So I probably tried a vast majority of all the major notetaking solutions out there. And many of the different ways you can organize things (GTD, david allen, secretweapon, inbox zero, etc) as well as my own creative variations as well.
The solution I have is that there is no gold bullet when it comes to notetaking. They all have problems. You just have to try many different methods and solutions to see what works, based on how you organize things, and the way you think.
Personally, I have found a blogpost here that encapsulates mostly everything I do after 4 years of notetaking. http://devonzuegel.com/post/memex-my-personal-knowledge-base.
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I use dynalist.io personally as my notetaking app. It supports features like codesnippets as well with a 3rd party extension. You can find how I organize it on my blog http://vincentmtang.com/2017/06/24/how-i-use-dynalist-io/
To give you a quick gist of it this is how I organize things on dynalist
- Journal (New items added uptop)
- Courses (New items added at bottom)
- Ideas if I have nothing else to do (New items added uptop)
- Everything else (Meeting notes / Collaboration)
There was a lot of psychology and research that I did personally detailing what goes on behind why I chose things this way. It mostly deals with a 2x2 selection matrix I made called UPIE (structured vs unstructured, internal vs external).
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Second, I organize writing in its own form via wordpress.
- Drafts / Ideas for writing (40+ drafts atm)
- One time posts (write everything in an hour or two and post, regardless of grammatical issues)
Third, I also use github for SVN control on larger repositories. Everything goes either in the `C:\www` folder based on PHP best practices (I don't write in php). Also, I have a folder called `C:\dropbox\github` for repos that are small in file (e.g. no node modules) and SVN control is too burdonsome to deal with. I use an extension called "markdown preview enhanced"(MPE) which in all of my research of markdown, is the best markdown extension to date on VScode and atom
Fourth, I use codepen similar to how I organize evernote. I have over 2500 notes on evernote so I know what the best practices here are. Each codepen file = one evernote note. I tag things, and search through it via as I normally would in evernote. I follow the "microsite" ideas heavily from chris coyier https://css-tricks.com/microsites-for-case-studies/. I find I am able to talk hours maybe days explaining how complex some of my private codepens are for the project I'm working on, to get a better relay this information about my skillsets as a frontend dev.
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Fifth, I have several other methods of organizingi things in general. I call it "self-data-collection" methods that I made up myself. For instance,
- Youtube video I've watched so I can check a log of videos I've looked up and limit search queries to just that. I have a system of bookmarking and commenting useful things here.
- Hackernews posts I've read for more than 30 seconds, so I can see it under `myusername/comments`.
- Stackoverflow posts. Upvote so I know what the best solution is to the question, namely so I can also keep track of what I've read as well that was helpful in obscure solutions and tech
- Google maps. If you looked at my local area maps on my account, I have about 200 stars and indexed / cataloged what each business is for. Hackerspaces, startup studios, areas with freewifi for working with laptops (coffee shops, bookstores), etc
- Shopping / Physical goods. I have a 2500 (limit of wishlist count) and another 1000+ ongoing list on amazon. I have different ways of searching through this so I can cross-pollinate different ideas from different industries. For instance, xbox controllers used in space/engineering simulations
- Lastpass. I manage about 200 account emails here
LASTLY I have some support systems
- Anki for flashcard and SRS (space repetition learning) among other things
- A list of 700+ applications I used on alternativeto.net at one point. I wrote 200 + reviews of these so I know why I did or did not like them, so I don't need to repeat the errors I made previously
- 700+ stars I bookmarked on github for ideas on opensource libraries to use, depending on project need. I fork it if its worth investing into
- A list of bookmarking system on google bookmarks based on emojis for quicker ways to grok what folder I want to look for. I organize it A-Z
- Different browsers for different functionality
- customized toolbar and spacers inbetween software apps for faster visual grouping identification
- Directory Opus for my file explorer. Apple Mac's have a significantly better native file explorer system and some apps, but directoryOpus bridges that gap for windows
- 100 + macros managed by phrase-express. I have a blog post about it here http://vincentmtang.com/2018/05/31/14-useful-phrase-express-...
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I could go on all day but I will leave it at that, to answer your question blankly I use mostly dynalist.io and a bunch of other things I slew together. I call it my "SOP" or standard operating procedures which ended up being several pages long. Its constantly evolving but now I just commit things to memory based on some industrial engineering practices I learned called LEAN for identifying and mapping value streams based on best business practices. This is something I do natively now and don't think very hard into, it mostly stems from how I used to run my own virtual business starting in middle school.
Lastly, I am writing my own notetaking software as well and I am not going to say more than this, but its mostly based on pitfalls I found in the above writing I wrote.
Notetaking requires a set of principlces that you need to follow as well as rigirous daily practice to enforce principlces of accountability. I do daily sprints here normally too in dynalist under journal section
What and how you use software vastly depends on what your field of interests is as well. I personally don't get too invested in tooling despite everything I stated above, there's a really good quote from one of my favorite youtubers "MJP funfunfunction" -> e.g. "Everything has a maintenance cost. The pros of that software needs to outweigh the cons of maintenance and debugging". This means you won't ever probably hear me talking about org-mode/linux/vim/emacs because I honestly like the simplicity of my GUI tools on windows.
Also, because I know what an optimized approach is to notetaking I can also identify based on metadata which people are worth following. I use twitter to keep a list of these people
I run backups of long posts I make here on pinboard.in using a keyboard shortcut
The approach I take to formatting long text mostly stems from how I've seen people use reddit to organize their public posts / notes in markdown format