[HN Gopher] Incremental Note-Taking
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Incremental Note-Taking
Author : thesephist
Score : 31 points
Date : 2021-06-28 20:25 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (thesephist.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (thesephist.com)
| Rochus wrote:
| Interesting text. But by the end of the day I think it is quite
| subjective how people optimally capture their thoughts and ideas.
| I spent many years doing research to find an optimal tool.
| Netmanage Ecco worked very well for me, but had some limitations
| - interestingly some which also the referenced article considers
| important. Other people were fan of completely different tools
| which I couldn't get much out of (and vice versa). Finally I
| implemented my own tool (not for the first time) ten years ago
| which I'm successfully using since then
| (https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/). It looks certainly
| old fashioned to younger people, but I'm very efficient with it
| because I can talk to people and record/organize the discussion
| at the same time without moving my hands away from the keyboard
| (what helps me to focus on the topic and counterparts and not to
| be distracted by handling the tool). If I assess my approach with
| the "Principles of incremental notes" it looks like a good match.
| Point 1 is met by efficient shortcuts and capturing information
| in context due to outlining approach. Point 4 is met in that each
| outline is automatically added to a history list; of course I can
| organize outlines in that some outlines are used as directories,
| and there is also a full text search; I agree that I very often
| rediscover notes from the history context. Point 2 is met in that
| I can consolidate notes from old ones without copying, i.e. I
| just take the items from different outlines I want and put them
| together in a new outline without losing the link to the original
| context; much more to say. And yes, I carry a small laptop with
| me wherever I go; it has a good keyboard on which I can type
| faster than people usually talk. Doesn't work with a smartphone.
| greyman wrote:
| >The tragedy of Apple Notes is that it's an idea black hole.
|
| I don't quite understand what's the problem here. You capture
| ideas digitally, and later, you can revisit them just the same as
| you revisit paper notebooks.
| tylerwince wrote:
| Agreed. I didn't understand this part. I exclusively use Apple
| Notes for typed and handwritten notes. I also find the search
| functionality to be excellent at finding stuff I need, so I'm
| not sure why the author bashes Apple Notes search either.
| tunesmith wrote:
| The incremental note-taking approach is interesting - it's
| definitely a solid primitive for tracking the history of data.
| But it also puts an even greater burden on the surrounding
| features for sorting, organizing, summarizing, because now you
| can't just delete something that is better represented elsewhere.
| riffic wrote:
| Is any of this influenced by _How to Take Smart Notes_ by Sonke
| Ahrens, or any of the recently trendy PKMS bloggers /youtubers?
|
| It seems there's been a mini-renaissance surrounding some of
| these topics.
| discardable_dan wrote:
| No discussion of Workflowy (https://workflowy.com/)? It is, in my
| opinion, by far the best note-taking app I have used. You can
| search, reorganize, and freely move content as you take it, and
| also after. You can nest a whole campaign of D&D notes next to
| your favorite recipes, and it feels natural due to their focus
| level model. More importantly, it's absolutely dead simple, and
| it "gets out of the way."
|
| The author dances around the two main properties that all good
| note-taking methods have:
|
| 1. It's easy to add new notes 2. It's easy to look through old
| notes to find what you want
|
| Pencil and paper, or bound journals, do the former very easily.
| The latter is much harder, unless you start some indexing system
| (such as a bullet journal solution). This suggests searching and
| tagging are ideal, which digital is good for. But, and I cannot
| stress this enough, (1) is more important than (2). It is not
| impossible to find information in hand-written notes, just
| harder. But the exact moment it becomes hard to take new notes,
| the solution fails because you won't use it. And I believe
| Workflowy does all of this, with quick nesting, easy extension,
| and even quick reorganization. And you can quickly drop into
| "just let me write some notes," then go back and organize later
| (even splitting your notes up into subcomponents, if you want).
| thesephist wrote:
| OP here. There are a lot that I left out -- Workflowy of
| course, but also Notational Velocity and its cousins (nvAlt,
| nvUltra) are another favorite of mine. I guess I mostly
| mentioned the ones that were top of mind / in the zeitgeist in
| my work. But you can extrapolate this philosophy to other apps
| like Workflowy for sure.
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