I still haven't found any note taking software that has a variety of strikethrough styles. Besides single and double strikethrough, I'd like to see squiggly line and diagonal dashes at least.
Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
171–180 of 219 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#172I mostly abandonded keeping notes, bookmarks etc because I realised it became another "collecting" exercise and sucked up time far in excess of it's utility. I make specific exceptions (especially for things that may be of use to others) but I become too addicted to the act of collating and organising. Gmail with it's "search don't sort" was an eye opener back in the day. I stopped filing emails and realised with a d…
I've started letting most notes “expire” (many are on paper that eventually gets forgotten or deliberately thrown away) rather than making any effort to reorganise them over time, but I still make them. I find the process of transcribing makes me think of side issues and other connections that I might otherwise miss, much like explaining something to another person does. Having made the notes and those connections, I'm more likely to remember enough so that I can easily rethink the rest of the details (or find them online if that was the original source) should I need to in future.
> "search don't sort" ... stopped filing ... with a decent search, I saved so much time.
Similarly, what notes I do keep long term are in a bunch of text files which I can search easily or Google Keep (more the former ATM, Keep I use mostly for short term lists & reminders now).
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#173A related question for note-takers: what would you estimate as your rate of reference to prior notes? For my own part that rate is so dismally low that right now I get more value out of making notes than retrieving and reading notes. I'm reminded of a response to another thread on HN a few weeks back about organizing physical documents. Many commenters had very sophisticated processes with scanning, OCR, indexing etc…
My rate of reference is pretty high. I have a job that involves a lot of research projects. My process often goes like this:
1. Someone calls me with a project. I take notes about what they need.
2. I look at my notes to figure out what to research. '
3. As I do the research, I take notes about the results
4. I look at my notes to draft an e-mail or memo about the research
5. I look back at my notes from the call to make sure I got what they wanted
Another task I often have is having a call with someone (sometimes a very long call) and then writing an e-mail about it:
1. Take notes on the call
2. Draft e-mail based on notes
3. Review notes to make sure the e-mail encompasses everything
I definitely refer to old notes less. But here are some examples where I constantly refer back:
1. I have a note with the terminal command to strip Mac OS system files from .zip files. I refer back to that a lot.
2. I have notes about my wife's favorite takeout orders that I check before I put the orders in.
3. I have a long note called "Python Dev Stuff" that describes how to set up my Python environment, that I look at whenever I get a new laptop or do a major OS update.
4. I have a "blog post ideas" note where I write down ideas for blog posts. When I want to do a post and can't think of what to write about, I look at that note.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
I was debating between that one and the iPad mini! Sounds like an awesome device, must be great for reading as well. The main reason I went for the iPad mini was the size (and apps maybe). Before I had an iPad Air 10.5 inch, and it was just too big for my use, it made it inconvenient. I'm still debating getting one anyway. It has that "coolness factor", and I want it haha. If they ever produce a smaller version I am…
The RM size is an advantage IMHO! It is very thin and does not feel "chunky", but the screen is large enough to be very comfortable for reading and writing (pretty much the same size as a normal notebook page). The main differentiator between the RM and other tablets (such as iPad), besides the excellent "write on e-ink" interface, is that the RM device is very committed to a minimalistic approach. There are lots of…
It's impossible to make a one-size-fits-all device. For me, the Remarkable is too small. I wish they would come out with an A4-sized display. That's the size of paper I generally take notes on and it's the native size for most PDFs.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#175I forget things, I know that I will forget things.
My brain doesn't remember full facts, it's more like the old school card index from a library. I retain information on where I can find things, not the things itself.
Note taking speeds this process up by letting me store all the things in a single place . With the added bonus that I know my notes won't just disappear from the internet one day.
I use Notion for stuff I need to share with others and things that need a bunch of embeds or images. Obsidian for text-only notes and more private stuff. Pinboard for bookmarks with the paid archiving feature enabled.
I treat bookmarks as mostly ephemeral, I can't usually be arsed to configure bookmark syncing between all the computers I use, Pinboard is mostly enough for long-term storage.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#176There is a saying in japanese that ideas don't come from kami but from kami. Kami in the first meaning means god. In the second it means paper.
So ideas don't come from god but from paper.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#177There is a saying in japanese that ideas don't come from kami but from kami. Kami in the first meaning means god. In the second it means paper. So ideas don't come from god but from paper.
This is it, i think. Note taking can somehow lately sound like a weird tech fetish but it's just about how to write. For millenia we only had one way to write, and we were pretty obsessed. Now we've got more options, and we're exploring them, but we're no more obsessed with information capture now than, say, the Roman emperor Constantine was.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#178I mostly abandonded keeping notes, bookmarks etc because I realised it became another "collecting" exercise and sucked up time far in excess of it's utility. I make specific exceptions (especially for things that may be of use to others) but I become too addicted to the act of collating and organising. Gmail with it's "search don't sort" was an eye opener back in the day. I stopped filing emails and realised with a d…
I’m much the same. I only keep note of: - Stuff that has a lot of details that rarely change (all my insurance policies, what they cover, the policy numbers etc. - Details that are “hot” in my mind right now that I might need in the same detail later (the steps to refill my boiler, the exact type of door handle I bought for my bathroom door when it broke, so I can purchase the same one once my kitchen door handle bre…
For me note taking is to:
- cognitively offload things for later and preserving work in progress; - archive things without processing (like a data lake); - build a corpus of knowledge to both improve my understanding of a subject and have a reference material that I can later look up.
I have spent a significant share of my life organizing my notes in a mnemonic tree and also writing code to improve it's usability but the dividends are starting to pay off.
It's good to have a functional 'external brain' to perform in a digital world that is filled by 'trash'. A decade ago you could find a good answer for 'everything' on Google. Today, besides a few islands of knowledge, you mostly find SEO optimized machine-generated stuff.
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#179IF YOU DON"T WRITE IT DOWN... IT NEVER HAPPENED
Re: Ask HN: Why the obsession with note taking?
#180It isn't about note taking, it's about supporting a brain that simply isn't capable of retaining the level of information that we have to deal with. The ultimate note taking device is actually an augmented human brain that has perfect recollection and organisation. In the mean time the note taking apps help with: Working memory - a page can hold far more information than I can retain in my working memory. Having a bu…
This is the 'official' explanation, and definitely true. But most of it is selling that next productivity upgrade that we communally all seem to obsess over here. People sharing their note graphs is the same as the guy on youtube with a sixpack promising a new and revolutionary 5 minute ab routine. And while the 5 minute ab routine certainly won't harm you, that body was built from months of discipline and required a…
> “Just like actual productive note taking and creative thinking is about spending time with your notes every day, and not the software.”
This is very cynical reasoning. I’m not sure what this passage means.
For example, ‘productive note taking’ is a fraught statement to begin with, and the passage ends with the suggestion we’re wasting time—my guess.
I’m not making this minor point to have an argument, rather, to highlight a curious idea. Learning is arduous and a mixed bag. The cynical take down, or the undercutting joke is a bit of a psychological trick to snap us out of difficult decisions for spending too much time practicing and not enough time actually doing. Some might say whatever sport you make of learning, in the end it’s just ‘work’ … and doing nothing is also good use if our time for mental health.
So THEN, all this focus on note taking and learning how to learn is maddening and seems wasteful—not working and earning, not learning more of what employers pay money to do, and not just using the time to do nothing and be healthy. So the cynical argument (I’m starting to think this also could be a ‘joke’; XKCD) is to say all these note taking efforts are simply money making schemes.
Maybe some are. And, my personal take, maybe the note taking problem is just an interesting language/computer/information problem at _human_ scale.