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Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

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Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#1

Post by dmje »

If there's one thing absolutely guaranteed to get a gazillion comments on HN, it's a post about either 1) note taking software, 2) note taking methodology 3) a combination of the two.

I'm kinda fascinated by this, in large part because I'm sucked in by it too. I can't count the number of apps I've tried, or the dopamine rush when installing a new one.

What's this about? Do we all secretly believe we can be truly better people if we can just get this right? Or are we just endlessly curious about what everyone else does? Tell me, I need to understand myself better!

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#2

Post by jl6 »

A big part of a software engineer’s job is to organize data. Notes are data. Usually very personal data that we understand completely. If we can’t even organize that right, then what hope do we have?

It’s professional pride.

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#3

Post by simonbarker87 »

It taps into so many productivity desires we have. In reality very few people are probably good at keeping notes and organising them well, yet we all want to be better and feel like note taking utopia and external organised brain is just over the next productivity summit.

It’s a hard problem to solve and that leads to many people “having a go” at it.

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#4

Post by eternityforest »

All notetaking apps are disappointing with the possibile exception of Obsidian that I haven't tried long enough to have an opinion on.

There's no open source standard. No LibreOffice or Krita of notetaking.

They all only have a small subset of features one might want.

And yet they are critical infrastructure for people's entire life. It's a pretty exciting space.

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#5

Post by unfocussed_mike »

I went through that phase.

I've stopped trying to get it _right_ and I just focus on actually doing it.

Simplenote, Things and Apple Notes get the closest to doing what I need; I've used only the latter for several years now (despite the egregious alternate lowercase A and all the yellow).

My guess is that we all think that the right application can save us from the failings of (or failure to consult) our notes, when the truth is that it's note-taking discipline that wins the day, not functionality.

The main thing I took from all of my searches through the world of notes apps is that if you don't write almost all your notes (and especially your to-do actions) as complete sentences, you're failing right out of the gate, no matter what app you write in.

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#6

Post by cryoz »

eternityforest wrote: post #4

All notetaking apps are disappointing with the possibile exception of Obsidian that I haven't tried long enough to have an opinion on. There's no open source standard. No LibreOffice or Krita of notetaking. They all only have a small subset of features one might want. And yet they are critical infrastructure for people's entire life. It's a pretty exciting space.

Logseq seems promising.

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#8

Post by Mikeb85 »

> What's this about? Do we all secretly believe we can be truly better people if we can just get this right?

I think so. In the end I just use Google Keep for mundane things like grocery lists (haven't found anything better for that, checkboxes and autocompletes most common items so it's quick) or random ideas I have (it's easy since it's on a phone and cloud). For programming shit it's todos in a readme in the repository. It's more about the act of writing it down than any feature in any app.

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#9

Post by unfocussed_mike »

eternityforest wrote: post #4

All notetaking apps are disappointing with the possibile exception of Obsidian that I haven't tried long enough to have an opinion on. There's no open source standard. No LibreOffice or Krita of notetaking. They all only have a small subset of features one might want. And yet they are critical infrastructure for people's entire life. It's a pretty exciting space.

I think all notetaking apps are a sort of function of their environment, too, because they all benefit enormously from ubiquity.

So for me as a long-time Mac user (and rather less long-time iPhone/iPad user), the realistic benchmark is Apple Notes: it is simplistic, fast, well-integrated and ubiquitous. It has just enough features to be useful and not enough features to be opinionated.

Absent the iPhone side of things, I'd likely use Simplenote.

Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

#10

Post by MattGaiser »

So much of the chaos of day to day work is an inability of organizations to make decisions and even after making the decision, remembering enough of it the next day or even next hour to use the information. When it comes to spreading that over a year or after someone departs, forget it.

There is also enormous inefficiency caused by covering the same ground over and over again, but it happens quite frequently as nothing survives from one discussion to the next. In addition, lots of decisions get made in side Slack channels.

There are some massive gains here to be had if this can be solved.

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