact the "Show HN" posts - before coronacrisis, we were seeing so many curated job postings sites that it got to be a bit of a joke. Just in the last couple week, we've see an upti…

They sure do. Is there a "HN trends" tool you're aware of?

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#192

Post by suref »

fishmaster wrote: post #127
suref wrote: post #122

To me the most important thing in notes is to find what you want easily. Because of this I think having some sort of online system is needed, otherwise if you have the notes at different places you will in the end give up on it and also tags and search is a huge advantage. But in the end I don't think there are one system that fits all, Zettelkasten might work for some people while others want it another way, this hy…

That looks good.

Thanks, have worked out so far.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#193

Post by rkangel »

vijucat wrote: post #92

OneNote's Linked Notes Taking does exactly this. You can combine it with the "Dock to Desktop" / Docked Window feature which makes it hijack a part of the desktop space (to the RHS, typically) so that you can continue to take notes while reviewing stuff on the LHS. The window on the LHS can be another OneNote window (or one of the other Office applications), and as you type in the RHS, docked window, sentences are au…

i'm using "OneNote for Windows 10" which seems to have lost a lot of the power features. It looks like both Dock to Desktop and Linked Notes have gone.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#194

Post by ww_wpg »

matesz wrote: post #107

I wonder what Ted Nelson would say to that :)

"Project Xanadu" Ted Nelson? as i understand it he's known for sinking decades of work into his vision while the modern internet developed instead

someone else in the comments said "isn't that what a hyperlink is for" and it reminds me of all the semantic web stuff and RDF.

makes me wonder, isn't there some search engine web crawler that graphically depicts trending websites and the pages or ideas that link to / from them?

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#195

Post by nanna »

dangirsh wrote: post #67
ssivark wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's already an Emacs package which has become quite popular over the last few months! :-) See "org-roam" [1,2] (and several blog posts and youtube videos by now) [1]: https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam [2]: https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/introducing_org_roam/

Love org-roam. I've been heavily using it for a few months, and not looking back. Don't miss these additional packages, which build on org-roam: org-roam-server: better graph visualization and navigation [1] org-roam-bibtex: Reference management in your Zettelkasten [2] The latter, combined with org-ref and org-noter, is the most effective way I've found for taking notes on PDFs. Beautiful demo at [3]. FWIW RoamResea…

> tending to a setup like this in Emacs can easily become a time-sink

I've started to wonder if the Emacs community should put together versions that are ready for different kinds of users out of the box. Say, a version for scholars with everything Auctex, org/org-roam, spell check, email, rss, etc already there, and a walkthrough to boot. Like a distro or spin, basically.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#196

Post by gas9S9zw3P9c »

This seems to be a new trend now. I'm skeptical. Many of the most successful people I know don't have complicated systems like this - instead of spending time on optimizing note taking, they actually get stuff done. In fact, many don't have systems at all. On the other side, most people raving about the systems are "productivity gurus" writing articles and books, not people who actually get stuff done or would be considered "successful" in the economic sense.

I see a similar trend with org-mode users. It's great and all on a technical level (I've used it myself in the past) but it's easy to fall into the elisp and customization rabbit hole. Over time, the few hours spent here and there to optimize the system add up to thousands of hours that could've been used to get stuff done.

These complex systems are the perfect excuse for procrastination because they make you feel like you are doing something productive while you actually aren't. Just get stuff done.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#197

Post by mark_l_watson »

I have invested a lot of time and thought in organizing my notes, including writing an Evernote mini-clone in Clojure and Clojurescript (with a Javascript Firefox plugin for capturing stuff on the web) many years ago.

I settled instead on Google Keep because at the time I didn't have a way to backup Apple Notes. I then saw a reference to the macOS Exporter app, it works OK, and I moved to Apple Notes because I slightly prefer Apple's privacy policies.

Now, on any device (use web app for Linux) I can get to my notes and search them. I especially like the interface on iOS and iPadOS: doing a global search on everything on the device shows results for the Notes.

I do a lot of research, writing, and development and I really need an extended digital memory. I also need the process of saving information to be as fast as possible so I don't avoid doing it.

The Zettelkasten systems, like Roam, seem like there is too much up front effort.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#198

Post by athenot »

lukevp wrote: post #132
Cthulhu_ wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same; I've been using various note taking approaches over the years, but my "problem" is that I rarely actually have to go back to a note, they are usually only relevant for one task like e.g. writing a blog post or implementing a feature. So while I'd like to retain my knowledge and research somewhere, at the same time I don't actually use it??? But some writing I've done that will be relevant in the next years is w…

I completely agree. Note apps are focused on categorization when 90% of note taking is creation, not retrieval. I have a new app that’s focused on creating notes as quickly as possible, working offline, and syncing to all your devices (web too). I’d love to include you in the alpha we’re launching this week, just send me an email and we’ll add you. This is open to anyone else as well!

This is why I always come back to Apple's humble Notes app after trying the others. It's simple and dumb enough that it gets out of the way and just lets me write notes on my mac or my phone and everything is quietly synced for offline use.

Once I start thinking about how I'm going to use the note, I go down a rabbit hole of style / format considerations and it gets in the way of the idea I was trying to capture. So now I give myself permission to just write a note and if it does need to morph into something more structured, it's only a copy-paste away to a fancier tool.

Re: Stop Taking Regular Notes; Use a Zettelkasten Instead

#199

Post by machbio »

rkangel wrote: post #193
vijucat wrote: post #92

OneNote's Linked Notes Taking does exactly this. You can combine it with the "Dock to Desktop" / Docked Window feature which makes it hijack a part of the desktop space (to the RHS, typically) so that you can continue to take notes while reviewing stuff on the LHS. The window on the LHS can be another OneNote window (or one of the other Office applications), and as you type in the RHS, docked window, sentences are au…

i'm using "OneNote for Windows 10" which seems to have lost a lot of the power features. It looks like both Dock to Desktop and Linked Notes have gone.

there are so many power features that were removed after OneNote 2016 - it makes using Onenote obsolete nowadays - hate to start using another note taking method now
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