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Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

notes.andymatuschak.org

11–20 of 66 posts

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#11
What the heck is with that crazy page design? The sliding panels and stuff. I'll see if I can figure out how to read it. That guy must do an awful lot of work keeping them organized and publicly presentable. His basic point is fine, "professional" note taking systems generally seem silly.

I have found it worthwhile to keep a bunch of org mode files about stuff I get interested in. They become progressively more useful as search engines get worse: if I find an interesting page and make a mental note of it, I probably won't be able to relocate it by remembering a few keywords as was formerly possible. So now I make a point of saving the link and ideally a quick summary in an org file. It's fairly practical to find stuff that way using emacs search commands (I could imagine improvements). But the individual files aren't particularly organized, they are just chronological (append new stuff to the end), with occasional updates or cross-links in the middle. I don't need anything fancier. I sometimes post the notes online (Org html export) and other people find them useful despite their near-total lack of structure.

This is not too different than the old fashioned way of reading books for English class: keep a yellow pad alongside of the book as you read, and as you read each page, note down the main points made on that page, along with the page number. Then when you have to write your class paper, it's pretty easy to go back over your notes to find what to use from the book, and to find it again in the book and cite it with page numbers.

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#12
post #5

Very refreshing to see content like this. Personally I'm VERY sick of the whole productivity hustle and the people who spout it. They prey on insecurities, make you feel like unless you're employing some kind of productivity system, you're cheating yourself or your employer. In reality however the very systems they tout steal away more productivity to maintain the productivity system itself than any benefit for actua…

I'm reminded of a story. This is going to date me. When I was in graduate school, the university computer store put out a pamphlet, to help you decide if you should get your own computer. The one memorable comment was:

Don't expect your computer to organize you. If you have a messy desk, you will have a messy computer.

It probably also applies to note taking, to-do lists, etc. I am living proof of this.

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#13
Like all those books on writing (or screenwriting) from people who have not published a book (or movie) you like.

One big difference, though, is if most people don’t take notes, then most successful people won’t take notes. (Not sure how you would know that if it’s even true).

My point is that you have a base rate problem on note taking.

I suspect that successful people have some system to think. It may be conversations, or writing emails or something else.

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#14

What the heck is with that crazy page design? The sliding panels and stuff. I'll see if I can figure out how to read it. That guy must do an awful lot of work keeping them organized and publicly presentable. His basic point is fine, "professional" note taking systems generally seem silly. I have found it worthwhile to keep a bunch of org mode files about stuff I get interested in. They become progressively more usefu…

> What the heck is with that crazy page design?

It's showing a stack of visited pages in a deep wiki structure. What you're viewing here is a dynamic view after partial exploration.

You might try starting here: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#16

What the heck is with that crazy page design? The sliding panels and stuff. I'll see if I can figure out how to read it. That guy must do an awful lot of work keeping them organized and publicly presentable. His basic point is fine, "professional" note taking systems generally seem silly. I have found it worthwhile to keep a bunch of org mode files about stuff I get interested in. They become progressively more usefu…

I had exactly the same problem thirteen years ago, so I made https://historio.us. You may find it useful, though it does need a bit of an update.

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#17
post #5

Very refreshing to see content like this. Personally I'm VERY sick of the whole productivity hustle and the people who spout it. They prey on insecurities, make you feel like unless you're employing some kind of productivity system, you're cheating yourself or your employer. In reality however the very systems they tout steal away more productivity to maintain the productivity system itself than any benefit for actua…

Anki helped me build vocabulary during language learning. Never heard of it used for productivity though. It actually took a bit of time to build my deck, so I thought never thought of it as saving me time compared to paid tools. Rather just something more custom.

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#18

What the heck is with that crazy page design? The sliding panels and stuff. I'll see if I can figure out how to read it. That guy must do an awful lot of work keeping them organized and publicly presentable. His basic point is fine, "professional" note taking systems generally seem silly. I have found it worthwhile to keep a bunch of org mode files about stuff I get interested in. They become progressively more usefu…

>This is not too different than the old fashioned way of reading books for English class: keep a yellow pad alongside of the book as you read, and as you read each page, note down the main points made on that page, along with the page number.

Wew… That’s a pretty painful way to “enjoy” a book.

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#19

What the heck is with that crazy page design? The sliding panels and stuff. I'll see if I can figure out how to read it. That guy must do an awful lot of work keeping them organized and publicly presentable. His basic point is fine, "professional" note taking systems generally seem silly. I have found it worthwhile to keep a bunch of org mode files about stuff I get interested in. They become progressively more usefu…

This is similar to being able to open a book at some location while reading another book and put them side by side for syntopic reading.

Also see http://fed.wiki.org/view/welcome-visitors and https://github.com/deathau/sliding-panes-obsidian.

Re: Those writing extensively on note-writing rarely have a serious context of use

#20

What the heck is with that crazy page design? The sliding panels and stuff. I'll see if I can figure out how to read it. That guy must do an awful lot of work keeping them organized and publicly presentable. His basic point is fine, "professional" note taking systems generally seem silly. I have found it worthwhile to keep a bunch of org mode files about stuff I get interested in. They become progressively more usefu…

> What the heck is with that crazy page design? It's showing a stack of visited pages in a deep wiki structure. What you're viewing here is a dynamic view after partial exploration. You might try starting here: https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes

Yeah I guess it makes sense, it just threw me at first. There are also all the little pop-up notes on things. Again, it looks very time consuming to maintain. I find it sufficient to just record the info in a file, and search for what I need in it using search commands or grep. For nesting info, the tree features of org mode seem like enough. Maybe I'll need more organization if my volume of notes gets a lot larger.

I do have an idea for a big optimization but it's less about the notes than the source materials. I may try to write it up sometime. I look at the really big personal notes sites (gwern.net comes to mind) and wonder how the heck the authors ever find the time. Andymatuschak.org seems like another one of those. Do the authors do anything else, have regular jobs, or anything like that?

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