Ask HN: What is a sustainable methodology for taking notes of your learning?

https://www.jetpens.com/Apica-Premium-C.D.-Notebook-B5-7-mm-...

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Pilot Vanishing Point Fountain Pen (Or Lamy Safari 2000)

After using Remarkable tablet (and iPad with pencil) for nearly 2 years, and various notes tech (mem.ai, roam, logseq), for “serious” notes (I.e learning a new topic) I went back to my handwriting days and realized what I was missing. Key features:

1. You can flip through pages really fast and find your notes from visual cues. Ah yes I remember how the page looked, here it is.

2. You can create an index page to quickly find topics you’ve written about. No need to build an exhaustive index right away. When you find yourself hunting for “where did I write about this equation”, then make an entry after finding it.

3. You can freely make diagrams, link things on a page with arrows, circle portions of text or equations and write side notes in different color pens (stabilo pens are good for this)

4. No shoulder/wrist strain issues from computer typing.

5. You really do find yourself revisiting your notes often. Even if you don’t, remember Feynman:

>”A visitor came to Richard Feynman's office. When he saw Fenyman's notebooks, he was excited to see "records of Feynman's thinking." Feynman replied, "They aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process." Writing is thinking. Plenty of people think, then write.”

Of course “write” can be interpreted as writing on computer, but Especially for “mathy” notes, I believe writing with pen + paper makes a huge difference in learning, thinking, retention, recall.

I’m no Luddite but I’d like to focus on what really matters (my learning and recall, and yes the quality of my experience) and avoid contributing to some startup’s ARR and a VC’s returns.

I still use logseq (and Apple notes) for less serious things like quick meeting notes or pasting receipts etc.

Not sure if you're trying to convey some "zen" advice but the way I actually synthesize & connect information is to take notes. My previous comment on how many thinkers use notes like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30331114

If you're suggesting that the mind makes more synthesis & connections without notes, I guess that's possible but that's not what happens in my case. Maybe that just means brains are different.

The general idea is this.

1. Take "Literature Notes" in your own words as you consume content. These are little summaries of ideas in the text that are usually 1-3 lines. For paper books, I do this in a little Muji notebook. For digital resources, these go straight in Roam. 2. When you have finished the resource, copy your notes to one page and summarise them in "Permanent Notes". 3. Keep your Permanent Notes in one Permanent Note page and link everything together.

The best guide I found for getting this kind of system set up was https://www.nateliason.com/blog/smart-notes. The original "How to Take Smart Notes" book is also good, but much less concrete.

Really, I found step 1 to be the most valuable. I was previously processing highlights from articles and books and that weirdly took more time. Writing little notes as you go along saves only what is relevant and it's much more direct for your use cases.

As a word of warning though, I really haven't gotten this stuff to work very well for programming (or disciplines where you need to exercise knowledge rather than archive it in a system). I either find I need to memorise the stuff more directly with Anki, or having to practice skills in a real world context.

File format not going away. Sync on onedrive. Outlining. Formatting. Integration with referencing software. Already installed on any windows machine I use. And when I want to write a paper I'm in the right app already.

Crazy huh.

Equation editing is horrible if there are lots of them but in the plus side word mostly understands latex math these days.

You need a master index of what you do where.

Then use sub indices until you reach your concrete notes. Don't expect these to be tidy or simple. They are living documents.