From the very beginning, I kept a 'dirt notebook' only, but because of its lack of structure, some thoughts would occasionally get lost or were hard to make sense of. Then I switched to ColorNote, but it has poor formatting. Recently, I asked an LLM to divide my ColorNote notes into notes and tasks in .md format for Obsidian. The LLM, by the way, did a bad job: some notes were mistakenly identified as tasks and vice versa.
Also, I had a problem with task notifications because tasks in standard Android apps like Google Tasks are easily swiped away from the phone's notification shade. As a result, I installed Notification Notes, which lets you change the behavior of notifications.
I started a “dirt notebook”
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Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#82i do the same thing, i have a notebook stream of thought writing, notepad for scibbles, and a notebook for journaling (the one i dont like to dirty). funny how someone else had the same exact problem and we came up with similar solutions independently.
I’ve used notepads as well for notebook but scratch purposes. Sometimes there’s stuff there worth keeping which I transfer over to a more permanent place. But a notepad, for whatever reason, just feels more disposable than a notebook even though the only real difference is no cover.
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conventional wisdom is to use a bound notebook, as a court will discount reliability if pages can be removed without leaving a trace.
Why would I care about a court? There are a hundred different issues that are more important to me than the usability of my notebook in a court proceeding. And even so, that proceeding might easily be one against you, so why would you want to produce reliable evidence against yourself?
alibi
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
Conventional wisdom is to use a bound notebook, as a court will discount reliability if pages can be removed without leaving a trace.
Why would I care about a court? There are a hundred different issues that are more important to me than the usability of my notebook in a court proceeding. And even so, that proceeding might easily be one against you, so why would you want to produce reliable evidence against yourself?
evidence that you reduced an idea to an invention before someone else so you can exercise IP rights
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#85Whenever I get a new notebook, I immediately scribble on the front page before I have a chance to stop myself. There. It's tainted and imperfect. And then I've given myself permission to make messy notes, and jot down just whatever, rather than treating it like some museum-grade archive.
I’ve always had an aversion to people that make neat notes. Anecdotally my experience in high school was that people that made clean notes and spent a lot of time on them always sucked at actual academics- like doing well on tests and intuitive understanding.
I think that the two examples of messy notebooks that the OA links to are remarkably restrained.
My practice is to capture the raw stuff on the right hand page and then keep the left hand page for later clarification or distillation. Thus a quick flick through a notebook shows which pages got developed further than the daily flux.
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#86I gave up trying to organize notes at all. I’ll try to keep the same notebook with me, but if I don’t happen to have it handy, I’d rather just write in whatever I’ve got lying around. Now there are many half-filled notebooks all over, and I stopped worrying about filling up one before opening the next. I don’t refer to them either, taking the notes helps me pay more attention, even if I will never read them.
I have also reconciled to not revisiting these notebooks. My handwriting also ensures I cant understand whatever i have scribbled at that point in time and I pity anyone who tries to decipher them. It took a while to convince my brain that this was not a pointless activity and its to stay in the moment.
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would I care about a court? There are a hundred different issues that are more important to me than the usability of my notebook in a court proceeding. And even so, that proceeding might easily be one against you, so why would you want to produce reliable evidence against yourself?
evidence that you reduced an idea to an invention before someone else so you can exercise IP rights
Lab book with numbered pages and dated entries for semi-thought out specifications when it gets serious? But there needs to be a level of scribbling on whiteboards/backs of envelopes/napkins before that stage?
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
my good notes have their origins in thoughts I had while in the shower or while driving or watching a movie or a conversation with someone close to me. Ideas evade me when I'm at my desk in front of my notebook with my awesome pen. This was a huge problem I never noticed that my notebook is never there for me when i need it the most. the second problem, because its my original thought, I'm naturally attached and bias…
I always have my phone with me so I can take a note in that. But when I'm meeting with someone I prefer taking notes in a little notebook I carry, I don't want the other person to feel like I'm...on my phone while speaking to them.
screens distract everyone. I avoid them. in meetings, I use a piece of paper or a whiteboard. Everyone can see what is being written on it.
on that note, the small whiteboard right next to my desk (at home) was a great idea too
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
What kind of notes do you take? It's always been kind of difficult, as someone who takes maybe a page of notes a week, to imagine what people fill entire books of notes full, outside of university etc.? I had a friend who would write notes on everything. Every time he learned something, he would write it down in his own words. This sounds good, but he ended up basically internalizing and studying his own misunderstan…
Sure. For me writing is an aide to thinking and remembering. When I have a thought, a task or anything I don’t want to lose, I just pull up my pocketbook and write it down. For my bigger notebook, I use it to jumpstart any task or project that needs several steps. I feel it helpful to write thoughts down, like it forces me to actually think thoughts through and end a sentence with a dot. I also sometimes sketch, make…
Thank you very much, these are some very interesting ideas! I appreciate that you took the time to write them down.
Re: I started a “dirt notebook”
#90[dead]