Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 219 posts

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

#51

Post by tgaj »

MattGaiser wrote: post #31
kkoncevicius wrote: post #28

My 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.

Do you not have a need to regularly record information in your life for later (genuine question)? I am curious how you avoid note taking without forgetting a ton of things.

I am not sure if I understood this question but with unmedicated ADHD you really have to write everything down, even the smallest, simplest tasks, and a lot of information for "future me". I even have to write about things that I do every day. Nothing really sticks in your mind. Notetaking is not a choice but a neccesity. When you are medicated you still want to take notes it you want to be even more organized but you can choose not too and probably be fine like a lot of other people without ADHD.

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

#52

Post by psyc »

jb1991 wrote: post #14

As Stephen King has said, and Edgar Allen Poe as well, in a different way, writing something down is the perfect way to make sure you keep bad ideas around. I’m not against all notetaking, but I do believe that doing it by default does have some drawbacks.

I'm not entirely sure I get his meaning - which I take to be using your memory to filter for good ideas. Sounds like something a savant would say, not realizing they have an unusual brain.

But I bet Stephen King types his novels, rather than dictating them to his editor from memory. Jay Z is said (by himself and numerous collaborators) not to write his lyrics down. He writes them in his head, and recites them from his head in the studio.

I can't remember any ideas that originate in my head, that I haven't seen with my eyes. Except for those thrice-in-a-lifetime level ideas. I've tried the "if it's good I'll remember it" approach literally hundreds of times, and maybe retained three of those. I've had more than three good ideas in my life. I don't only want to remember the A+++ ones. I want the A++ ones, the A+ ones, and so on, so that I can work on refining them. Note taking apps are really handy for refining.

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

#54

Post by sippeangelo »

simias wrote: post #22

My 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.

Same, but I never tried. Back in school we were encouraged to take notes during lectures, but I found that if I was focused on note taking them I wouldn't take in any of what was presented to me, and my notes would be useless. No note taking software even comes close to how my brain works either. Of the few notes I've actually taken I've never gone back to read them again. Sure, I will forget stuff, but I feel like in most instances I can just go back and relearn them faster than the time I would have wasted on taking notes, categorizing them and making them searchable.

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

#55

Post by tlb »

It's one way for people to cope with information overload. Instead of letting the information firehose spray into space, try to store it somewhere.

You can certainly store some for future use, but when people get excited about fancy systems it's probably a sign that they should cut down their information input, rather than looking for fancier offloading tools.

It's analogous to a scarcity/abundance mindset. The abundance mindset realizes that all the information will still be out there when you need it, so there's no need to hoard. (Information that's specific to yourself is still worth recording.)

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

#56

Post by [deleted] »

odiroot wrote: post #42
kkoncevicius wrote: post #28

My 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.

> My take - note taking is a symtom of ADHD It's not a symptom of ADHD. It's one of the coping strategies for people with ADHD who have problems memorising things.

[deleted]

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

#57

Post by sputr »

WA wrote: post #40
kkoncevicius wrote: post #28

My 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.

Funny, but nah. Writing it down is a way to structure thoughts and get it out of your system. But I use a simple text editor (Sublime) for this and I write them in a braindump-kind-of-way. There's really only one thing you gotta know about note-taking: you either optimize for fast writing or for fast information retrieval. Since I rarely read my notes, I optimize for fast dumping them. All apps and organizational sch…

> Writing it down is a way to structure thoughts and get it out of your system.

Why do you feel the need to "structure thoughts" and "get it out of your system"?

Asking as a way to point out that feeling the need to do it is not a forgone conclusion.

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

#58

Post by KptMarchewa »

simias wrote: post #22

My 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.

Every time I set something up I later forget to actually use it when I get the info that should be saved.

One thing I'm able to successfully track are meetings and appointments in google calendar.

Work stuff is usually tracked on jira/github issues, and when I see the issue I usually remember all the context that was established when creating the issue - if it was internal, so I have no problems there.

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

#59

Post by iqanq »

odiroot wrote: post #42
kkoncevicius wrote: post #28

My 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.

> My take - note taking is a symtom of ADHD It's not a symptom of ADHD. It's one of the coping strategies for people with ADHD who have problems memorising things.

No post body was provided.

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

#60

Post by xlii »

There are a few vectors to it:

- Note-taking (only by hand, mind you!) helps with learning [1], and thus it's recommended by many specialists. Unfortunately, "note-taking" vs "keyboard typing" is quite often lost in context for those situations

- It adheres to kinesthetic memory. Some people need to have physical activity to remember better

- It might be a coping mechanism for ADHD - those can include doodles, colorful tags, etc.

- It scratches the "collector" itch for some (data hoarding is a thing)

- It allows for externalization mechanism (ever had this feeling that you won't be able to get back from somewhere after driving there with GPS? - similar thing but with notes)

But in the end, it's relatable since almost every person with internet access had to take notes at some point in their life, and - as you mentioned - that's dopamine, so a fun thing to check out to something that relates to almost everyone.

As for me, personally, I use the act of writing itself, as I never revisit the notes. A long time ago I caused quite a stir in my school when I went for concept maps instead of having full-text notes (which were required at the time).

[1]: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.0070... (Sidenote: there are more studies about it as it's quite researched subject)

Post reply on HN