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Note Taking in 2021

blog.dornea.nu

81–90 of 213 posts

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#81
After spending countless hours researching, trying (and then abandoning) notetaking apps such as OneNote, Evernote, Zimwiki, plain markdown files, and more, I ended up writing notes in Docx and then putting them on Onedrive. While Docx might be clunky, I could edit it from my phone, on the web, and on my desktop. I could put images in them. The file format has enough momentum that I am sure I could still open it 20 years from now.

Most importantly, I could store the Docx file next to my other project resources, and when I am done, I could archive the whole folder away.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#82
I've been down this rabbit hole too many times. My advice is take notes - it is good and fun. There are lots of ways to take notes, pick one you like and stay happy. While there are differences between approaches, the big thing is notes or no notes. Also remember, what works well for you might not be the same as what is hip at the moment...

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#83
I did a lot of research on the topic when I started my university studies in microengineering. At the start of uni, there's a lot of money and time being spent by students to set up the "best note taking environment" to ensure their success, usually resulting in expensive iPad Pros with Apple Pencils or the Windows Surface equivilent. In the end I chose a simple piece of software for my 2012 Thinkpad: OneNote. Why? Equation support. There are so many problems with it, but after trialing it against paper and pen, I never looked back, just for the ability to quickly flip back to last-year's lecture/exercices on-the-go. We each have our own journey and find our preferred solution, but here are a few reasons why I chose OneNote over the plethora of other available solutions.

It's free. I wouldn't mind paying for something, but this gives you peace of mind that it will stay yours without restrictions, like Google Docs/Sheets/etc. Secondly, it's fast. It's an optimized Windows app that starts in the blink of an eye and uses few system resources. It's visually simple, doens't distract you and has nice smooth animations, it's easier to read/write formatted text with equations than muck around with Markdown/LaTeX. Instant sync, in fact, real-time like Google Docs between devices. The equation support is great once you learn it, it's almost as good as LaTeX. It has pretty decent spell check (although I wish I could set a preferred writing language and not have it deduce from my active keyboard). Good organisation into books, sections and pages. Students get unlimited storage with OneDrive, so no problem there, and trust me, it will be a while until you exhaust your free storage with note taking. Paste images/screen captures, tables. I've never used the pen mode because I don't have any device with a stylus, but I prefer text anyway for it's searchability and typing speed. It takes a little while to really understand the formatting engine, but once you get a feel for the markdown-like underlying invisible structure, it makes it easier to format and move things around. You create your own style and organisation that you can understand and navigate quickly.

It's one of the things keeping me on Windows, sadly. Encryption is absolutely not important for me for lecture note-taking, anything remotly important I'll stick in 1password or on a locally encrypted drive. The day I want to migrate, I'll export it as PDF and archive it in the fairly unlikely event I will want to refer back to something. Over time I've learnt that what's in your head is more important than having a perfectly organised personal wiki of knowledge. I would reconsider it for the long-term, but it's fantastic to use something that feels polished and backed by a large company, like GMail vs settings up your own VPS/email software and client. I'm not a fan of big-tech endorsed products, but I can't seem to keep myself away from this one.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#84
post #30
post #6

This is going to be one of those threads where everyone rattles off their own note-taking setup, which is great and all. So: There's a lot of things people tend to want from note-taking setups: easy entry, navigation and organization, wiki-like linkages, export to various formats, encryption. What I've found actually matters for my day-to-day and gets me to actually take lots of notes, though, is just (1) search and…

Joplin is one I highly recommend: https://joplinapp.org/ Cross platform, open source, and offers encryption.

Joplin doesn't appear to support syncing via iCloud though.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#85
Like everyone else on this tread I built a note-taking system!

Mine is called MindPalace and its special feature is that it is focused on spaced repetition and remembering the notes after they were written.

For me, whenever I would take notes, they would become stale and forgotten. Despite Emerson's quote “I cannot remember the books I've read any more than the meals I have eaten; even so, they have made me.”, I felt that there is a lot more to be gained from remembering them.

For instance, I can remember meetings past and insights gained by following up on meeting notes, or insights I got from reading books. I have almost a 1000 notes in my personal notebook.

BTW, the app is self-hosted and avilable here if anyone is interested: https://github.com/msipos/mind-palace

I'd be curious if anyone else does "spaced repetition note taking" and if anyone can share cool tools for that (my tool is not particularly good)

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#87
post #6

This is going to be one of those threads where everyone rattles off their own note-taking setup, which is great and all. So: There's a lot of things people tend to want from note-taking setups: easy entry, navigation and organization, wiki-like linkages, export to various formats, encryption. What I've found actually matters for my day-to-day and gets me to actually take lots of notes, though, is just (1) search and…

I think the fact that the topic of note taking comes up so frequently may suggest that it's still a problem to which there is not a very satisfactory solution.

Re: Note Taking in 2021

#88
It's kinda fascinating how something as simple as notetaking is still one of the big unsolved challanges in IT. We are constantly reimplementing the same decade-old concepts again and again, in slight variations and combinations, but yet hardly moving into a higher level of conquering this domain.

One reason is for sure is the wide number of requirements that everyone has. But another one seems to be the lack of big money flowing into that area and the low effort in researching it as a result. It's basically all just personal preference and randomness spreading.

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