https://github.com/foambubble/foam
Roam-like note taking app using VS Code. Still early days but has momentum.
Been using it for a week for some project docs, and so far I like it.
Tired of note-taking apps
21–30 of 481 posts
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#22My theory about handwritten note-taking is that the bandwidth difference between thinking (fast) and writing (slow) is somehow extremely beneficial to the process of generating creative and evocative output. There have been so many journaling sessions which I started with the absolute conviction that I had nothing new to say, and after 4 pages of extremely creative and detailed ideas, surprising even to me , I had no…
Ted Chiang's "The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Fiction" is one of the best treatments I've read on this topic.
https://web.archive.org/web/20140222103103/http://subterrane...
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#23I agree with the sentiment, but it's a crowded market that if there was an easy, elegant solution that met everyone's needs we'd already have some leaders out there. Maybe we already do. My person preference is Notion at the moment.
That's nice. I used to like taking notes on Notion. But one day, I got annoyed when I was not able to quickly search an old note as it was nested under some other note. Took a while for me to realize and make sense of that.
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#24I've tried Evernote, Apple Notes, the Remarkable Tablet, vimwiki, and I keep going back to handwritten notes on paper.
My current workflow for notes is: I take notes on the notes app on the iPhone or my Mac if I don't have my A4 Moleskin notebook handy. And then I transcribe the notes on the Moleskin whenever I can. Another recent addition I have to this workflow is a Brother VC-500W label printer. I use it to print QRcode stickers for URLs that I stick on my notebook.
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#25I've tried many different systems, and the one I settled on is a single simple doc. It's the only method I've used for over a year. You can do google doc or office doc, but the key for me was having one doc that I just keep prepending to. Each day i'll add the date yyyy-mm-dd (dow) in bold and then list my work for the day... I use hyperlinks to dedicated docs or online guides for more involved projects (quick ctrl-k…
An outliner app like WorkFlowy (YC S10) or TaskPaper is nice for adding nesting and the ability to zoom in and out.
You can also directly link to any node, at least in WorkFlowy.
My approach is similar to yours except it's one hierarchical entry per day.
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#26I have used Apple Notes since I got my first iPhone, there's still notes from back then in there! Mainly for quick lists and things I need to remember, ideas, shopping, etc. Haven't really found any issues with it.
Yes I use Apple Notes for actual notes. It works well enough for everything I do with the only draw back (to me) being it isn't available as raw text. Although copy/paste works just fine so not a huge deal tbh.
For anything that I find lives in Apple Notes a bit too long I move it over to plain text and use iA Writer. I try to keep anything in Apple Notes as short term notes. Anything I plan to keep around as more (small) documentation I switch over to iA.
A few years ago I just got tired of trying out all these different notes apps. I figured I have iA Writer and Apple Notes and that works well enough so gave up trying every new note taking app that came out and haven't had any regrets.
Recently I tried out Notion and god it was awful. I felt I spent longer arranging things in Notion than I did working on things.
These days I find a more limited and simpler solution is better for me. I switched back to Things 3 a year or so ago as I found Todoist overwhelming after a while. Sure Things is more limited but I like that. It is basically a post-it note and I realised that is all I needed.
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#27[deleted]
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#28I've tried Evernote, Apple Notes, the Remarkable Tablet, vimwiki, and I keep going back to handwritten notes on paper. My current workflow for notes is: I take notes on the notes app on the iPhone or my Mac if I don't have my A4 Moleskin notebook handy. And then I transcribe the notes on the Moleskin whenever I can. Another recent addition I have to this workflow is a Brother VC-500W label printer. I use it to print…
Have you considered linking notes from one notebook to another? E.g. if you named each notebook and numbered pages, you could just point to "page X in notebook Y", and wouldn't need to transcribe. Would this be something helpful to you?
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#29My theory about handwritten note-taking is that the bandwidth difference between thinking (fast) and writing (slow) is somehow extremely beneficial to the process of generating creative and evocative output. There have been so many journaling sessions which I started with the absolute conviction that I had nothing new to say, and after 4 pages of extremely creative and detailed ideas, surprising even to me , I had no…
Have you tried using OneNote's handwriting recognition feature? I am curious if that experience would allow for the regaining of the pen-to-paper "magic".
Edit: typo
Re: Tired of note-taking apps
#30There is a lot of feature overlap between these note-taking apps, but I always find one or two missing critical features. It seems like most apps try to be a one-size-fits-all solution, and they fail in doing so.
My new approach uses dedicated apps for each use case. I am trying Raindrop.io (or Pinboard.in) as web clippers / persistent bookmark managers, I am using Todoist to organize (and gamify) my tasks, and I use VSCode for general note-taking. Especially VSCode, with its vast extension marketplace, seems to be a balanced solution for customizing the note-taking experience. I can pick my preferred Markdown extension with LaTeX math support and add additional comfort features like TabNine or Grammarly for a better writing experience than whatever these one-size-fits-all solutions such as Evernote or Notion can offer.