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Ask HN: How do you take notes?

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Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#51

Post by _corbett »

glitterfang wrote: post #46
_corbett wrote: post #42

I use a personal wiki, with sections for each project, and a todo list and inbox of physical papers organized in the GTD fashion. I use delicious.com extensively to track and tag websites.I keep a small moleskine and pen with me at all times and carry around an iPhone, which syncs my todo list with my computer. As I work, I keep another larger moleskine for each project for transient notes, calculations and thoughts.

what software do you use for your wiki?

I started out with tiddlywiki (single html file, very portable/easy to configure (read: no configuration)). but search and collaboration features are lacking so I migrated to mediawiki.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#52

Post by naner »

I spend a lot of time consuming information (HN, books, blogs, Mixergy interviews and Twitter) but have nothing to show for it.

How you take notes doesn't really matter much (you will develop and refine your own style over time) but, I hate to say it, most of that stuff you listed is superficial. It can be fun but it is mostly valueless.

Books, academic papers, and face-to-face time with experts are really the only way to gain deep interconnected knowledge. Read a book, take notes, read the book's wikipedia page (I actually do this before I read the book), follow the wikipedia references, look for other analyses online, start working through each of the book's "works cited", rinse, repeat.

Information fed to you (rss, twitter, social news, etc) is not super relevant or deep and comes with a ton of distractions. You have to have to have a focus and actively seek out the most relevant and most valuable information.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#53

Post by dgallagher »

adbge wrote: post #50
jules wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These diagrams look very good. So good in fact that it would take more time to make them than to completely memorize their content?

For some (myself included), visualizing something is part of memorization. I find constructing diagrams of a system really helps me just get how it works. So, the OP is probably memorizing the content of the diagram through creating it.

Exactly. The actual creation process helps with memorization considerably. If someone just handed the diagram to me, I'd have a much harder time understanding it.

An untested theory of mine is that this would not be the case if the diagram was more entertaining. If walking through it told a story, possibly in comic-form, maybe with animation, you might have a better chance of grasping it. TV networks do this all the time with animations, most recently with the BP oil spill, showing how it was going to be capped.

FYI you can do the same with pencil/paper. There's no real need to use OmniGraffle/Visio/Photoshop/Whatever (asides from the advantages of having it on a computer).

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#54

Post by da5e »

I've also been an avid reader forever and I've started feeling like Gloria from White Men Can't Jump, " I'm filled with more useless goddamn information than any human being on this fucking planet!" so now I do what I (rather grandiosely) call Rapid Prototype Reading. I read until I hit an item that I can act on in some way and I stop and either use the info or practice "doing" the item. So even if I don't finish reading I still get memorable value from it.

I also use a digital tape recorder that i re-listen to at random times for general interesting info. And sometimes call my Google phone and let them transcribe to email.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#55

Post by seltzered »

I'm trying to get off of still using pen and paper, and have been trying to get used to onenote. I'll agree with others that it's a bit bloated, but:

1) I like the possibility that I can freely draw and "whiteboard" in it. I like thinking spatially at times. I typically still do most spatial planning/whiteboarding in excel, but I'm trying to see if I can do the same in onenote

2) I plan to eventually retain scanned docs with it (it has ocr searching like evernote). This also means I could just pen and paper for notes, then take a picture with em and OCR em in.

3) the sidenote feature seems really cool, just hit Windows+N wherever you are to type down something. It's a small step towards pervasive note-taking.

I haven't tried mobilenoter/other syncing interfaces with it yet. I'm also looking at org-mode as an alterative, not sure.

Things I hate about onenote: it doesn't have the freeform tagging infrastructure evernote has, and is too obsessed with trying to feel like a physical notebook. That said, evernote seems too oriented towards capturing outside information and less focused on one's own thoughts.

If onenote had a good delicious-like tagging experience for web bookmarks, I'd probably be sold on it.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#57

Post by inetsee »

If your primary interest is in maximizing the amount of information you remember, I suggest you look into Spaced Repetition software like SuperMemo, Mnemosyne or Anki ("http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spaced_repetition). These are online flashcard programs that adjust the amount of time between presentations, so that you see the concepts you're having problems with more frequently than the stuff you've got solidly locked into your memory.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#58

Post by larrywright »

jakarta wrote: post #4

I think Evernote is pretty decent for this. I just use the web version, but because of the work I do, I have to read a ton of documents online and usually want to refer to them later. Evernote helps because I can use the web clipper to save whatever I am looking at and then tag it and even write some notes on it. Then later I can fire up the desktop application and go through my notes. I believe the mobile versions a…

I like Evernote as well. It's far from perfect, but the ability to clip random bits of text or entire web pages along with plain notes is very useful.

Re: Ask HN: How do you take notes?

#60

Post by ryanteo »

awolf wrote: post #12

Creating a Mindmap is what works best for me. I started on paper, but there are superb pieces of software for this as well. iThoughts HD on iPad is excellent. Not sure if they have a desktop client. If desktop is a requirement then check out MindNode which is also very good.

For mindmapping, has anyone used Compendium before? I used it for mindmapping a project, it's rather useful. It's rather flexible and you can create sub-mindmaps easily.

You can also use it for brainstorming sessions and problem solving as a team (project on a screen and let everyone see it). http://compendium.open.ac.uk/institute/download/download.htm Available for Windows, Mac, Linux and free

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