I recommand an amazing cross-platform note-taking tool: Trilium(https://github.com/zadam/trilium) made by zadam.
Incremental note-taking
21–30 of 68 posts
Re: Incremental note-taking
#22My personal note taking system is based around plain text files in Git repositories. I edit with NeoVIM and use ripgrep (and other shell tools) to recall. I started out (in 2014 or 2015) with a wiki-like style, but I switched to a time-based/append-only style (in 2019) when I realized that not everything that I wanted to write down needed its own name. I still use some remnants of the old wiki style, but I mostly use a few append-only files/folders.
I have `scratch` where I'll write just about anything, it has upcoming tasks, my current place in TV shows, juggling patterns, math problems, and drafts (including this message). Many things in it are unlabeled and I often delete things from it, relying on Git to store the history. I have `viewed-topics` which lists things (HN/Reddit threads, papers, talks) I've read/watched with a summary, my thoughts and related things from the past. Last I have dated notes (files named `YYYY-MM-DD`) where I write things that happened, philosophical rambles, mental constructions, shower thoughts, etc. Often these will reference previous notes.
I've been thinking about how to improve this for a while because it doesn't handle "updates" to old notes well. I currently have three ways I do it: (1) copy then change (with a reference), (2) append in place with a marker (WRITTEN YYYY-MM-DD), or (3) new note with just changes (and a reference). Each has problems, (1) makes seeing changes difficult, (2) is impure and can make it hard to find by date, and (3) makes seeing the "current" version difficult. I relate this to version control, particularly the tradeoff between (1) and (3). Git allows seeing both diffs and states fairly easily, but it doesn't track bits of text between files well enough. I've thought about it off and on but always manage to confuse myself without producing any solutions.
TL;DR I greatly agree but want better updates
Re: Incremental note-taking
#23My personal note taking system is based around plain text files in Git repositories. I edit with NeoVIM and use ripgrep (and other shell tools) to recall. I started out (in 2014 or 2015) with a wiki-like style, but I switched to a time-based/append-only style (in 2019) when I realized that not everything that I wanted to write down needed its own name. I still use some remnants of the old wiki style, but I mostly use…
Similar experience, similar conclusion but I ended up with a system around todo.txt. A note gets an todo entry and a reference to a note (in markdown). Updates sometimes get a new todo entry w/ link to the same note. Some notes are structured in a diary-like fashion.
Re: Incremental note-taking
#24Slightly offtopic: There is a thing called "Incremental Reading" [1], and I guess this article is (remotely) inspired by that. It's well known, cult-like method in note-taking / memorizing community. Worth a read, although not directly applicable to most people's life. (Some more context: [2])
Re: Incremental note-taking
#25Slightly offtopic: There is a thing called "Incremental Reading" [1], and I guess this article is (remotely) inspired by that. It's well known, cult-like method in note-taking / memorizing community. Worth a read, although not directly applicable to most people's life. (Some more context: [2]) [1] http://super-memory.com/help/read.htm [2] https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/
(The expanded and updated version of the parent's first referenced article is [1].)
I'd say on-topic. The core of incremental reading is a highly configurable mechanism of distributed exposure to your notes over time, which is an activity the article advocates for. In addition to letting the user walk the revision path through the note maze, the SuperMemo implementation walks the extra mile in suggesting an optimal schedule of revision given constraints, priority criteria, and past performance. The tools mentioned in the article, including (inc)remental, do not suggest any schedule of revision, nor explicitly tackle the problem of measurably preserving information in long-term memory (which, in SuperMemo, is the culmination of the incremental reading process).
The word "reading" in incremental reading can be misleading in establishing a relationship with note-taking, but "reading", here, is far more than "consumption": elaboration/editing of notes is encouraged (even necessary) for brain-friendly formulation and memory preservation, which is also another point the article touches on (though it ultimately seems to focus more on history preservation). An elaboration-first approach to incremental reading is incremental writing[2].
Re: Incremental note-taking
#26Great deep dive into core principles of a good note-taking system. There are a few things I'd add. Curious to hear your thoughts. > 1) Captured ideas are better than missed ones > 2) Adding new ideas is better than updating old ones. Updating notes in-place is inherently lossy, and I think it’s unnecessary. Yes. And, setting the intention to "add," not "update" reduces friction to capturing. When you write something…
Glad the ideas resonated with you! Two things you said stuck out to me:
>And, setting the intention to "add," not "update" reduces friction to capturing.
This is a subtle point I felt, but failed to capture, that you expressed very succinctly. Having the primary action be adding, rather than "keeping up to date", reduces the cognitive load of capture. As a result, we remember more with adding-based tools than replacement-based ones.
>Most of what's most important from personal working notes is stuff that's immediately relevant. Stuff that was probably written in the past week or so.
One thing that I've been thinking about, but haven't had a chance to form into a thesis yet, is the idea of our actions / workflows making sort of tacit modifications to our workspace that make the workspace more usable. For example, in a paper-and-pen world, if I had a note on a sticky note that I access a few times every day, it would inevitably end up somewhere very close to where I work, compared to notes I rarely access, which may be stuck inside books or on a far wall somewhere. This isn't necessarily because I brought it closer because it would make me more efficient or something -- it just ended up close by as a direct consequence of how I access the note frequently.
I feel like affordances/tacit modifications of our workspaces like this are much rarer in digital tools, where the default state is not to change over time. The behavior to have most recently edited notes "nearby" for example takes explicit design in digital notes. Makes me wonder what other kinds of tacit modifications to our tools/workspaces we are leaving out in software tool design.
Re: Incremental note-taking
#27> This means our tool has to be fast, and can’t burden you with questions like “In what folder should I put this?” that aren’t relevant in the moment.
This is so important. I feel most note taking apps approach note taking the wrong way: organization first, ideas later. Most of our notes are random and the only real organization they can fit into is time.
I have recently launched a note taking app [0] that keeps this in focus. In my opinion, "organizing notes" is often done after "writing notes" and that is how the app is built.
1. Note taking is a fast activity - you can take notes from any where in your phone, opening the app is fast, the steps to actually writing a note are frew, the note editor is uncluttered and stays out of the way, and the app works anywhere you have a browser & an internet connection.
2. Time is a first class citizen: all notes are sorted by date created, grouped by modifiers like year, week, month & alphabetical.
3. The app doesn't force you to organize your notes i.e., there's no special distinction between organized and unorganized notes. Some apps put unorganized notes in a specific folder or tag. Not so with my app. The focus is on writing notes; organization comes later.
4. Recalling notes is currently not the most amazing thing. There is full text search, however I feel like that's not enough. Things like similarity search (based on tags) or advanced filtering are yet to be implemented.
I think all these fit well into the incremental note taking system. However, that's a coincidence really.
Re: Incremental note-taking
#28[deleted]
Re: Incremental note-taking
#29Slightly offtopic: There is a thing called "Incremental Reading" [1], and I guess this article is (remotely) inspired by that. It's well known, cult-like method in note-taking / memorizing community. Worth a read, although not directly applicable to most people's life. (Some more context: [2]) [1] http://super-memory.com/help/read.htm [2] https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/
(The expanded and updated version of the parent's first referenced article is [1].) I'd say on-topic. The core of incremental reading is a highly configurable mechanism of distributed exposure to your notes over time, which is an activity the article advocates for. In addition to letting the user walk the revision path through the note maze, the SuperMemo implementation walks the extra mile in suggesting an optimal s…
This is fascinating. I’ve come across SuperMemo and use spaced repetition for self-created decks. However, incremental reading is something new to me, like a missing piece. Seems like it’s a process of turning any linear material into a deck. Have you or anyone else use it? And could comment on results / issues?
Re: Incremental note-taking
#30No discussion of Workflowy ( https://workflowy.com/ )? It is, in my opinion, by far the best note-taking app I have used. You can search, reorganize, and freely move content as you take it, and also after. You can nest a whole campaign of D&D notes next to your favorite recipes, and it feels natural due to their focus level model. More importantly, it's absolutely dead simple, and it "gets out of the way." The author…
oh wow. workflowy is a amazing. I need to dump onenote for this i think
As a long-time paying Workflowy user, it’s great but it also has some persisting frustrating issues and I think it’s not for everyone. Two of the biggest issues:
* no easy way to insert code snippets
* because the desktop app is just a web view, it’s not possible to open more than one window. Which means that for some poweruser stuff you have to open multiple browser Windows of the web version.