Ask HN: What tools do you use to take learning notes and organise them?

28 points by iltaiuti 8 years ago | 26 comments

I would be interested to hear what software stack you use for learning and related note-taking. Some example questions that might help: what note-taking software do you use? How do you search and organise your notes for revision and reference? What are the pros and cons of your choices? Do you wish there was a software that solves a particular pain?

Context: I have noticed that I always struggle to keep consistent track of notes I make as I learn new topics. I have tried OneNote, Evernote, and some more open-source ones, but each lack of something that makes it complete. For example, I find Anki really useful and use it every day, but its interface is stuck in the 90s and it doesn't easily synch with my other, more expansive notes.

9889095r3jh 8 years ago |

Pen. Paper. Every time I see someone taking notes on a computer, they start typing whatever they hear, word for word. Pen forces you to slow down. Makes you organize the concepts, highlight the important things, summarize.

According to this article, there's evidence that you learn better that way. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/a-learning-secret...

But who knows. I just know it works for me. Plus, I hate lugging around a laptop everywhere I go. Composition book is lighter.

If you switch to pens, try gel pens. Less hand fatigue. I don't mess with fountain pens as they are more expensive, prone to failure, and just come across as pretentious IMO.

SnowingXIV 8 years ago |

Legal pad. I've tried tons of different software options but never used them and never reacted in the way I needed to. Plus any cloud based solutions of logging into things just adds more cognitive overheard. Often times I'm jotting notes down or like to draw little diagrams or use some other reasoning for emphasis. I feel by writing things down I remember it better. There is also something very special about hand-writing the date everyday (well, work day at least).

If I need it to be multiple places and accessed by a computer I'll use the basic notes app from apple that I can open up on my phone as well.

For a more complete answer I really like using gitbooks to write my own version of tutorials or documentation. It's a nice bit of software to organizes pages and markdown is fun.

iltaiuti 8 years ago | |

I hadn't tried gitbooks, thanks!

SnowingXIV 8 years ago | | |

It's really beautiful, probably one of the more enjoyable web applications I've used. Plus you can share with your friends and because it's git you see that history which is neat!

aldanor 8 years ago |

When taking notes in a class (español), always an iPad + Apple Pencil + GoodNotes. Proven to be super handy during few years of use.

On a Mac, there’s a brilliant Quiver app for note taking, with syntax highlighting, diagram support and other programmer-related goodies.

For editing notes collaboratively, or as a shared knowledge base / brainstorming resource, notion.so which is quite nice.

cher14 8 years ago |

I made https://www.breakdown-notes.com Its' a tool to make notes quickly. You can click anywhere and start typing, copy paste text and images from pdf's or other sources, and use a multitude of shapes, arrows and colors. Also it's easy to reorganize / revise your notes: text can be edited like in any other text editor, but it is way easier to reposition text blocks / images. They can simply be dragged anywhere. You can zoom in and out of the map you take notes on, making it easy to get overview or detail.

It works great as a note taking tool while reading a book, or following a course. Searching the notes is OK-ish. You cannot search the notes without opening it. It works best in chrome and is not intended for use on mobile.

acutesoftware 8 years ago | |

That looks like a good tool, which can make some nice visual notes.

There is a typo in your sign up line though (should be weeks)

"Try out for free for 2 week!"

ajarmst 8 years ago |

(OT: Suggestion to not use software...) I'm aware that this is answering only the implied question, but many recent studies have indicated that handwriting is still the best tool for learning. I use a good-quality bound journal in quadruled or dot format. It's organized by date, so all my notes are in one book, but I add indexing notes and topic references. I use a variant on the bullet journal (bulletjournal.com) for integrating my notes with task information. I've been in IT for thirty-five years, and have spent a substantial portion of that in classrooms as a student and as an instructor. I have yet to find a digital replacement remotely as powerful, and I've tried most of them.

NB: I do sometimes photgraph and ocr important pages that need to be archived or machine searched. It turns out that I don't need that nearly as often as I thought I might. It also turns out that, if you were the one to write it, you can actually find the page you're looking for in even a large and full journal extremely quickly because of the way your memory works with physical objects.

ajarmst 8 years ago | |

PS: When I do need to type notes (often when working with others and want to record decisions), I usually use org-mode, which is pretty much de riguer because I spend most of my time in emacs.

evolve2k 8 years ago |

I love Docear an awesome open-source project that lets go create mind maps of highlighted references from journals you've been reading, but they could do with some more dev assistance.

http://www.docear.org https://github.com/Docear/Desktop

ismail 8 years ago | |

Wow this sounds Awesome. Will definitely take a look.

EricLima 8 years ago |

Notion.so — It was recommended to me and after playing around with it for a little while, I didn’t want to use anything else. I use it for almost all of my note taking and other note and documentation tasks along with several other purposes. Completely left Evernote and moved everything over to them.

ApolloRising 8 years ago | |

This looks great, thanks!

Multicomp 8 years ago |

Mempad - It is a tree-style text outliner that I use to hold my text-only notes, the same kinds of ones that used to be in the sticky note app or the 'random notes.txt' file.

OneNote is great for multimedia and freeform stuff, but not always reliable - I once 'lost' a notebook that had my draft novel in it and had to go pull off a (thankfully recently) cached copy of it from a computer that had just been decommissioned and stuck in storage.

40acres 8 years ago |

Pen / Pencil & Paper works for me. I use Google Notes for things like groceries and books that I want to buy but for everything else I carry a notebook.

mobitar 8 years ago |

I use and develop Standard Notes: https://standardnotes.org.

Full encryption + cross-platform.

hitsurume 8 years ago |

I use Evernote, and I love it. I write notes and its searchable and editable and that's pretty much all I need.

I'm curious to what sort of process you're using for notes that isn't solved in the most basic way? Meaning, you write notes, you edit notes, and you can search through them or tag them?

eglafac 8 years ago |

Baron Fig notebook in dot grid all the way. Nothing beats paper and pen in my opinion.

tmaly 8 years ago |

I do like to keep an idea pad. But I am working through the 2001 version of the Getting Things Done book. I have started organizing things as projects and am using the ios Things 3 app to do this.

ismail 8 years ago |

Have been iterating on a notes system as I also found no software gave me the complete solution.

Here is my current system for notes that combines written notes with electronic back-up.

So far the system below is working but still looking to improve further. Especially around pdf highlighting and notes for research papers.

Would appreciate feedback/ideas.

Note taking System:

Principals:

- Evernote is used as the electronic data base of notes

- i classify/differentiate notes between ephemeral and long-term archival

- only long term goes into Evernote

1. Journal for ideas etc.

- Started keeping a notebook around 2015-2016. This is with me most of the time

- Use a modified bullet journal format.

http://bulletjournal.com/

- Have a daily log, monthly log. This is for ephemeral notes such as Meeting notes&Tasks

- Modules: long-term log: Ideas, insights log, unanswered questions, problems go here

Modules are dedicated pages around a specific topic. I usually dedicate two pages at a time.

- separate modules When researching a specific topic, doing a course, reading a physical book etc.

- These modules go right in whichever month It is. So e.g I may have a few days of March, then start a new module in between.

- Index with page numbers goes in the front of the journal with start of each month and various topics. Once an item is listed on index any additional pages get listed next to original page.

Example Index :

Idea log - p14, P23 February 2018 - p18, p34 System theory - p27 March 2018 - p43

- The journal is purely functional. No fancy drawing etc. Try to keep it as minimal and functional as possible. Others use the bullet journal format for creative outlet.

- Every 3 months or so, take pictures of the pages that are important and they go into Evernote.

- Each “module” goes into a separate note. They are tagged by year, and topic

- When the Journal is finished, an image of the index goes into Evernote

- Evertnote will OCR the text. It is quite accurate and I am able to search based on words in my written notes

- It takes about 30-45 mins to do an entire notebook (leaving out the emphereal notes)

2. Reading - Books - kindle:

- Highlight important passages

- at times make kindle notes

- Export the highlights&notes into evernote

3. Reading - Books - physical:

- Module in journal

4. Reading - Research Papers:

- used Mendely but stopped using it. Found out they do not store highlights or notes with actual pdf. Their support is also terrible and was unable to access my notes with out resorting to poking around their data files for several months.

Currently looking for something to highlight, make notes and manage references

- have tested papers, readcube, zotero, highlights and have still not found the right solution

- ideally it should be able to export to Evernote as well. Think highlights is the only app that supports this.

5. Workshops/Brain Storming sessions:

For post-its:

- Pictures with the post-it plus app. Import into evernote

- Whiteboards etc. Picture into evernote

6. Understanding Concepts/knowledge graph

- Use CMAP tools to do concept mapping.

https://cmap.ihmc.us

- right now the concept maps are saved on Dropbox

- Will investigate a script to export the concept map structure and propositions to Evernote as well

- Heard that SMSn is quite good as well. Have not had the time to investigate.

https://github.com/synchrony/smsn/wiki

fairpx 8 years ago |

I keep coming back to the standard notes app in iOS

noobly 8 years ago |

Org-mode with a latex plugin (I use AucTex).

conception 8 years ago |

Can you go into detail on what OneNote, EverNote, etc are missing?

That said - Workflowy is amazing and changed my life.

gt_ 8 years ago | |

I have been stashing in Evernote for about a decade but have come to really love using Markdown for learning notes so I am looking elsewhere. For now, I have started using a git repo for learning notes.

spondyl 8 years ago | |

As a Workflowy fan, I can also recommend Dynalist

kingkongjaffa 8 years ago | | |

I want this but offline/ self hosted, any ideas?