How do you take efficient notes? How do you take notes? I cannot decide which way is the best one and what to choose: a Kanban board, sticky notes, pen & paper, or simple To-Do Lists? Notion / Todoist / Trello / what to use...! I save some content in Kanban Board, then I'm missing quick notes I can save with a simple to-do list app. Later I switch to Notion, but finally find it too advanced. How do you take notes to make it simple and efficient? |
The challenge you are describing is of the cost of context switching between multiple tools as all your information that you need to recall to do your work (say about a project or a topic of what have you) is living in different places. Your tasks may be in todoist but it’s not great for writing notes to preserve context. Trello etc all have similar problems. Notion is too powerful in the way you can do a lot with it and it’s easy to fall into the paradox of choice there. Unfortunately there is no good solution today. Even orgmode that i mention has its challenges (mobile usage for 2023’s world is pretty poor)
Most of the time you end up using something setting up a system to take notes manage work only to move on to the next thing which is when you realize that data portability matters and you don’t like being locked into a tool. Enter plain text which has its own limitations in terms of tooling ,collaboration. Etc.
Not the answer you were looking for but a long winded way of saying there isn’t one tool/silverbullet. Start with something simple and stick to it. The more data in there the more valuable it starts to become.
The real question you want to ask and answer is why do you take notes. And the answer more than likely is going to be you need notes for different things which result in realizing you need diff types of notes and that note taking is more nuanced. And that you may be able to use something like orgmode as one solution to it all but it lacks mobile, collaboration support etc. you may then have more clarity on which tools you need to use for which type of notes. Or if you can live with one tool that does it all but trading off some other qualities you desire.
Worry about the things being noted, not how to note them.
What I think I’d like to use is some sort of a wiki-based app that also allows to organize and present “pages” in a columns/grid format with some tabbed control around it. So I could store notes, links, tasks, snippets, everything in there, categorized visually. And add them with a simple “+” command. Something in spirit of https://new-tab.vlad.studio/ ( https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=vladstudio )
Right now I use OBTF.txt (one big text file) in a repo, with vim folds around sections. And Trello for task-y things. Pen and paper for ongoing “designs”.
I've learnt a method called CODE (Capture, Organise, Distill, Express from a book - Build Your Second Brain. It changed how I organised my information and helped me be more productive.
You can have a look and see if that methodology works for you.
During meetings I often use my iPad w. Concepts or Apple Notes.
I prefer doodling when I feel like I'm focusing too much on writing down notes verbatim and not paying enough attention to the conversation.
Similarly as VSCode is an IDE for code, Obsidian is an IDE for knowledge and productivity.
There is a learning curve, but you can start right away, and learn as you go.
Do you use more than that ? Any recommendations ?
Unlike SaaS tools and even VSCode, Obsidian has exceptional speed, and using hotkeys/shortcuts is crucial. To learn more about using shortcuts, I completed the Obsidian Flight School course[1].
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1. https://www.linkingyourthinking.com/obsidian-flight-school
Look up bullet journal.
You can’t beat that simplicity
cron job to git pull/push
For shorter term written notes and research documents, I use spreadsheets. They are grids. Grids help organize things into nice cellular chunks. They can contain lots of asset types. I don't actually need the other spreadsheet functions, but if I did want to search my notes, I could export a CSV and write something to quickly filter through it. If I need a cloud spreadsheet there are options, but I've been alright with LibreOffice Calc.
If I only access the notes occasionally(e.g. financial records) or there's a need for intensive ideation then I have a paper spiral notebook. Again, I use grids as a way to add some organization - I got a bundle of A5 grid notebooks off Amazon so that I feel like "I have storage to waste". I also use a color multipen, and most recently I've added sticky notes to the arsenal. The point is to have some hierarchies and categories just already there by default - by position, by color or styling. The sticky notes are currently used as project to-dos that I can remove when done - thus when I look through those books I have a view into just current tasks, and done tasks - not things I said I'd do and didn't. If I need to share, I take a photo.
For on-the-go use I also keep a dollar store bound notebook and two pens(a multi and a fountain) in a fanny pack. I use a binder clip to close it flat and prevent dogearing, and I also keep sticky notes available in a tiny case I found at Daiso.
Notetaking bleeds into home/office organization too. You want to have duplicates for things and pre-divided space so that more of your projects are kept together - tools and notes available without a moment of "where did I put the...". Anything that turns into an unorganized pile with no "reset" state is calling for a space divider or binding of some kind, whether that's something small like a binder clip or manila folder, or large shelf storage, file boxes, etc. Electronic often becomes a huge hindrance for this kind of spatial organization by turning into a dependency gatekeeping information access behind an OS, apps, etc.
Sometimes there are units of info that you want to cross-reference - "plan A vs plan B", "section 2" and the like. For this you can invent short identifier codes or nmemonics. Then as the need arises you can decide how you want to collect and archive them.