How I Manage My Random Daily Notes(hachibu.net)
hachibu.net
How I Manage My Random Daily Notes
https://hachibu.net/posts/2020/how-i-manage-my-random-daily-notes/
195 comments
I like the idea of daily notes even better when you combine them with your todo lists at the same time. That concept is called interstitial notes [0], and it's used in several software tools like Roam Research [1]. I use Drift [2] which has a interstitial notes plugin which has proven to work very well for me.
[0] https://nesslabs.com/interstitial-journaling
[1] https://roamresearch.com/
[2] https://akhater.github.io/drift/
[0] https://nesslabs.com/interstitial-journaling
[1] https://roamresearch.com/
[2] https://akhater.github.io/drift/
This is also what org-mode[0] does.
My files are 'logbook', 'life', 'project-1', 'project-2', etc. At any time I can hit a key and capture an idea/meeting to any of those places, and as I'm taking notes I can mark anything as a todo and schedule/deadline them. In the 'agenda' I can see a single overview of all my todo items, and my schedule, from all my notes.
I've tried a lot of systems (paper, apps, cli notes, etc) and org-mode clicks in a way nothing else has for me.
[0]: https://orgmode.org
My files are 'logbook', 'life', 'project-1', 'project-2', etc. At any time I can hit a key and capture an idea/meeting to any of those places, and as I'm taking notes I can mark anything as a todo and schedule/deadline them. In the 'agenda' I can see a single overview of all my todo items, and my schedule, from all my notes.
I've tried a lot of systems (paper, apps, cli notes, etc) and org-mode clicks in a way nothing else has for me.
[0]: https://orgmode.org
Same system, except for step 1 I simply email [email protected] [1] from gmail and it goes in the "Quick Notes" section.
I like it especially when it's a single URL as OneNote automatically appends a snapshot/screenshot of the page in the note itself, so even if coming back to it much much later, less risk of the original webpage being 404 not found.
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-email-to-send...
I like it especially when it's a single URL as OneNote automatically appends a snapshot/screenshot of the page in the note itself, so even if coming back to it much much later, less risk of the original webpage being 404 not found.
[1] https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/use-email-to-send...
Google Keep has a limit with how large notes can be, and how many unarchived notes can dictate app performance.
It's neat you simply decided to use it to hold on to things for about a week, prefering instead to store them in OneNote (or anything you want), a more stable product. Thanks for this advice!
It's neat you simply decided to use it to hold on to things for about a week, prefering instead to store them in OneNote (or anything you want), a more stable product. Thanks for this advice!
This sounds like a good idea if you are on top of things. I was going to push back by saying it almost sounds like a chore, but a lot of the reason notes are jotted down is in fact to learn. So this process makes a lot of sense in retrospect.
I use paper. Digital notes are great if you need them to be available everywhere, or edit them time and time again, but paper is still significantly better for me.
I keep my recipes in Keep and on my personal website, because I often amend them. However I discovered that printed recipes are much more pleasant to use.
Likewise, I'd much rather have a dirty notebook to sketch and write on when I'm working in the garage, or anywhere that's not my desk
I keep my recipes in Keep and on my personal website, because I often amend them. However I discovered that printed recipes are much more pleasant to use.
Likewise, I'd much rather have a dirty notebook to sketch and write on when I'm working in the garage, or anywhere that's not my desk
For most things, paper works best for me for capture, and then the additional step of transcribing / summarizing into my corpus of org files gives me a chance to structure and review.
But I have a notebook and a (fountain!) pen on my desk all day long, right next to my keyboard and mouse.
But I have a notebook and a (fountain!) pen on my desk all day long, right next to my keyboard and mouse.
It's just my opinion, but nothing beats paper. I have tried keeping note files on my computer, and I've tried using tablets to jot things down (I have spent so much money trying to get this option to work). Paper just works better. I found that I like to scribble and underline, and draw. I'm just not an organized thinker. Forcing things to be in a list don't work for my thoughts and even drawing on an iPad etc. seems too constricting. The precision of paper just isn't there.
This seems to be supported by data https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/095679761452458...
I have been transitioning to Remarkable 2 to see if there's some benefit to uniting the concepts. So far, though, I seem to be taking fewer notes.
I have been transitioning to Remarkable 2 to see if there's some benefit to uniting the concepts. So far, though, I seem to be taking fewer notes.
I was close to pulling the trigger on one, since I also doodle a lot. Then I realised it would be yet another gadget that annoys me because it does annoying gadget things.
Paper doesn't require an account, or updates. It doesn't require repeating a task because it didn't get it. It doesn't have a community that tries to pick up where the manufacturer left off. It's also a hundredth of the price.
Paper doesn't require an account, or updates. It doesn't require repeating a task because it didn't get it. It doesn't have a community that tries to pick up where the manufacturer left off. It's also a hundredth of the price.
That effect is heavily driven by writing things down in your own words - writing by hand essentially forces you to do it, keyboard lets you get away with transcription, which doesn't help.
> I found that I like to scribble and underline, and draw
I use Goodnotes[1] on my iPad for my notes in which you can do all of that. Works great for me.
But i can understand that a digital solution is not always a better solution for every situation/lifestyle...
[1] https://www.goodnotes.com/
I use Goodnotes[1] on my iPad for my notes in which you can do all of that. Works great for me.
But i can understand that a digital solution is not always a better solution for every situation/lifestyle...
[1] https://www.goodnotes.com/
Computers are for organizing; paper is for thinking.
Pen and paper is frowned upon by people but, they're indispensable for me too.
Allows you to concentrate better, the result is much more refined and as an added bonus, fountain pens are nice.
Allows you to concentrate better, the result is much more refined and as an added bonus, fountain pens are nice.
Sorry to be “that guy”, but I’ve switched to Remarkable recently and I love it. It’s for people like us who work best on paper.
Just got mine a couple weeks back and it's great! The software could use some additional features, but thanks to the open platform, it is getting them from some dedicated users.
I've even seen a user run offline OCR on it, and we may soon be able to integrate with metadata to make those notes searchable. Credit to https://github.com/utopiah , post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/jj5yt2/of...
I've even seen a user run offline OCR on it, and we may soon be able to integrate with metadata to make those notes searchable. Credit to https://github.com/utopiah , post here: https://www.reddit.com/r/RemarkableTablet/comments/jj5yt2/of...
was about to say something similar, but using OneNote while working on Surface Book 2, taking handwritten notes with Surface Pen. Totally recommends it.
I graduated college in 1984, so my note taking was entirely pen & paper. What's the norm in college nowadays? Is everyone banging away on laptops? That seems like it would be distracting to me.
If it is laptops, what software do people use? Simple text editor, Word...?
When I was in university a few years ago, laptops were very common, but most still used paper.
Yeah, it was distracting. I spent more time writing my own note-taking tool than I did listening in class. It went poorly.
Yeah, it was distracting. I spent more time writing my own note-taking tool than I did listening in class. It went poorly.
[deleted]
I can’t use pen and paper because I’m surrounded by nosy people who don’t know to respect my privacy. And if I put some kind of lock on a physical diary or something, they complain that I am hiding something.
Privacy and integrity in your own thoughts and explorations is a valid concern and basic need. You have every right to say "this is mine and does not concern you".
Establish limits and set boundaries, if you have to. If that means a locked room, desk, trunk, or other means, then do that. Often the best way to establish boundaries is to assert them.
You situation sounds intrinsically toxic. I understand you're married with family --- if that's where the privacy issues are (rather than at work), you might want to consider family counseling. A lack of basic trust or respect is a bad sign.
Meantime, digital encrypted systems may be more appropriate, though personal notations and code can help with paper --- you're not the first person to have nosy neighbours.
Establish limits and set boundaries, if you have to. If that means a locked room, desk, trunk, or other means, then do that. Often the best way to establish boundaries is to assert them.
You situation sounds intrinsically toxic. I understand you're married with family --- if that's where the privacy issues are (rather than at work), you might want to consider family counseling. A lack of basic trust or respect is a bad sign.
Meantime, digital encrypted systems may be more appropriate, though personal notations and code can help with paper --- you're not the first person to have nosy neighbours.
I'm sorry you are getting downvoted.
Reasonable or not, one difficulty I have with keeping any kind of journal is that I keep thinking of the fact that it may eventually be read and exposed to the cruelest, least charitable interpretation.
Reasonable or not, one difficulty I have with keeping any kind of journal is that I keep thinking of the fact that it may eventually be read and exposed to the cruelest, least charitable interpretation.
Well it won't solve for every case, but you could use the Hindu tantra - vasana daha tantra. You write down your worries, fears, anger - anything troubling you that you want to express - then you burn it.
Why am I getting downvoted? Am I not raising a valid point about physical privacy? It’s not like I’m calling anybody here nosy.
Karl, could you avoid using a nickname on HN in an attempt to speak about us in bad ways behind our backs?
HackerNews is weird :/
Nothing beats the flexibility of pen and paper for unstructured information.
Of course, for work we also use shared digital docs, but what goes in there has first been through my ugly scribbles on paper.
Of course, for work we also use shared digital docs, but what goes in there has first been through my ugly scribbles on paper.
> Nothing beats the flexibility of pen and paper for unstructured information.
How 'bout a pencil and paper?
How 'bout a pencil and paper?
> How 'bout a pencil and paper?
I hereby salute your nitpicking :)
I hereby salute your nitpicking :)
Great until you lose the paper.
same for digital: great until you get hacked or loose your data some other funny-digital way ;-)
how do you find anything later? It's a simple capture method, but it doesn't work well for a use case like "oh I talked to that user one time, let me search for them in my notes"
I am very surprised nobody has yet mentioned Notational Velocity, or better yet the fork nvALT [1].
I hate any _friction_ to writing a note. I just want to get it out of my brain (or find it, if a previous thought) as quickly as possible.
With nvALT you start typing and it is searching immediately, but if there is no match and you hit enter you are now writing a new note.
Each note is stored as a text file, and so is findable via other search methods on your machine, and is easy to sync via your chosen technology.
I have tried a variety of approaches as I love the idea of linking between notes, and adding images, and tagging and all that stuff. But in reality all of that adds friction, and so prevents me from making the note (which is the critical part).
[1] https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/
I hate any _friction_ to writing a note. I just want to get it out of my brain (or find it, if a previous thought) as quickly as possible.
With nvALT you start typing and it is searching immediately, but if there is no match and you hit enter you are now writing a new note.
Each note is stored as a text file, and so is findable via other search methods on your machine, and is easy to sync via your chosen technology.
I have tried a variety of approaches as I love the idea of linking between notes, and adding images, and tagging and all that stuff. But in reality all of that adds friction, and so prevents me from making the note (which is the critical part).
[1] https://brettterpstra.com/projects/nvalt/
Also this one for those that want to live in Vim: https://github.com/alok/notational-fzf-vim
I create "notes" directory on my desktop at work, and each day I start a new text file named $DATE_$JIRATASKNO_$DECRIPTION.txt
Whenever I copy-paste stuff that might be useful I leave it there. Stuff like stacktraces, class:line_number when I was searching where something happens, links to webpages related to the task.
I was keeping a notepad tab open at all times anyway to keep context when I was doing something (otherwise I forget when I'm back from lunch and have to search again). So this is only making this context permanent and searcheable.
Then when I do something 3 months later and get a stacktrace I vaguely remember or other problem that I can imagine what the keyword would be - I just grep in that directory and find all the context needed, including jira task, commits, all related webpages, etc.
I also write short free-text notes there, but these are usually very short and less important than the copy-pasted stuff.
Whenever I copy-paste stuff that might be useful I leave it there. Stuff like stacktraces, class:line_number when I was searching where something happens, links to webpages related to the task.
I was keeping a notepad tab open at all times anyway to keep context when I was doing something (otherwise I forget when I'm back from lunch and have to search again). So this is only making this context permanent and searcheable.
Then when I do something 3 months later and get a stacktrace I vaguely remember or other problem that I can imagine what the keyword would be - I just grep in that directory and find all the context needed, including jira task, commits, all related webpages, etc.
I also write short free-text notes there, but these are usually very short and less important than the copy-pasted stuff.
I feel like Joplin (https://joplinapp.org/) should also get mentioned: storing notes in plain Markdown files, optionally synced via e.g. Dropbox. Bonus points for also having mobile apps that sync with the same backend.
I looked for many alternatives to taking notes and Joplin ended up being what I went with, it's fantastic. I wrote a small script to export my notes to a static website because I figured someone could use the knowledge, even if it's just a brain dump:
https://notes.stavros.io/
I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
https://notes.stavros.io/
I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
I do something similar with Drift [0], a customized distribution of TiddlyWiki [1]. I capture as many thoughts and ideas as I can using the Zettlekasten methodology [2]. If it can be distilled to a single piece of knowledge, I assess, should this be private for me? or it can be useful to anyone else? if b, then I publish add it as a Tiddler on my public TiddlyWiki file, and I run an update that will upload it to my web site [3]. If private, I keep it in my private file.
TiddlyWiki has been around for a very long time, and it keeps evolving. My personal file has over 3,000 Tiddlers and it keeps growing. It's unbelievable all you can do in a single file with just HTML and JavaScript. As long as those standards exist in 20-30 years, I can be sure my files, all tags and all relationships are still available and highly usable.
[0] https://akhater.github.io/drift/
[1] https://tiddlywiki.com/
[2] https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/
[3] https://ramirosalas.com
TiddlyWiki has been around for a very long time, and it keeps evolving. My personal file has over 3,000 Tiddlers and it keeps growing. It's unbelievable all you can do in a single file with just HTML and JavaScript. As long as those standards exist in 20-30 years, I can be sure my files, all tags and all relationships are still available and highly usable.
[0] https://akhater.github.io/drift/
[1] https://tiddlywiki.com/
[2] https://zettelkasten.de/posts/overview/
[3] https://ramirosalas.com
That's very nice! TiddlyWiki was the first thing I looked at, but couldn't find a good way to publish it on the web. Thanks for the Drift link!
I would love a network of people’s knowledge base / personal notes. I have several people’s kb-sites bookmarked, which I check in from time to time - I always learn a ton! I have been using Obsidian to take notes of everything I learn - my own KB - and have been thinking of how the share the notes out publicly, while still keeping the informal, private, low-friction note taking. For those who share their notes/kb publicly, whats your strategy?
> and have been thinking of how the share the notes out publicly, while still keeping the informal, private, low-friction note taking.
That's exactly what I want to do too. Increasing the friction makes people less likely to share, so I want the community to feel very casual, so people aren't afraid to post even single-sentence brain dumps.
> For those who share their notes/kb publicly, whats your strategy?
You mean those who have already shared them? The advantage of a centralized site would be improved searchability, so you'd help more people.
Since I don't really aim to make money from this, it'd be open source, sort of like a Neocities vibe.
Would you like to email me at [email protected] if you're interested (and whoever else reads this comment, please feel free). If I do end up making this I'll make it invite-only so I don't have to worry about spam (at least at first), and this would be a nice way to have a few early testers.
That's exactly what I want to do too. Increasing the friction makes people less likely to share, so I want the community to feel very casual, so people aren't afraid to post even single-sentence brain dumps.
> For those who share their notes/kb publicly, whats your strategy?
You mean those who have already shared them? The advantage of a centralized site would be improved searchability, so you'd help more people.
Since I don't really aim to make money from this, it'd be open source, sort of like a Neocities vibe.
Would you like to email me at [email protected] if you're interested (and whoever else reads this comment, please feel free). If I do end up making this I'll make it invite-only so I don't have to worry about spam (at least at first), and this would be a nice way to have a few early testers.
I keep two TiddlyWiki [0] files, one public, one private.
If I feel that a certain note can become its own piece of knowledge in a Zettlekasten fashion and can have any value for someone else, I put it in my public file and I run a script that will copy it to my hosting provider. My public site is a single file! [1].
[0] https://tiddlywiki.com/
[1] https://ramirosalas.com/
If I feel that a certain note can become its own piece of knowledge in a Zettlekasten fashion and can have any value for someone else, I put it in my public file and I run a script that will copy it to my hosting provider. My public site is a single file! [1].
[0] https://tiddlywiki.com/
[1] https://ramirosalas.com/
Me too, I find Tiddlywiki perfect for this kind of use! You may have seen it, but it is recently made a php script that let you save directly to your server and create a public version where private tiddlers are removed or censored [0]. That way you only need to manage a single file. But it sounds as you have found a good way of doing it already:)
[0] https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/GRkskZRzj_o
[0] https://groups.google.com/g/tiddlywiki/c/GRkskZRzj_o
That is really awesome, this kind of functionality would be a really awesome plugin to Joplin itself somehow.
> I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream? Almost like a cross of the github "X starred Y" stream and Twitter (with none of the social-y features). I favorite a lot of things from day to day and would love to know what others are favoriting/finding as well.
Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I'd love to make it possible to also share-from-joplin for single notes but that feature isn't there yet. The only way to make it happen otherwise would be synchronizing somewhere unencrypted (!) and then asking that somewhere to "publish" your notes. Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles" or any way to separate encryption keys or which notes are and aren't encrypted... it's hard to do that as well..
> I also had an idea to make a site where you could take notes and have them be auto-published (like the above, but as a service), to create a community of random knowledge dumps. Think of a Wikipedia, but made of personal sites and not as rigorous, with a very "personal Web 1.0 website" feel, but talking to a few friends it didn't seem like they saw much point in it.
Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream? Almost like a cross of the github "X starred Y" stream and Twitter (with none of the social-y features). I favorite a lot of things from day to day and would love to know what others are favoriting/finding as well.
Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I'd love to make it possible to also share-from-joplin for single notes but that feature isn't there yet. The only way to make it happen otherwise would be synchronizing somewhere unencrypted (!) and then asking that somewhere to "publish" your notes. Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles" or any way to separate encryption keys or which notes are and aren't encrypted... it's hard to do that as well..
> this kind of functionality would be a really awesome plugin to Joplin itself somehow.
Agreed, I looked for a plugin but unfortunately found none.
> Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream?
I don't really use bookmarks, whenever I come across an interesting page I put it in https://historio.us, but they're too few to make a stream out of...
> Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
> Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles"
Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
Agreed, I looked for a plugin but unfortunately found none.
> Alongside this idea, would you use a browser plugin that shares your bookmarks as a stream?
I don't really use bookmarks, whenever I come across an interesting page I put it in https://historio.us, but they're too few to make a stream out of...
> Also, somewhat unrelated to that, would you pay for encrypted offsite joplin sync target/backups?
I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
> Unfortunately, since joplin doesn't have multiple "profiles"
Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
> I don't really use bookmarks, whenever I come across an interesting page I put it in https://historio.us, but they're too few to make a stream out of...
Interesting! I'd never heard of historious, thanks for the link. I'm quite surprised that using that is easier than hitting Ctrl+D (in Firefox anyway), and doing the management there. I totally get it though.
> I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
Yep, I can see that, many who find their way to joplin are quite technologically independent and came to joplin precisely because of those reasons. I guess not many people would really want hosted WebDav when you can just hook up NextCloud/S3/OneDrive/etc.
> Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
Yeah -- tags would definitely be the way, but the problem is that I'd want someone to be able to publish an update from their phone (or at least from every platform possible), and be able to keep their encryption. Just spitballing, but imagine serving a sync/backup service that happens to also be able to spit out md-derived websites very very easily. Notion and it's ilk have features like that and people seem very excited about it. A notebook as a blogging platform also seems interesting/incredibly low friction. Could even be a podcasting platform if you attached audio to notes.
Interesting! I'd never heard of historious, thanks for the link. I'm quite surprised that using that is easier than hitting Ctrl+D (in Firefox anyway), and doing the management there. I totally get it though.
> I don't think so, I prefer doing my own hosting and NextCloud/WebDAV works quite well, so I wouldn't want yet another account to manage.
Yep, I can see that, many who find their way to joplin are quite technologically independent and came to joplin precisely because of those reasons. I guess not many people would really want hosted WebDav when you can just hook up NextCloud/S3/OneDrive/etc.
> Yeah, I ran into this problem with my script as well, where I wanted some notes to be private. For those, I just created a notebook that has "private" in the name and put them all there, the script skips them. Tags might work as well.
Yeah -- tags would definitely be the way, but the problem is that I'd want someone to be able to publish an update from their phone (or at least from every platform possible), and be able to keep their encryption. Just spitballing, but imagine serving a sync/backup service that happens to also be able to spit out md-derived websites very very easily. Notion and it's ilk have features like that and people seem very excited about it. A notebook as a blogging platform also seems interesting/incredibly low friction. Could even be a podcasting platform if you attached audio to notes.
> I'm quite surprised that using that is easier than hitting Ctrl+D (in Firefox anyway), and doing the management there.
It's easier because I just hit a different shortcut and don't need to do any management at all afterwards, I can just search the content.
> I guess not many people would really want hosted WebDav when you can just hook up NextCloud/S3/OneDrive/etc.
Many people probably would, just not me :P
> A notebook as a blogging platform also seems interesting/incredibly low friction.
Yep, hence my idea of "notes as a site" in my first comment.
It's easier because I just hit a different shortcut and don't need to do any management at all afterwards, I can just search the content.
> I guess not many people would really want hosted WebDav when you can just hook up NextCloud/S3/OneDrive/etc.
Many people probably would, just not me :P
> A notebook as a blogging platform also seems interesting/incredibly low friction.
Yep, hence my idea of "notes as a site" in my first comment.
> It's easier because I just hit a different shortcut and don't need to do any management at all afterwards, I can just search the content.
Reasonable, I clicked around their demo and I think I can see the value there.
> Yep, hence my idea of "notes as a site" in my first comment.
yeah this sounded like it'd fit great with the other hosted webdav thing, thanks for talking through it a bit!
Reasonable, I clicked around their demo and I think I can see the value there.
> Yep, hence my idea of "notes as a site" in my first comment.
yeah this sounded like it'd fit great with the other hosted webdav thing, thanks for talking through it a bit!
Oh I made historious myself, so it's a pretty good fit for me :P
Ditto, with https://github.com/jareware/howto/, which I’ve been meaning to automatically sync from a specific notebook from my Joplin. Yours looks very polished though, maybe I should just use that!
You could, the script is a bit tailored to me right now but very slightly. It just exports a Zola site and I used the Gitbook theme, but you should be able to easily swap in any theme you want.
What turned me off about Joplin was how awkward it was to link to other pages. I might have missed something, but by default I think that takes creating the other page first, then manually copying its id -- way too much clicking, and breaks the focus on what you're writing.
In the end, I ended up using Obsidian (https://obsidian.md). While typing (even in an outside editor), I can just go [[random reference]] -- and that will turn into a link, even if that page doesn't exist yet. When I eventually get to creating the page, it will already have back links from all the places it is used (something else I think Joplin doesn't have).
In the end, I ended up using Obsidian (https://obsidian.md). While typing (even in an outside editor), I can just go [[random reference]] -- and that will turn into a link, even if that page doesn't exist yet. When I eventually get to creating the page, it will already have back links from all the places it is used (something else I think Joplin doesn't have).
Agreed. In Joplin internal linking is a pain and that makes it a bad Zettelkasten. However, Joplin is not meant to be that, Joplin is more of an Evernote alternative, which is made for collecting information rather then connecting it. For that Joplin is awesome.
For my Zettelkasten and writing I use Obsidian. They are fantastic in tandem.
For my Zettelkasten and writing I use Obsidian. They are fantastic in tandem.
I spent time this week with Joplin.
Why I won't be using it:
* If I live in Markdown, I want to edit it WYSIWYG. Maybe that's wrong, but I don't want to live in .md code mode (for this reason, I miss Evernote). I author in Typora, but I don't want to keep notes in MD.
* It's sync-ing options don't map to the most used syncing tech on desktops these days. I'd have to pay for Dropbox (given my current ecosystem) just to use it to sync.
* I want folders and sub-folders. Folders and tags don't work for me.
* I wish these systems had a built-in journal mode, like Roam.
Why I won't be using it:
* If I live in Markdown, I want to edit it WYSIWYG. Maybe that's wrong, but I don't want to live in .md code mode (for this reason, I miss Evernote). I author in Typora, but I don't want to keep notes in MD.
* It's sync-ing options don't map to the most used syncing tech on desktops these days. I'd have to pay for Dropbox (given my current ecosystem) just to use it to sync.
* I want folders and sub-folders. Folders and tags don't work for me.
* I wish these systems had a built-in journal mode, like Roam.
- Joplin has a rich editor
- If you talk about google drive, you can use the file system sync and sync from there
- you can create notebooks and sub-notebooks
If you are still on the search, there is a great list: https://old.reddit.com/r/Evernote/comments/j87fb9/please_hel...
- If you talk about google drive, you can use the file system sync and sync from there
- you can create notebooks and sub-notebooks
If you are still on the search, there is a great list: https://old.reddit.com/r/Evernote/comments/j87fb9/please_hel...
Very happy Joplin user -- switched earlier this year and am extremely happy with it.
Reposting my setup here. It's not the best setup but it's based on trying different things. Might be useful for those who are trying to figure out their own setup:
=======
Just another opinion on the balanced note taking method:
I think org-mode solves almost all offline note-taking requirements
* org-roam makes it super-easy to link notes
* emacs as an editor is as usable as any other editor
* Rich media is possible and easy to do in org-mode. Attach a snapshot, embed a video file
* Code with documentation is a feature not available in most other note taking methods/apps. It's possible to run code snippets and add comments, documentation about them in the same space
* Latex support is advanced. Inline equations work seamlessly
* Search support is advanced
Drawbacks:
* One of the main drawbacks is that all your notes end up offline. This was a deal-breaker for me. ox-hugo helps in publishing your notes to a (private) static site where it can be searched, viewed but not edited on the fly
* Publishing through ox-hugo is separate from maintaining a backup/sync of your notes in /org/ format. You'll have to do this separately through Dropbox/GDrive/etc
* A backup of your org notes is not usable until you set up your emacs environment and download all your notes
=======
Just another opinion on the balanced note taking method:
I think org-mode solves almost all offline note-taking requirements
* org-roam makes it super-easy to link notes
* emacs as an editor is as usable as any other editor
* Rich media is possible and easy to do in org-mode. Attach a snapshot, embed a video file
* Code with documentation is a feature not available in most other note taking methods/apps. It's possible to run code snippets and add comments, documentation about them in the same space
* Latex support is advanced. Inline equations work seamlessly
* Search support is advanced
Drawbacks:
* One of the main drawbacks is that all your notes end up offline. This was a deal-breaker for me. ox-hugo helps in publishing your notes to a (private) static site where it can be searched, viewed but not edited on the fly
* Publishing through ox-hugo is separate from maintaining a backup/sync of your notes in /org/ format. You'll have to do this separately through Dropbox/GDrive/etc
* A backup of your org notes is not usable until you set up your emacs environment and download all your notes
One drawback you omitted is that you have to set it up and learn how to use it before you reach a point where it competes with other less sophisticated solutions.
I try to keep some notes.org file and use it regularly, but I'm just faster with unix tools and vim, so it's hard to make the upfront investment in learning emacs and start somewhat from scratch. I think there's also some kind of discoverability issue with org-mode features: I don't really know which features should I look into to improve my setup further and have something really nice instead of a glorified markdown.
One day I'll just read the manual from start to finish and try to start properly from there, one day.
I try to keep some notes.org file and use it regularly, but I'm just faster with unix tools and vim, so it's hard to make the upfront investment in learning emacs and start somewhat from scratch. I think there's also some kind of discoverability issue with org-mode features: I don't really know which features should I look into to improve my setup further and have something really nice instead of a glorified markdown.
One day I'll just read the manual from start to finish and try to start properly from there, one day.
I have been just using a single function `org-roam-find-file` to insert or read an existing note.
I'm pretty sure there are various other functionalities, but this seems to be enough for me as of now. If I have to search something with it, I just fall back to deadgrep's [0] interface. So, I don't think you need to read the entire manual to be productive! Infact, I would say that starting small and slowing forming the habit is a good way to use this effectively.
[0] https://github.com/Wilfred/deadgrep
I'm pretty sure there are various other functionalities, but this seems to be enough for me as of now. If I have to search something with it, I just fall back to deadgrep's [0] interface. So, I don't think you need to read the entire manual to be productive! Infact, I would say that starting small and slowing forming the habit is a good way to use this effectively.
[0] https://github.com/Wilfred/deadgrep
To know what features you need you first need to know what method you will use, that's the hard part and orgmode or any other note taking app will not help you with that.
> One day I'll just read the manual from start to finish and try to start properly from there, one day.
Define "manual", because I've been using org-mode since (greps .org files) . . . 2010, and I still haven't read the manual cover to cover. I just look things up and tweak as needed, which I think is key. You can go looking for features, but you're usually better off following a YAGNI and "google the stack answer" sort of mindset.
Define "manual", because I've been using org-mode since (greps .org files) . . . 2010, and I still haven't read the manual cover to cover. I just look things up and tweak as needed, which I think is key. You can go looking for features, but you're usually better off following a YAGNI and "google the stack answer" sort of mindset.
> One drawback you omitted is that you have to set it up and learn how to use it before you reach a point where it competes with other less sophisticated solutions.
I've not found this to be the case. org mode has an extremely shallow learning curve.
If your note taking flow is simple, it will be correspondingly simple in org mode.
Once you start adding sophistications to your workflow, you may find some tool that is easier to use than going through the trouble of configuring org mode, but only if that tool's author shared a very similar mindset to you. I've not found this to be the case for my workflow. Even worse, if you decide you want to try some other workflow, that tool likely will not be as flexible and you'll have to hunt for another tool. And possibly migrate all your notes to it.
If you use a flexible solution that lets you alter your workflow, you'll find it will compare with org mode in terms of ease of use.
> I think there's also some kind of discoverability issue with org-mode features: I don't really know which features should I look into to improve my setup further and have something really nice instead of a glorified markdown.
I mostly discover these by reading people's blog posts on how they use org mode. Having said that, I tweak it very rarely, often with a few years in between any major tweak/exploration.
> One day I'll just read the manual from start to finish and try to start properly from there, one day.
It's a good idea, but don't expect a massive productivity increase from it. Often you'll read something and say "That sounds cool, but I'm not sure how I'd use it." I usually get more insights from other people posting how they used feature X than from reading about feature X in the manual.
I've not found this to be the case. org mode has an extremely shallow learning curve.
If your note taking flow is simple, it will be correspondingly simple in org mode.
Once you start adding sophistications to your workflow, you may find some tool that is easier to use than going through the trouble of configuring org mode, but only if that tool's author shared a very similar mindset to you. I've not found this to be the case for my workflow. Even worse, if you decide you want to try some other workflow, that tool likely will not be as flexible and you'll have to hunt for another tool. And possibly migrate all your notes to it.
If you use a flexible solution that lets you alter your workflow, you'll find it will compare with org mode in terms of ease of use.
> I think there's also some kind of discoverability issue with org-mode features: I don't really know which features should I look into to improve my setup further and have something really nice instead of a glorified markdown.
I mostly discover these by reading people's blog posts on how they use org mode. Having said that, I tweak it very rarely, often with a few years in between any major tweak/exploration.
> One day I'll just read the manual from start to finish and try to start properly from there, one day.
It's a good idea, but don't expect a massive productivity increase from it. Often you'll read something and say "That sounds cool, but I'm not sure how I'd use it." I usually get more insights from other people posting how they used feature X than from reading about feature X in the manual.
Yeah, you're right. It's not for the casual user. Emacs itself has "unwieldy keybindings" as many say. I switch between vim and emacs all the time but it's not for everybody
It was worth it for me.
I spend lots of time learning the tools I use for work (database systems, departmental protocols, client interactions) and having a better personal productivity tool is at the center of everything I do. It's worth months of heavy investment in the long run.
I spend lots of time learning the tools I use for work (database systems, departmental protocols, client interactions) and having a better personal productivity tool is at the center of everything I do. It's worth months of heavy investment in the long run.
You may want to take a look at logseq [0], which is open-source but seems to support org-roam files!
[0] https://logseq.com/
[0] https://logseq.com/
> * Rich media is possible and easy to do in org-mode. Attach a snapshot, embed a video file
How you insert a video in org file? This is one of the reason I have to move away from org only setup.
How you insert a video in org file? This is one of the reason I have to move away from org only setup.
Might be misleading for me to say "embed" a video. Emacs definitely cannot play video (there are some round-about ways but org-mode is strictly text only)
I meant it's possible to embed a link/thumbnail that will open the file in the player of choice
I meant it's possible to embed a link/thumbnail that will open the file in the player of choice
I'm still figuring out my own ways. Right now, lots of text/markdown files. I really like "My productivity app for the past 12 years has been a single .txt file"[1].
1. https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/
1. https://jeffhuang.com/productivity_text_file/
Yet-another-note-taking-system that doesn't solve my core problem:
I want to browse my notes in chronological order AND in thematic order. i.e. I want to do semantic search and automatic topic grouping.
[edit: The use-case I have in mind is you are learning about a topic, and your chronological "research notebook" is also an automatic zettlekasten.]
I want to browse my notes in chronological order AND in thematic order. i.e. I want to do semantic search and automatic topic grouping.
[edit: The use-case I have in mind is you are learning about a topic, and your chronological "research notebook" is also an automatic zettlekasten.]
That's easily done in Org mode for Emacs https://orgmode.org/
Org mode is something that I've always thought I should look at, but never quite have. One thing I like to do with my notes is to keep a short "todo" list at the top, listed in the order that I'm planning to work on them.
Something like:
Is there a way to manage that in Org mode (linking tasks to further notes would be great to have) while keeping items in relative priority order without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"?
Something like:
Todo
====
- Fix Widget
- Extend Screen
- Profit
Todo
====
- Profit
- Fix Widget
- Extend Screen
Todo
====
+ Profit
- Fix Widget
- Extend Screen
Is there a way to manage that in Org mode (linking tasks to further notes would be great to have) while keeping items in relative priority order without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"?
This is trivial in org mode. There are multiple ways to do this. The simplest is:
Put your TODOs in the order you want. You can easily reorder them using Alt + Up or Alt + Down. Marking it as complete is also trivial.
The canonical way to do this is to make each TODO a headline with the TODO keyword. To mark as done, put your cursor on the headline and press Shift-Right.
Alternatively, you can use checklists and just press C-c C-c to mark an item as done:
> Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.
You can refile any headline to another section. Org mode also has the concept of archiving a headline. By default it moves it to an archive file, but I'm sure the location can be customized.
> linking tasks to further notes would be great to have
Org mode supports links - you can link to about anything - another file, another section in the same file, a line number in a file, a search string, an image, a PDF, a web site, etc.
In practice, if you use the headline version of TODO, you just keep the relevant notes under that headline. You can collapse all headlines if you just want to see the TODOs, and expand any given headline to see the details. But even if you go the checklist route you can just add a link to detailed notes.
You can learn to do all this in Org mode in under 30 minutes, if you find the right tutorial/video.
> without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"
These are entirely optional in org mode and not on by default.
If you want to be able to add a TODO in the right spot without moving your cursor to the exact location, you'll want to learn about capture templates, which is a bit more advanced.
Put your TODOs in the order you want. You can easily reorder them using Alt + Up or Alt + Down. Marking it as complete is also trivial.
The canonical way to do this is to make each TODO a headline with the TODO keyword. To mark as done, put your cursor on the headline and press Shift-Right.
Alternatively, you can use checklists and just press C-c C-c to mark an item as done:
- [ ] Fix widget
- [X] Extend Screen
- [ ] Profit
> Once there are too many completed tasks at the top, I move them down into a "Done" section.
You can refile any headline to another section. Org mode also has the concept of archiving a headline. By default it moves it to an archive file, but I'm sure the location can be customized.
> linking tasks to further notes would be great to have
Org mode supports links - you can link to about anything - another file, another section in the same file, a line number in a file, a search string, an image, a PDF, a web site, etc.
In practice, if you use the headline version of TODO, you just keep the relevant notes under that headline. You can collapse all headlines if you just want to see the TODOs, and expand any given headline to see the details. But even if you go the checklist route you can just add a link to detailed notes.
You can learn to do all this in Org mode in under 30 minutes, if you find the right tutorial/video.
> without explicitly setting due dates or priority "scores"
These are entirely optional in org mode and not on by default.
If you want to be able to add a TODO in the right spot without moving your cursor to the exact location, you'll want to learn about capture templates, which is a bit more advanced.
For to do lists Trello is god.
Sure, you can do this via the agenda [1], which essentially aggregates your tasks in various ways. You would organize your tasks as headers as follows
[1]: https://orgmode.org/manual/Agenda-Views.html
* some project :tag:
** open tasks
*** TODO Fix widget
a stacktrace
[[screenshot.png]]
*** TODO Extend screen
some notes on xrandr
** tasks done
*** DONE Profit
some notes about making money
more notes about how much money was made
[1]: https://orgmode.org/manual/Agenda-Views.html
I'm working on something like this (macOS/iOS), although it is not quite ready yet.
Notes can have tags and attributes so you could have attributes per note like: topic=rocketscience, semester=fall2020. Later you could say: "sort all my notes by semester and then group by topic" or if you change your mind, set up a second view for "all notes grouped by topic then by semester".
If you're interested, feel free to contact me through the site (kitestack.com/lnotes). I'd love to learn more about how you currently organize your notes.
Notes can have tags and attributes so you could have attributes per note like: topic=rocketscience, semester=fall2020. Later you could say: "sort all my notes by semester and then group by topic" or if you change your mind, set up a second view for "all notes grouped by topic then by semester".
If you're interested, feel free to contact me through the site (kitestack.com/lnotes). I'd love to learn more about how you currently organize your notes.
Do you mean browsing the notes in chronological order AND in thematic order (something like an outline?) in the SAME TIME?
I'm currently doing a re-designing of my DocxManager (outliner based on Word) and you did inspire me!
you can do this all in bash. you could set up a function that takes the text of your note as input along with your metadata and makes a timestamp. then you just index your notes however you'd like.
Small text files named 20201204_taskno_description.txt (handles chronologic order) + grep (handles topic grouping).
Works like a charm and is very low friction when notekeeping.
Works like a charm and is very low friction when notekeeping.
Zim Wiki?
zettelkasten ?
edit: you proposed zettelkasten-like solution just when I posted
edit: you proposed zettelkasten-like solution just when I posted
I get why folks like paper, but I'd lose it, it'd get spilled on (because kids). That, and it's just so easy to get buried in piles of paper… so I do everything digital. I even work to stay as paperless as possible.
I'd like to make a plug for Standard Notes.
standardnotes.org
I don't work for them. I get nothing from mentioning them.
It's cross-platform, and you have the option of encrypting things. It's my go-to place for notes.
I'd like to make a plug for Standard Notes.
standardnotes.org
I don't work for them. I get nothing from mentioning them.
It's cross-platform, and you have the option of encrypting things. It's my go-to place for notes.
Does anybody have a counter argument for just using macOS notes if you exclusively use Apple products? They sync nicely with my devices and make note taking pretty simple for me.
I’ve been using macOS notes for a couple of years for daily note taking, because it is just so convenient with cloud sync. I have been planning to transcribe everything I want to keep into a git repo of .md files, for exactly the lockin reasons the other replies have mentioned. I hope to settle on macOS notes for daily stuff and transcribing to a repo for long term.
> I have been planning to transcribe everything I want to keep into a git repo of .md files
Exporter.app might help you. https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12
Exporter.app might help you. https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12
Proprietary format. Difficult to link (or backlink) to other notes. Difficult to export, index, or analyze with other tools.
They are difficult to export. I had great success with Exporter.app, it converts to markdown and even handles the images. It then imports nicely into Bear.app.
https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12
https://apps.apple.com/nz/app/exporter/id1099120373?mt=12
They're accessible via IMAP. For me, at least, that makes them quite easy to export or $whatever with.
I think similarly, but after giving the notes app a shot for a few days, I went back to a text doc on iCloud Drive.
I never really made notes on my phone, and I like being able to stay in my text editor (acme) on macOS.
For me, the presentation and structure around this workflow is what's too complicated. To adopt do something similar on macOS, I'd just:
> % echo 'notes () { acme-open ~/iCloud\ Drive/notes/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md }' >> ~/.zshrc
This would give me a function to create a new, dated notes doc and open with my editor anywhere from the terminal. And then I'd just use standard tools for searching, instead of using a script.
(FYI: acme-open is my wrapper to acme, and I keep a link to the actual iCloud Drive directory in my home folder.)
I never really made notes on my phone, and I like being able to stay in my text editor (acme) on macOS.
For me, the presentation and structure around this workflow is what's too complicated. To adopt do something similar on macOS, I'd just:
> % echo 'notes () { acme-open ~/iCloud\ Drive/notes/$(date +%Y-%m-%d).md }' >> ~/.zshrc
This would give me a function to create a new, dated notes doc and open with my editor anywhere from the terminal. And then I'd just use standard tools for searching, instead of using a script.
(FYI: acme-open is my wrapper to acme, and I keep a link to the actual iCloud Drive directory in my home folder.)
It's a proprietary note ecosystem, so if you ever try to leave (or not use iCloud, which iOS/macOS note syncing depends on), it will be very difficult to regain control of your notes. I did this and it took a lot of effort, involved parsing out some protocol buffers, and losing a lot of formatting. I now just use markdown text files, never going back to that.
There are iOS shortcuts now which can let you do this programmatically, but you also lose formatting, and its a hack.
There are iOS shortcuts now which can let you do this programmatically, but you also lose formatting, and its a hack.
Local text files of notes are the best.
For me, I go even simpler. I have a single file in my Dropbox folder that I’ve been using for over a decade. To open it, I just use Alfred (and before that, quicksilver). I pop new stuff at the top. Every now and again I search for something way back when.
Works really well for me.
For me, I go even simpler. I have a single file in my Dropbox folder that I’ve been using for over a decade. To open it, I just use Alfred (and before that, quicksilver). I pop new stuff at the top. Every now and again I search for something way back when.
Works really well for me.
I went from paper to a tablet for a year (as a challenge), ended up back on paper. My boss got me into using nicer notebooks, and I've been doing it for years (about 6).
I then switched to MD files, eventually ending up using Stackedit extensively for a while similar to the tablet effort.
Now, between work, hobbies, being a DM; I've given up and spent some time in One Note... and now that's where I've
migrated everything. I'm always interested in how others do this in case they've figured something out.
I still use a paper notebook as a personal journal, important notes, etc. I also still use a notepad for those daily notes / thinking on paper that you can throw away at the end of the day.
I personally use a combination of Notion for collaborative notes/tasks/whatever, bullet journal for daily notes/tasks, and a markdown based zettelkasten for knowledgebase-type stuff. There's a fair amount of duplicated information, but both Notion and the Zettelkasten or easily searchable, and it's trivial to copy-paste between them.
I really like the paper method for day-to-day stuff, but for research or work-related notes, I simply can't write fast enough to keep up (particularly if I'm trying to capture info from a meeting), and the lack of searchability means I can never fully rely on paper notes as a means of retaining information long-term.
I really like the paper method for day-to-day stuff, but for research or work-related notes, I simply can't write fast enough to keep up (particularly if I'm trying to capture info from a meeting), and the lack of searchability means I can never fully rely on paper notes as a means of retaining information long-term.
I just use rednotebook on Linux and it's very good.
I have daily notes, a small calendar to navigate to dates in the past/future, a tag cloud populated with words I've written the most, and a search bar that I don't know how it works but usually finds what I'm looking for.
It's no fancy system but it's immediate, no dumb nerding and dumb wheel reinvention needed.
I have daily notes, a small calendar to navigate to dates in the past/future, a tag cloud populated with words I've written the most, and a search bar that I don't know how it works but usually finds what I'm looking for.
It's no fancy system but it's immediate, no dumb nerding and dumb wheel reinvention needed.
For the past couple of months I have been using org-roam [0] for this and I find it quite effective. Just found out that I have 87 different notes lying around:
$ ls *org | wc -l
87
[0] https://www.orgroam.com/
$ ls *org | wc -l
87
[0] https://www.orgroam.com/
I just use plain org-mode (orgzly on my phone), storing files on Dropbox (personal) or One Drive (work). AutoHotKey to emacs, then org-capture.
(Evernote if I find web content that's good.)
(Evernote if I find web content that's good.)
I use markdown + git as the core note components (organization methodologies layered on top, dealer's choice), wanted to share this Android neat app for those who do the same: https://github.com/GitJournal/GitJournal
Thanks for GitJournal. Will try it out.
I have been thinking of converting from OneNote to markdown. One thing that has been keeping me from making the switch is search, especially from mobile. Any one knows of any solution that is capable of searching through all the markdown notes similar to how OneNote does from mobile? I am thinking of hosting the notes in a RPi with Gitea or Nextcloud and access it using VPN (using Rpi as a trial and later move on to a dedicate mini PC if I end up liking this setup).
I have been thinking of converting from OneNote to markdown. One thing that has been keeping me from making the switch is search, especially from mobile. Any one knows of any solution that is capable of searching through all the markdown notes similar to how OneNote does from mobile? I am thinking of hosting the notes in a RPi with Gitea or Nextcloud and access it using VPN (using Rpi as a trial and later move on to a dedicate mini PC if I end up liking this setup).
Hi.
GitJournal author over here. If you can provide me with a video of what you mean, and what you would like that would really make implementing this much easier.
GitJournal author over here. If you can provide me with a video of what you mean, and what you would like that would really make implementing this much easier.
also a markdown + git user here. I just open it up like it's a code repo in VSCode.
(for anyone interested, "Working Copy" iOS app is great for this. It's a git client for iOS, and its contents are even accessible in the Files app. Can't speak to Android use, but looks like parent comment has recs)
(for anyone interested, "Working Copy" iOS app is great for this. It's a git client for iOS, and its contents are even accessible in the Files app. Can't speak to Android use, but looks like parent comment has recs)
I have a system too. Every time I want to record something I simply have an anxiety attack.
I created a self-hosted app to keep track of my thoughts and tasks during the day: https://github.com/m0ngr31/DailyNotes
It helps me to break things out based on date or by topic, which this supports.
It helps me to break things out based on date or by topic, which this supports.
For years, I experimented with paper, org-mode, text notes (Sublime Text, TextEdit) to manage my thoughts and life. What I ended up with was folder after folder of disorganized notes, files like daily.txt, todo.txt, log.rtf that ended up disgusting me.
I would so strongly recommended everyone reading this to check out Roam Research (https://roamresearch.com/). At it's core, it's a collection of text notes in the cloud. Just open it up and start typing your thoughts down. No folders or hierarchy. The key enabler is that is that you can link together different pages. Roam Research helps you make so much better sense of your thoughts - I use it personally to plan out goals, projects, brainstorm research, track meetings/dates, and keep a daily log of everything I go through. I can't recommend it enough - even my dad started using it everyday after I showed him.
Just try it out and starting typing a few notes. It'll start off as a simple graph for text notes / documents, but there are so many more powerful features to discover, too.
EDIT: Roam is a cloud-based service, notes are not end-to-end encrypted. It doesn't bother me, but if it bothers you, there are many open source, offline-first alternatives that the community has created (emacs-org, Foam, Obsidian, etc.). I am in no way sponsored by Roam, I don't know anybody at Roam, I don't run any of those bullshit Roam courses, and Roam is expensive as fuck, but let me tell you this: there are so many features and UI optimizations that make Roam have the best user experience. Don't compromise your time and user experience.
I would so strongly recommended everyone reading this to check out Roam Research (https://roamresearch.com/). At it's core, it's a collection of text notes in the cloud. Just open it up and start typing your thoughts down. No folders or hierarchy. The key enabler is that is that you can link together different pages. Roam Research helps you make so much better sense of your thoughts - I use it personally to plan out goals, projects, brainstorm research, track meetings/dates, and keep a daily log of everything I go through. I can't recommend it enough - even my dad started using it everyday after I showed him.
Just try it out and starting typing a few notes. It'll start off as a simple graph for text notes / documents, but there are so many more powerful features to discover, too.
EDIT: Roam is a cloud-based service, notes are not end-to-end encrypted. It doesn't bother me, but if it bothers you, there are many open source, offline-first alternatives that the community has created (emacs-org, Foam, Obsidian, etc.). I am in no way sponsored by Roam, I don't know anybody at Roam, I don't run any of those bullshit Roam courses, and Roam is expensive as fuck, but let me tell you this: there are so many features and UI optimizations that make Roam have the best user experience. Don't compromise your time and user experience.
After exactly year of using it, I moved back to Notion, even though I have Roam for free. Thanks to Roam's hype they have backlinks now (+ it's possible now to create new page in another page/db with "[[", that will leave only link/mention to that new page), which means both structured and flat zettelkasten-style notes (done in some master notes DB) are possible, plus regular DBs and all of the other cool stuff. This is a complete solution for me, all of my notes are much better organised now. And yes, I know, Roam has much more features than backlinks, I was using all of them, queries and block references, and sidebar, and ..., but for real work I'm not missing anything else than a sidebar. Sidebar is the best part of Roam IMO, even Obsidian with their multipane can't compete with that. With Notion I can open new tab in browser or new window in desktop app and keep it side-by-side and it's ok too, not as good and fast experience as with Roam, but good enough.
Thanks for sharing your experience - I have both for free as well, and I started with Notion. The problem is that Notion never stuck with me because it's hard to create pages/links at the same speed that you think / not as flexible, and I think Notion is better suited as a knowledge base with collaborators. Strong agree on the sidebar point, I don't use queries but am a strong user of references and embeds.
Wouldn't a Zettelkasten in Notion be most natural as a page with a template button to create a new note, and the new page had a template button to create children, etc...
That way it'd end up as a branching tree the way an actual zettelkasten would and would probably be more searchable.
That way it'd end up as a branching tree the way an actual zettelkasten would and would probably be more searchable.
Obligatory mention of foam for vs code here.
As well as org-roam for Emacs! https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam
I build a whole iOS/Mac app around the idea of daily notes and now also backlinking :)
https://noteplan.co
https://noteplan.co
I've built a similar system from scratch - also using this Dropbox daily notes file technique - except my script generates folders and sub folders for each year (YYYY) and each month within each year (YYY-MM) whenever I instantiate a file on a certain day. Makes long term management much easier than having thousands of files in one folder. Same grep principles apply (and I use hashtags within my notes to track keywords).
This is what I do too. I have 20 years of notes saved like this.
I also open sourced a zero dependency Bash script that handles this at: https://github.com/nickjj/notes
It supports adding notes in 3 different ways:
I also open sourced a zero dependency Bash script that handles this at: https://github.com/nickjj/notes
It supports adding notes in 3 different ways:
notes hello world appends the text to the YYYY-MM.txt dated file
echo cool | notes same as above except you can pipe in text
notes opens the YYYY-MM.txt file in your configured $EDITOR
Why even break it down? If you are using grep and presumably editors that can go to a pattern anyway you might as well write to a single file.
I also manage my notes on the go by opening the Dropbox app on my phone and editing the txt files from there. Having subfolders helps with navigation on the Dropbox app.
In case of infrequent synchronizations you reduce the number of conflicts by having separate files rather than a single big one.
I'm terrible at scripting, but I'm curious how you handled that. Do you mind sharing the script you created?
Sure thing.
It's a script called "d" (for diary) that I keep in my home folder. I try minimise mouse usage, so I've got a keyboard shortcut for opening a terminal, and then in the terminal I run ./d
=== start of script ===
#!/bin/bash
y=`date +%Y`;
ym=`date +%Y-%m`;
ymd=`date +%Y-%m-%d`;
if [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y" ]; then
if [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym" ]; then
vim Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym/$ymd.txt
=== end script ===
I could probably refactor the hell out of this. But I'm an old beard that prefers explicit readability. For example I don't need to use YYYY-MM for the month sub-folders (I could just use MM), and similarly I don't need the full YYYY-MM-DD.txt for the day files (I could just use DD.txt) - so your preference may vary.
And yeah I use .txt files because I can edit those natively in the Dropbox app on my phone too. Don't need any special apps installed to manage my notes on the go.
In terms of the contents of the files, I've kept the searchability really simple by using hashtags, example:
=== Dropbox/diary/2020/12/04.txt ===
## #keyword1 #keyword2
Here be notes on keyword1 and keyword2.
## #keyword3
Here be notes captured later on the same day on keyword3.
These can span multiple lines if I want.
## #keyword4
Here be notes on keyword4 captured even later in the day.
===
I use the single hashtag keyword system for quick grepping (and future indexing if I want to build a searchable database out of this one day), and the double hashtag ## at the start of each note snippet so that I can parse individual snippets more easily.
Hope that helps! :)
It's a script called "d" (for diary) that I keep in my home folder. I try minimise mouse usage, so I've got a keyboard shortcut for opening a terminal, and then in the terminal I run ./d
=== start of script ===
#!/bin/bash
y=`date +%Y`;
ym=`date +%Y-%m`;
ymd=`date +%Y-%m-%d`;
if [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y" ]; then
mkdir Dropbox/diary/$y
if [ ! -d "Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym" ]; then
mkdir Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym
vim Dropbox/diary/$y/$ym/$ymd.txt
=== end script ===
I could probably refactor the hell out of this. But I'm an old beard that prefers explicit readability. For example I don't need to use YYYY-MM for the month sub-folders (I could just use MM), and similarly I don't need the full YYYY-MM-DD.txt for the day files (I could just use DD.txt) - so your preference may vary.
And yeah I use .txt files because I can edit those natively in the Dropbox app on my phone too. Don't need any special apps installed to manage my notes on the go.
In terms of the contents of the files, I've kept the searchability really simple by using hashtags, example:
=== Dropbox/diary/2020/12/04.txt ===
## #keyword1 #keyword2
Here be notes on keyword1 and keyword2.
## #keyword3
Here be notes captured later on the same day on keyword3.
These can span multiple lines if I want.
## #keyword4
Here be notes on keyword4 captured even later in the day.
===
I use the single hashtag keyword system for quick grepping (and future indexing if I want to build a searchable database out of this one day), and the double hashtag ## at the start of each note snippet so that I can parse individual snippets more easily.
Hope that helps! :)
Thank you so much! I really appreciate it! (And sorry for the way delayed response... I went to bed shortly after posting.)
That's a very good idea. I might use that for my script. Thanks!
Honestly, I'm surprised at the amount of different answers here. It shows how personal note taking is to the user. I currently love notion. I switched over from Evernote, and it has been a game changer. The only downside is I'm tied to notion (the company), in a way I wouldn't be if I used something like markdown and git. That said, I think it's worth it to have the features in notion.
What features do you use?
Templates, Linked Database, Styles/Designs, Sorting/Filtering of databases. I also follow alot of Ali Abdaal workflow. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ONG26-2mIHU
I prefer keeping it all in one file, less messy since you are using grep anyway:
alias note='(date; cat; echo) >> ~/notes.txt'
alias note='(date; cat; echo) >> ~/notes.txt'
Also pretty elegant tool: https://github.com/tomlockwood/dn
Ah yes, the monthly note taking discussion.
I like to think of it as a positive bike shedding session - instead of arguing about the color of the bike shed, we all share and compliment each other on how interesting and cool our bike shed designs are.
I like to use the tools available on my system, so I simply use Apple Notes. It's simple, good for synchronization, backing and searching, good for regular text with minimal formatting, but not good for code snippets unfortunately. I'm open to alternatives (but don't want to bother with versioning).
Overall, taking notes isn't a solved issue for me. I mostly like pen and paper as a thinking tool, but I'm not able to archive and search them, and it' slower when writing pure text.
Maybe a "Remarkable" would be a good tool, but I'm not sure I want even more screens and devices I already have.
Overall, taking notes isn't a solved issue for me. I mostly like pen and paper as a thinking tool, but I'm not able to archive and search them, and it' slower when writing pure text.
Maybe a "Remarkable" would be a good tool, but I'm not sure I want even more screens and devices I already have.
It lets you interleave pictures. Really useful feature. It also does the URL expansion thing, what's that called?, where they expand a url into a mini snippet of the corresponding website. That's sometimes useful. However, there's no clean way to control it.
Worth noting, exporting Apple Notes in bulk loses any hyperlinked URLS. It also doesn't copy hyperlinks when copy-pasting out of Notes. Terrible for portability.
I can recommend the Remarkable. The nice thing about it is that I don’t even see it as a screen. It just exists as a more organised and versatile version of the paper notes I normally keep. But it’s a lot closer to paper than to a digital device (good for me, maybe limiting for some).
Ha! I recently started to do the same thing, except just a timestamp every time I run the script. If I want a blank page in the middle of the day I get one. `vn` opens a new one, `vl` opens the most recent one.
Similar tactic here, has been working extremely well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22279802
I also set it up to auto-create/open my daily-doc in the background when I open a new terminal session, since days that I do that are days that I most want to take notes. It serves as a very good, very minor reminder to actually write something down. And if I don't write anything, I can just delete empty files later with a trivial `find`.
I also set it up to auto-create/open my daily-doc in the background when I open a new terminal session, since days that I do that are days that I most want to take notes. It serves as a very good, very minor reminder to actually write something down. And if I don't write anything, I can just delete empty files later with a trivial `find`.
For a long time I had a Zapier setup that did something similar.
v1 created a templated note in evernote which I eventually enhanced to a more custom solution.
v2 used google cloud print to create a pdf from html and add to my google drive then move it into the Notability folder so I could access it and write on it from the Notability app on my ipad.
I loved this because I could also pull in weather, horoscope, daily calvin and hobbes, news headlines, top gitlab issues for my projects and add them to the html template/pdf. Frequently I'd end up physically printing it.
v1 created a templated note in evernote which I eventually enhanced to a more custom solution.
v2 used google cloud print to create a pdf from html and add to my google drive then move it into the Notability folder so I could access it and write on it from the Notability app on my ipad.
I loved this because I could also pull in weather, horoscope, daily calvin and hobbes, news headlines, top gitlab issues for my projects and add them to the html template/pdf. Frequently I'd end up physically printing it.
Inspired by similar plaintext to-do discussions on HN I also built my own system.
I use Sublime and I love scrolling. The second makes the system in TFTA not good for me, and given the first, I didn't mind my implementation being editor specific - but the principal is dead simple, as to not really matter.
I have a small custom function stored in Sublimes user package folder which, when called using the [cmd]+[shift]+p command palette will insert a small template in the top of the current file (my `daily.txt`).
This is just a headline with the date, and name of day of week and Two lines called start and end (with datetime filled in in start) let's me keep loose track of my hours.
I also have a sub-heading that says to-do, with two `[ ] ...` txt checkboxes already added, another headline called did and a line that separates it from the previous day.
"To-do" is for things I plan on doing, "did" is for ad-hoc things I ended up doing. This helps me keep track of how much work I actually did, which is nice for days where everything is meetings and firefighting and I don't close issues in the tracker or PRs in git.
I can use go-to symbol to jump to a date, or just search the document for key words. Like I said, I like scrolling, and enjoy being able to just scroll down to see the previous day.
The system is like I said dead simple, easy to operate, easy for anyone to implement and customize to their liking. I've used mine for a few months and it has been great!
I use Sublime and I love scrolling. The second makes the system in TFTA not good for me, and given the first, I didn't mind my implementation being editor specific - but the principal is dead simple, as to not really matter.
I have a small custom function stored in Sublimes user package folder which, when called using the [cmd]+[shift]+p command palette will insert a small template in the top of the current file (my `daily.txt`).
This is just a headline with the date, and name of day of week and Two lines called start and end (with datetime filled in in start) let's me keep loose track of my hours.
I also have a sub-heading that says to-do, with two `[ ] ...` txt checkboxes already added, another headline called did and a line that separates it from the previous day.
"To-do" is for things I plan on doing, "did" is for ad-hoc things I ended up doing. This helps me keep track of how much work I actually did, which is nice for days where everything is meetings and firefighting and I don't close issues in the tracker or PRs in git.
I can use go-to symbol to jump to a date, or just search the document for key words. Like I said, I like scrolling, and enjoy being able to just scroll down to see the previous day.
The system is like I said dead simple, easy to operate, easy for anyone to implement and customize to their liking. I've used mine for a few months and it has been great!
I tend to have a notes.txt in different folders. One for each project, one for each bug investigation, etc. I'll admit I need to work on a better backup story
I'm a dedicated Evernote user. I add just about everything I generate or want to record to Evernote, in one big "notebook", and then I extensively use tagging to make sure everything is findable. I try to use every tag I might ever search for, for which this note would be relevant.
Sometimes I add content to existing notes, if they are relevant and include the same family of concepts. I often merge notes; e.g., I save all my tweets to Evernote via IFTTT, and then merge all of them for each given month.
I often add notes with no tagging at all, and I have a shortcut to search for notes with no tags, as a sort of inbox.
The ability to search everything at once is the key: I can search "movies" or "startup" or "medicine" and find everything with those tags, or those words in the title or text, or even in PDFs. (I use a Fuji ScanSnap to scan documents into Evernote, with fully searchable text.)
The biggest feature I wish for is transcription of voice notes or audio files, so the content would be searchable.
Evernote's Mac app is notoriously slow, but it's gotten better over the years. I still don't understand why they can't make it as fast as the web app.
Sometimes I add content to existing notes, if they are relevant and include the same family of concepts. I often merge notes; e.g., I save all my tweets to Evernote via IFTTT, and then merge all of them for each given month.
I often add notes with no tagging at all, and I have a shortcut to search for notes with no tags, as a sort of inbox.
The ability to search everything at once is the key: I can search "movies" or "startup" or "medicine" and find everything with those tags, or those words in the title or text, or even in PDFs. (I use a Fuji ScanSnap to scan documents into Evernote, with fully searchable text.)
The biggest feature I wish for is transcription of voice notes or audio files, so the content would be searchable.
Evernote's Mac app is notoriously slow, but it's gotten better over the years. I still don't understand why they can't make it as fast as the web app.
My system as of right now...
Todoist on my phone for tasks. I like todoist because it's got a nicely polished interface and an excellent API.
I use an AWS Lambda to define and push repeating tasks into Todoist at set times, it also moves tasks from certain lists into my inbox at certain times of the day/week. Basically I don't want to fiddle with setting times or scheduling in todoist except for one off scheduled tasks. I just want to put tasks into the right lists and let the lambda move them into the inbox when I need to do them.
This is effectively a kind of timeboxing so I generally do all my work in the morning till early afternoon and then do research/admin for the next days tasks in the afternoon.
For notes and project management I use Roam Research which I found suited me best.
Todoist on my phone for tasks. I like todoist because it's got a nicely polished interface and an excellent API.
I use an AWS Lambda to define and push repeating tasks into Todoist at set times, it also moves tasks from certain lists into my inbox at certain times of the day/week. Basically I don't want to fiddle with setting times or scheduling in todoist except for one off scheduled tasks. I just want to put tasks into the right lists and let the lambda move them into the inbox when I need to do them.
This is effectively a kind of timeboxing so I generally do all my work in the morning till early afternoon and then do research/admin for the next days tasks in the afternoon.
For notes and project management I use Roam Research which I found suited me best.
Do you think Roam is worth it, and are there any alternatives that are comparable to Roam?
I really like Roam, it seems to be made by people who're thinking deeply about what a note taking system should be, I don't mind paying for that reason.
I think there are a bunch of alternatives out there, just googling roam research alternatives will throw them up, I just don't want to spend a lot of time searching and evaluating different systems when frankly roam is good enough for me.
I think there are a bunch of alternatives out there, just googling roam research alternatives will throw them up, I just don't want to spend a lot of time searching and evaluating different systems when frankly roam is good enough for me.
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After years of using tons of notebooks I decided to move to Notability on my iPad. The Apple Pencil + Paperlike experience really do it for me.
Notability is nice and when I write feature designs I don’t have to transcribe my handwriting to the computer. I simply select the handwriting, convert it to text and move it over my computer.
Another great thing about this is that I can run searches on my handwriting, I really enjoy that because looking for that one page in a notebook is never practical, specially when you have many notebooks.
I’m a fan of the simplicity of your system but I don’t know if it’ll work for me. I really like writing with a pencil, that’s when I feel like I’m learning or reflecting on information.
I’m a fan of the simplicity of your system but I don’t know if it’ll work for me. I really like writing with a pencil, that’s when I feel like I’m learning or reflecting on information.
I have been struggling to keep notes effectively. A lot of my notes "expire" a few days after taking them, but others I will need years later.
For most of my job I take physical notes. I don't love it but it's easy for me to grab a pen and paper just about anywhere I am. Where I struggle is doing something with those notes after the fact.
When I am at my computer, I usually just keep a plain text file going for the day and just save it for the date. I also have Teams recordings, screenshots, and other stuff that I have to just put in a folder. I don't have tagging or anything and keeping up this information just isn't working.
Any tips?
For most of my job I take physical notes. I don't love it but it's easy for me to grab a pen and paper just about anywhere I am. Where I struggle is doing something with those notes after the fact.
When I am at my computer, I usually just keep a plain text file going for the day and just save it for the date. I also have Teams recordings, screenshots, and other stuff that I have to just put in a folder. I don't have tagging or anything and keeping up this information just isn't working.
Any tips?
Physical notes are great for the reasons you mention - I tend to transcribe my physical notes into e.g. Google Docs/Dropbox which seems to make it easier to refer back to them. Of course you run into potential privacy issues for sensitive notes; on that front, pen and paper notes (or an offline machine) are hard to beat.
I have a script that functions very similarly, called `jot`[1].
I also have one for rapid steam-of-conscious thoughts[2] and organized journaling[3].
Personally, I'm a fan of the "plaintext files in a directory" pattern for notes, thoughts, and writing.
[1]: https://github.com/Pinjasaur/jot
[2]: https://github.com/Pinjasaur/jt
[3]: https://github.com/Pinjasaur/jrnl
I also have one for rapid steam-of-conscious thoughts[2] and organized journaling[3].
Personally, I'm a fan of the "plaintext files in a directory" pattern for notes, thoughts, and writing.
[1]: https://github.com/Pinjasaur/jot
[2]: https://github.com/Pinjasaur/jt
[3]: https://github.com/Pinjasaur/jrnl
Personally I used Python's tnote program, but, because of Python, it worked pretty slowly. So I rewrite on pure POSIX shell and it serves me for nearly ten years:
http://www.git.stargrave.org/?p=t.git;a=blob;f=t
Comparing to author's solution, it gives ability to briefly list notes, use multiple "namespaces", quickly add (without invoking the editor), delete or modify each specified note. Also there is no bashism and it works out of box on *BSD (that lacks bash) and GNU systems.
Comparing to author's solution, it gives ability to briefly list notes, use multiple "namespaces", quickly add (without invoking the editor), delete or modify each specified note. Also there is no bashism and it works out of box on *BSD (that lacks bash) and GNU systems.
I guess the author has never heard of vim-wiki?
> The way it works is that every time I run the script, it opens the note for that day in my editor of choice
vimwiki's diary function does that for you under the hood.
> The way it works is that every time I run the script, it opens the note for that day in my editor of choice
vimwiki's diary function does that for you under the hood.
> I guess the author has never heard of vim-wiki?
The author, as well as most everyone in the comments here, have apparently never heard of org-mode. Yeah, I can understand that for some people emacs is a non-starter, but trust me, if you want to do it, I can just about guarantee it's possible in org-mode. It's just that flexible, and everyone's org-mode setup is different, customized to their needs.
The author, as well as most everyone in the comments here, have apparently never heard of org-mode. Yeah, I can understand that for some people emacs is a non-starter, but trust me, if you want to do it, I can just about guarantee it's possible in org-mode. It's just that flexible, and everyone's org-mode setup is different, customized to their needs.
my workflow for stream of conscious notes: \ww
I add tags as relevant if I think about it, and for projects/tasks spanning multiple days i'll create a root item.
I created a local git repo I try and keep everything checked into; I might push it up to a private github/bitbucket repo eventually, but I haven't been careful with scrubbing credentials from shell snippets so leerly on pushing anywhere remote.
I add tags as relevant if I think about it, and for projects/tasks spanning multiple days i'll create a root item.
I created a local git repo I try and keep everything checked into; I might push it up to a private github/bitbucket repo eventually, but I haven't been careful with scrubbing credentials from shell snippets so leerly on pushing anywhere remote.
Yes, it sounds like they reimplemented 1% of vimwiki...
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I go for a low-fi approach: it is a single text file.
$ notes
appends a new line, current date like Mon 05 Oct 2020 10:20:47 AM EDT another new line and a set of === as a separator and moves the editor cursor to the bottom. So I can immediately type.
If I type
$ notes So that was weird
then it will take whatever I typed at the command line and append that as well allowing me to continue to type in the editor.
Finally I use :tag to freetag notes so I can easily search through notes based on the topics.
I figure eventually I might figure out a better system but so far this one worked very well.
$ notes
appends a new line, current date like Mon 05 Oct 2020 10:20:47 AM EDT another new line and a set of === as a separator and moves the editor cursor to the bottom. So I can immediately type.
If I type
$ notes So that was weird
then it will take whatever I typed at the command line and append that as well allowing me to continue to type in the editor.
Finally I use :tag to freetag notes so I can easily search through notes based on the topics.
I figure eventually I might figure out a better system but so far this one worked very well.
For me, I'm an avid browser, lurker, reader of HN, Reddit, and when I come through an interesting paragraph in an article, or a comment in a thread, I screenshot it.
Next step will be to automatically move the screenshot from iCloud onto a computer, run OCR on the screenshots, index them, and make it possible to search through their text with near-equal search terms (eg "cute dog" would match "cute puppy" as well)
Anyone has ideas on how to make that possible?
Next step will be to automatically move the screenshot from iCloud onto a computer, run OCR on the screenshots, index them, and make it possible to search through their text with near-equal search terms (eg "cute dog" would match "cute puppy" as well)
Anyone has ideas on how to make that possible?
Screenshot + OCR seems tough, but sounds like it could be your preferred workflow. More robust will always be 1. a link to the article/thread and 2. a transcription of the content (esp. tailored to you [1]) imo. Your search term idea is interesting, I know Google is/has been doing this.
[1] https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/
[1] https://zettelkasten.de/posts/collectors-fallacy/
I've considered similar but thought that ingesting the actual text from a link would be easier.
For the past few months I’ve been taking markdown notes which are then transformed into HTML and pushed to an s3 bucket for public viewing. Probably not the best solution within this thread but it costs approximately nothing is a great way to get access to a web-based version of your notes anywhere.
This allows you to throw extra features in the HTML like searching for files and randomly selecting a note for viewing at your leisure.
This allows you to throw extra features in the HTML like searching for files and randomly selecting a note for viewing at your leisure.
I made a comment here with the same idea:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25300423
I love the idea that I have a place to publish random stuff that I don't have to spend lots of time writing, I can just drop a sentence and maybe someone else will find it useful.
The big problem is that Google will basically never give you that page in a result, no matter how relevant it may be to your query, because it prefers SEO-rich content farms like Wikihow. I was thinking that a service would at least be easier to search/remember to go to.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25300423
I love the idea that I have a place to publish random stuff that I don't have to spend lots of time writing, I can just drop a sentence and maybe someone else will find it useful.
The big problem is that Google will basically never give you that page in a result, no matter how relevant it may be to your query, because it prefers SEO-rich content farms like Wikihow. I was thinking that a service would at least be easier to search/remember to go to.
Having a generally positive experience with Dendron: (https://github.com/dendronhq/dendron ) currently, having recently migrated several thousand markdown-format notes captured over the past few years.
A suitable addition to your system for managing notes is the open source tool TagSpaces (https://www.tagspaces.org). With it you can tag, preview and edit your markdown files in one application, without any vendor locking.
Random data point: OneNote, Microsoft sticky notes, moleskine books, emails to myself, github issues; depending on the context. In some future utopia there would be a unified solution. Small hunch I'd have to create that myself in order to be content with it.
Or as a single line [0]:
alias lb='vim ~/logbook/$(date "+%s")'
I wrote something similar that got a bit of traction on here yonks ago - a bit less elegant than this though.
https://github.com/tomlockwood/dn
https://github.com/tomlockwood/dn
Seems useful for daily stand ups (we do dark stand ups at the end of the day). I might give this a go
Gonna go against the grain here: I use proprietary software!
I dump all my random thoughts into my todoist inbox. Every couple of days I sift through and take action, or categorize as needed between notion notes and todoist projects.
I dump all my random thoughts into my todoist inbox. Every couple of days I sift through and take action, or categorize as needed between notion notes and todoist projects.
A nice solution for those that can get by with text-only notes.
For storing images I use Microsoft OneNote as more often than not, there is a need to document something with text and images. And search is excellent.
For storing images I use Microsoft OneNote as more often than not, there is a need to document something with text and images. And search is excellent.
One way to work images in text-only notes is to bake in the path names to the image files on your local drive rather than paste an image into the note. If I'm in terminal I can copy that text with the path, hit cmd n "open" cmd v enter and view the image with the system viewer (preview in this case). If I'm looking at the text file in textedit on mac os, I can actually do this from the right click menu under services after highlighting the path name. Could be a good solution if you are tired of onenote's bloat.
nb seems like a souped-up version of this tool, and a few others mentioned in the thread.
https://github.com/xwmx/nb
https://github.com/xwmx/nb
+1 for nb, the dev posted it here a couple months back and I immediately switched to using it, does the job perfectly.
Trello has been the best Notes and todo app I could find.
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^same! I absolutely love Trello for short notes and now I have over 1000. I still need to figure out a proper export / back up mechanism
I haven't even tried to back it up But I'm assuming they have an export function?
I love Trello but I don't want my data on the cloud. I wish I could have something as nice and easy as Trello but self hosted
As a self-hosted Trello alternative, I use OpenTasks[0], created some Lists to sort my different kind of notes, and sync this between my machines with DAVx5 and Nextcloud. Not as streamlined as a trello, but hey, FOSS and self-hosted. On desktop I can view my tasks and lists with Nextcloud's web app, or Thunderbird's Lightning addon. With OpenTasks, one task can have a title, a detailed description, a checklist, start and due dates, completeness status, even priority - I usually just use the title, and often the checklist, excellent for groceries and household chores.
You could also try Wekan[1], which is awesome on desktop, but I found the mobile interface unusable.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.dmfs.tasks/
[1] https://wekan.github.io/
You could also try Wekan[1], which is awesome on desktop, but I found the mobile interface unusable.
[0] https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.dmfs.tasks/
[1] https://wekan.github.io/
This looks great. With to-dos and notes I'm like 80% mobile.
Does next loud have mobile apps?
Does next loud have mobile apps?
Absolutely they do. And now I'm realizing that they build a Trello-like functionality too, Nextcloud Deck.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/it.niedermann.nextcloud.deck
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/it.niedermann.nextcloud.deck
Thanks for sharing that!
My philosophy is that my life is not important, I'm not unique, and I'm not influenced by ads, so I might be wrong, but tech companies are literally wasting their cpu time and database space storing info about me.
So they can store all they want while I enjoy their free products.
So they can store all they want while I enjoy their free products.
I use a combination of nextcloud deck + all its other addons. I've installed it on a rasberry pi and a simple zerotier setup so that my notes are accessible over the internet.
Has been working for me for years now.
Has been working for me for years now.
Just wait until systemd-notesd comes along and shows us all the One True Way(TM) of taking notes!
Very nice! i installed it and will give it a shot. Thanks for sharing!
vim with folding
Still the best tree editor I've found. I left emacs for it!
Still the best tree editor I've found. I left emacs for it!
Emacs has folding too, so that cannot be the only reason..?
Yeah emacs has like eleventeen different folding modes. That's the problem.
Vim has folding as a basic feature of the editor binary, not some aftermarket script. So editing operations on folded regions always do what you expect.
Vim has folding as a basic feature of the editor binary, not some aftermarket script. So editing operations on folded regions always do what you expect.
Oh look, someone reinvented org-mode.
1. Capture: every interesting idea that I think up or read is immediately stored in Google Keep (on mobile or laptop). It can be very rough at this point, the goal is simply to not forget.
2. Transcribe & Organize: every weekend, I go through the notes I accumulated during the week. It tends to be between 10 and 30 notes. Sometimes the note is "read this article" or "catch up on all newsletters", so understanding a single note can take over an hour. On some tough weekends the process takes an entire day, but that is invariably a day where I feel like I learned a ton. Once the note is cleaned up (transcribed), I feel like I understand it. At this point I rarely forget it - it has been absorbed into my brain. The final step here is "categorizing" the note. I classify it using OneNote with tabs like "Clinical psychology" (nested under "Psychology") or "Investment management" (nested under "Finance") or "Math" or "Physics". This way, in the future, I don't have a million notes scattered around, but one clear place I know where to look. On average, this process takes 2-4 hours per weekend. I never accumulate bookmarks, Google Keep notes or unread emails more than a week to prevent existential dread.
3. Revisit: generally, people recommend you revisit your notes from time to time. I almost never do this. But if I ever am thinking about "Marketing" or "Sociology", I have an immense, high SNR repository of everything I've ever found valuable on the topic. I've done this for software interviews and it's been incredibly helpful.
Overall, I attribute this system to making me much smarter. It has been an invaluable investment.