Note taking itself is an interesting thing but also a robust and usable 'my-archive.org' experience. That's where all notetaking solutions fail for me; I can take notes and organize info, but in 5 years, all of it will be lost or at least not in a usable form. I have tried a lot of apps, but nothing really works over time. Everything works for 'today'; that's nice, but deo volente I am around 10-20 years from now (as I am 20 years after 2000 when I also took notes which are worthless now because broken links, images, not searchable etc).
Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
21–30 of 219 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#22My deep dark secret is that I never take notes. Not for lack of trying, I just don't know how to do it. I never did it at school, never did it at work, never did it outside of work. I'm in my mid-thirties now, I just gave up on the concept.
Every time I see a post on HN about how somebody manages to organize their lives around a personal wiki or org-mode or whatever I get a bit jealous.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#23I don't know, but, if you want to actually remember stuff, handwritten notes are better than digital notes. Unless you need to write down a detailed set of instructions, handwriting will generally be the better way to go. See https://effectiviology.com/handwriting-vs-typing-how-to-take...
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#24So 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 nothi…
As a counterpoint, one can view this as a feature and not a bug. An organization that fastidiously remembers everything might soon drown itself in memories, as it attempts to fit every new piece of information into the context of all memories. Much like a human savant could end up effectively paralyzed by frequently recollections of irrelevant trivia.
Obviously there’s a middle ground between the above and the “amnesia” that many orgs seem to suffer from, but digging into the actual causes of the amnesia and confusion often reveals it’s not due to missing tools (off either the software or organizational variety)
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#25I think people are interested in these tools, because they help them mitigate stress from cognitive load: If you have written it down, you don't have the fear of losing your thought.
For me personally, writing notes down is indeed the most important step. I don't read most of the notes ever again :)
A nice UX gives dopamine bonus points for this act of getting peace of mind.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#26My interest in the subject is mostly that I've not yet found a system that I can work with, I'm absolutely terrible at taking notes, and at using the notes I take, to the point where I don't even know where or what they are.
I'm also terrible at identifying which information to note down, and inconsistent in even attempting to identify it.
So I'm following the topic out of curiosity that a tool might appear that will truly argument my disorganized mind with the skill and dicipline of organization.
I've found Dendron interesting, and have started using it a bit, but I feel it's not "ambient" enough, I need something that interacts extremely well with my phone, home computer and work computer, and is not cloud based.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#27> 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.
> Ask HN: Why the Obsession with Note Taking?
Is this some sort of social experiment? (I shall not be suc-- oh, damn!)
For me it's notes but more the closely related to-dos, and I'm always interested because it's something I want to be better at doing (from a very low starting point of almost never having anything up to date written down) but never quite manage or find myself happy with methods/apps/sites I can find.
A while ago I decided/realised my personal preference would be GitHub issues, trouble is I need them to do two things:
1. Implement 'projects' in the mobile app - https://github.com/github/feedback/discussions/5609
2. Option to auto-add all my repos to a project - https://github.com/github/feedback/discussions/6258
then I'll be happy, shall stop obsessing over it, and stop upvoting and participating in these threads. /s
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#28My take - note taking is a symtom of ADHD. The fact these topics are popular on HN suggests there are quite a lot of ADHD people here.
The counter intuitive thing is that these apps are thought of as something that helps with attention disorders. But wanting to "organize life", "track thoughts and ideas", "never forget what you learned", etc, are symptoms, not cures.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#29So 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 nothi…
As a counterpoint, one can view this as a feature and not a bug. An organization that fastidiously remembers everything might soon drown itself in memories, as it attempts to fit every new piece of information into the context of all memories. Much like a human savant could end up effectively paralyzed by frequently recollections of irrelevant trivia. Obviously there’s a middle ground between the above and the “amnes…
Well this is part of the unsolved problem. How can you take notes and organize themin a high density way that you don't drown yourself in them?
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#30My deep dark secret is that I never take notes. Not for lack of trying, I just don't know how to do it. I never did it at school, never did it at work, never did it outside of work. I'm in my mid-thirties now, I just gave up on the concept. Every time I see a post on HN about how somebody manages to organize their lives around a personal wiki or org-mode or whatever I get a bit jealous.
Me too, I can't imagine the discipline, skill and time it takes to be organized like that (or at all tbh).