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Daily Notes Considered Harmful

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Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#11

Post by Brajeshwar »

sevensor wrote: post #9

I have a single system that I use for both digital and paper notes. Start writing, put new stuff at the end. Date every entry. Use topic headings that stand out clearly from the text. When it gets too full, slap a date on the file / notebook and open a new one. Mostly this is not for returning to, but for thinking things through, although the paper system is also good for to do lists.

Nice. I followed this process of appending the date instead of new notes (or pages) because the paper is too costly. I fell in love with the Midori MD Notebook. I do not want to waste space on the paper, and hence keep appending new notes.

Btw, try out those translucent sticky notes for the highlights.

Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#12

Post by massysett »

“That value is exponentiated each time a note is shared.”

I disagree, I write notes for my eyes only. They would be less useful, not more, if I shared them: I world have to make sure others understand it, and would need to censor it to avoid offense.

A note that will be shared is called email, or a social media post, not a note. A note is for personal use. This notion of a note being more valuable if shared is baffling to me.

Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#14

Post by ashton314 »

> The value of a note is directly proportional to the number of times it is visited.

That’s an easy thing to measure, but that doesn’t make it a good measure.

A note is valuable when it aids your thinking, problem solving, recall, etc. How many times you visit it is irrelevant. Some of my most valuable notes were ones I visited once or twice. Some were valuable because I just wrote it down; that was enough to aid my memory or thinking.

Proxy metrics are more harmful than the worst data-hoarding habits. See: JIRA

Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#15

Post by jacknews »

It seems to me a good part of the value of daily notes is to reflect and consolidate, even if the notes are never revisited.

Sticking the whole mess into an LLM might be a good way to get some 'recall' use from notes, without necessarily revisiting them.

Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#17

Post by peterlk »

ashton314 wrote: post #14

> The value of a note is directly proportional to the number of times it is visited. That’s an easy thing to measure, but that doesn’t make it a good measure. A note is valuable when it aids your thinking, problem solving, recall, etc. How many times you visit it is irrelevant. Some of my most valuable notes were ones I visited once or twice. Some were valuable because I just wrote it down; that was enough to aid my…

I am never sure which notes I am going to reference again. Most of my daily notes go unread forever. But occasionally, that seemingly trivial thing that I jotted down in a meeting turns out to be _very_ important. I have AI assistants that take notes for me too, but somehow I can’t stop taking notes in meetings - and occasionally this has saved me (note taker bugged out).

Daily notes are also where I do a lot of scratch pad thinking, and occasionally those come in handy as well.

Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#18

Post by 1123581321 »

A daily notes page or view is ideally automatically appended to with a reference when you create anything that day, so you spend little time on it but it’s there when you want to find something or review/reflect.

I can see how a time-consuming/duplicative effort dated notes page would not be worthwhile.

Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#19

Post by sgoody »

peterlk wrote: post #17
ashton314 wrote: post #14

> The value of a note is directly proportional to the number of times it is visited. That’s an easy thing to measure, but that doesn’t make it a good measure. A note is valuable when it aids your thinking, problem solving, recall, etc. How many times you visit it is irrelevant. Some of my most valuable notes were ones I visited once or twice. Some were valuable because I just wrote it down; that was enough to aid my…

I am never sure which notes I am going to reference again. Most of my daily notes go unread forever. But occasionally, that seemingly trivial thing that I jotted down in a meeting turns out to be _very_ important. I have AI assistants that take notes for me too, but somehow I can’t stop taking notes in meetings - and occasionally this has saved me (note taker bugged out). Daily notes are also where I do a lot of scra…

I agree here. When I take notes more formally in a structured way, I often feel like there isn't a good place to store something. Or I think something is so scrappy that it doesn't "deserve" to be a note in a carefully curated store, so I don't write it down.

When taking daily notes... I can just literally fire anything into the note and forget about it.

If it's something I'm actively working on, it'll be in a note from a couple of days back.

If it's something more historic, it can sit gathering dust and I never need to worry about it and maybe if I need something I can just search over the notes files.

Re: Daily Notes Considered Harmful

#20

Post by sevensor »

Brajeshwar wrote: post #11
sevensor wrote: post #9

I have a single system that I use for both digital and paper notes. Start writing, put new stuff at the end. Date every entry. Use topic headings that stand out clearly from the text. When it gets too full, slap a date on the file / notebook and open a new one. Mostly this is not for returning to, but for thinking things through, although the paper system is also good for to do lists.

Nice. I followed this process of appending the date instead of new notes (or pages) because the paper is too costly. I fell in love with the Midori MD Notebook. I do not want to waste space on the paper, and hence keep appending new notes. Btw, try out those translucent sticky notes for the highlights.

That is a great notebook; I agree that it’s too fine to leave pages unwritten. The only time I do that is when I change jobs. I’ll have to search up those sticky notes; I didn’t know they existed!
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