[HN Gopher] Ask HN: What is a sustainable methodology for taking...
___________________________________________________________________
Ask HN: What is a sustainable methodology for taking notes of your
learning?
Suppose you have a diverse interest in CS, Philosophy, Physics. The
purpose can be improving your knowledge in building systems etc.
Author : dev_0
Score : 90 points
Date : 2022-07-24 09:28 UTC (13 hours ago)
| knlb2022 wrote:
| I use logseq to take study notes in org mode, which are then
| published to my public slipbox by post-processing with emacs in a
| github action. The consistent part of this has been plain text
| notes -- the slipbox has stuck for the past year, and hopefully
| will continue.
|
| https://explog.in/slipbox/
| thrown_22 wrote:
| Hierarchy, doesn't matter in what form.
|
| You need a master index of what you do where.
|
| Then use sub indices until you reach your concrete notes. Don't
| expect these to be tidy or simple. They are living documents.
| samsquire wrote:
| Create a GitHub repository, create a README.md. You can edit it
| on the website or on the CLI.
|
| You don't technically need anything more complicated than this.
|
| The important thing is you take notes and actually use them.
|
| I even blog and journal on GitHub.
| rossvor wrote:
| Emacs org-mode
|
| Kitchen sink is yet to be implemented[1], but for everything else
| you are covered:
|
| - Executable blocks
|
| - Footnotes
|
| - Inline charts/images
|
| - TODOs tracking
|
| - Multi-device support (there are mobile apps)
|
| It's not going away any time soon, and you can always add-on
| stuff yourself if you familiarize yourself with emacs-lisp.
|
| 1: https://www.emacswiki.org/emacs/TheKitchenSink
| graboid wrote:
| In recent years, many tools have been created in the note-taking
| space. They often market themselves as something like "personal
| knowledge management tools", "Zettelkasten" or "second brain".
| There are just so many solutions now (and it seems like every
| week someone develops a new one). I keep a list where I note down
| solutions I see mentioned. In case you are still in search of a
| tool, here is a short extract containing some of the more popular
| tools from my note: Obsidian, logseq, roam, foam,
| org mode, notion, remnote, evernote, dendron, zettlr, tiddlywiki,
| joplin, devonthink, thebrain, heptabase, scrintal, ...
|
| Now I don't know what you are referring to with "sustainable", if
| you mean finding a note-taking workflow that is easy to keep up
| for you, then of course that highly depends on your personal
| needs (method of input, type of content, multi-platform
| requirements etc.).
|
| My advice would be:
|
| 1. pick something that works outside the browser
|
| 2. pick something that you can sync, and that has a mobile
| solution for quick notes on-the-go
|
| 3. pick something that works on a "future-proof" plain-text
| format, e.g. .txt files or .md
|
| 4. some tools offer spaced repetition integration, either as core
| functionality, as plugin, or by syncing to a dedicated SRS app
| like Anki. If you find a way to frictionlessly create SR cards in
| your notes, that can be a nice way of keeping some knowledge
| "cached"
|
| 5. keep it simple in general, don't rely too much on specific
| tools or workflows. they will all cease to work/go out of
| business at some point.
|
| 6. If you are going with any solution that operates on a local
| folder of .md/.txt/.org files, a nice goodie is that you can
| actually version your notes with git.
| barry-cotter wrote:
| Either don't take notes and read more, in clusters by topic, or
| write about what you read. You'll still forget a lot but at least
| you'll be able to find out what you thought about something at
| the time. Or you could use Anki or another spaced repetition
| system.
|
| This can only be an individual question. Try things.
| sackerhews wrote:
| On the topic of flash cards, the Leitner system is pretty
| awesome.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leitner_system
| alexpetralia wrote:
| > _As I 've mentioned elsewhere, I have a fairly straightforward
| "personal knowledge management" (PKM) methodology.
|
| 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._
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25302365
| robcohen wrote:
| The first two steps look like the GTD methodology, which I also
| follow. The point is to remove the cognitive load by putting
| all todos into an inbox for sorting later.
| brudgers wrote:
| My methodology became sustainable when I stopped taking notes [1]
| and accepted that learning happens through repetition.
|
| Which is to say, rereading and multiple sources spread over time
| is much much more effective...and rereading and repetition from
| multiple sources is what note taking is.
|
| But only if you go back and read your notes. And I didn't. So I
| stopped taking them.
|
| What I realize now, writing this, is my note taking was driven by
| fear of missing out. That's how we are taught in school. If you
| don't take notes during the lecture, you will miss what you need
| to know for the test.
|
| Life after school isn't that way. There's no final exams every
| sixteen weeks, no pop quiz on Tuesday, and no problem set
| tonight...or at least it's all optional.
|
| And on the bright side, to a first approximation life entails
| missing out on almost everything. Time on Physics is time away
| from poetry, geology, and the pub.
|
| Good luck.
|
| [1]: I still make _actionable_ notes. And I still make notes of
| my potentially actionable ideas.
| srvmshr wrote:
| I usually keep a project open in Overleaf where I keep jotting
| down everything that I like. Then on a second pass on my own - I
| expand or cull the information usually and double checking the
| information as well.
|
| Here is an example of what I did for Stanford CS 230 notes:
| https://github.com/fagan2888/CS230_notes/blob/main/section1/...
|
| I used to write things down. But I am very OCD about the page
| yellowing or creasing. Also if I made a mistake I usually trash
| the sheet and rewrite it. For me notes are a way for
| regurgitating digested information in good details. I do not ever
| want to look through the book or course, once I have already
| covered it. So, yes its a bit tedious, but I save time on the
| long run
| greymalik wrote:
| What did you use for the diagrams? I know you could do some of
| that in tikz but that seems tedious.
| srvmshr wrote:
| The graphs are from Jupyter notebooks/Pytorch + Matplotlib.
| Neural networks schemes are made in Latex Tikz. Several
| others (flowchart & generic) just Google slides. I have latex
| macros to build the template & sections quickly - and then
| just focus on writing
| stuckinhell wrote:
| I find everything fails eventually anki, Zettelkasten, markdown,
| text files, obsidian, one note, wiki, notion etc.
|
| You need to very clearly define what you want and you should know
| how your brain works. Some people want loose links to job
| memories, some people think slower but more deeply. Some people
| get math better than biology, and so on and so on.
|
| You should have a good idea how you learn and what you are
| good/bad at. Then develop a system that works with YOUR brain.
| Also you must emotionally accept you aren't going to get it right
| the first couple times.
| D13Fd wrote:
| > everything fails eventually
|
| I don't think this is true. I've been using a folder full of
| text files for 10+ years now and still use it basically the
| same way I did when I started (now with Ulysses rather than
| NValt, but few technique changes).
|
| For me this is because I just slotted it in as the answer to
| the mental question "where should I write this down?" I don't
| take notes because I think taking notes is good, I take notes
| because I want to remember things or be able to find them
| later.
| stinos wrote:
| Very good point. Just like I only learned how to properly study
| in the last 2-3 years of university (which was quite a
| 'perfomance' increase, i.e. time spent studying decreased quite
| a lot yet grades went up; partially driven by the topics being
| more interesting, but still..) I tried a bunch of things. Only
| to figure out that the exact tool used doesn't matter a lot, it
| just needs to be easy enough to work with and preferrably plain
| text - I settled with Obsidian in the end because it's simply
| pretty good at what it does, and FF Simple Tab Groups for links
| used often.
|
| What did matter is that I needed to use the tool consistently
| and not be like 'oh let's quickly add a text file with a note
| on my desktop' or 'oh here's a shiny new tool let's take some
| notes in it and paste some bookmarks in it'. That, and figuring
| out categories: not too much, not too little.
| karma_fountain wrote:
| I'm using zk and the zk-neovim plugin. Works well, its easy to
| link between notes and navigate. They are future proof because
| they are stored as plain text. Would like to auto commit and push
| the notes to github every once in a while, but I've yet to set
| that up.
| reality_inspctr wrote:
| The writing tool Ulysses is great for me. It's as simple as
| notepad, but device and cloud syncs, and supports markup etc.
|
| Anything I finish gets deleted or delegated, anything I can't use
| gets posted or integrated into future writings.
| Simon_O_Rourke wrote:
| Relatively simple, but effective at least for me. I've a notes
| folder, and every day I'll save a text file called YYYYMMDD.txt,
| and in it I'll write lots of one liners like,
|
| Note: Do something Read later: some url and description Bug:
| whatever
|
| Then I'll just grep on a particular term and keyword and rank by
| filename to get the most recent.
| woile wrote:
| I follow the same approach, I use obsidian to create the daily
| note with a button. When I study I take notes there and then if
| I have to, I move them to different files
| photochemsyn wrote:
| No tool is as versatile as pen and notebook. The limitation is
| that you don't have access to data / images / tools. Indexing the
| notebook to a filesystem where each subject in the notebook has
| an affiliated folder, and the filesystem gets backed up to
| storage regularly, with occassional archival storage (basically
| freeze a picture of the filesystem to a USB drive once a year and
| store it somewhere safe) is a decent approach.
| jfasi wrote:
| I find that something magical happens when you write things out
| by hand. Thinking slows down, you subconsciously explore the
| problem, and your expression becomes much more deliberate.
|
| Also, you activate more of your capabilities as a thinking
| creature that way. Why just approach a problem with your
| fingertips on a keyboard when you can activate your visual,
| spatial, and temporal processing capabilities?
|
| Personally, I've recently fallen in love with Leuchtturm
| notebooks. I bought the great big 83+ one, a nice Japanese
| mechanical pencil, and I've been going to town on problems ever
| since.
| sm_ts wrote:
| I keep a relatively large amount of notes (1), which are
| fundamental to my learning.
|
| My notes are essentially books in markdown format, which I can
| open with the editor/IDE I use when working on any project.
|
| My opinions are:
|
| - the vast majority of the effort is spent on cataloguing
| knowledge when adding new notes (that is, keeping each book
| consistently structured); this is something that no tool can do,
| and as a consequence, any tool will probably do equal.
|
| - a consequence of the cataloguing effort is that the brain
| better remembers the topics stored.
|
| - searching is where the other effort goes; I've found that as
| long as the books are consistently structured, and one puts a bit
| of effort to make concepts easily findable, a textual search does
| well. probably, a tool to do fulltext search may help in some
| cases, but I rarely find the need
|
| - there are interesting differences between doing a google search
| and searching a stored concept: 1. the stored concept is
| processed 2. the search follows my brain organization, not a
| search engine's
|
| - I do only very basic cross-referencing; my method will probably
| be inadequate if this is a requirement
|
| For things that require rote memorization (say, System-V x64
| calling conventions), I use Anki.
|
| I take notes almost only for computer/science related stuff. If I
| had to catalogue diverse topics, I'd probably just use
| subdirectories.
|
| (1)
| https://github.com/64kramsystem/personal_notes/tree/master/t...
| marek_leisk2 wrote:
| Putting together a short-form blog post. Also, turning it into a
| presentation helps solidify any learnings.
| chrisweekly wrote:
| See Tiago Forte's "Building a Second Brain" (esp. the PARA
| approach, and Progressive Summarization note-taking technique)
| for a comprehensive system that answers precisely your question.
|
| More generally, this topic has come to be referred to as PKM
| (Personal Knowledge Management) and TFT (Tools For Thought). IME
| Obsidian.md stands out for its power and flexibility and
| community, though Roam Research (and Athens, its OSS
| counterpart), logseq, and Notion have their merits.
|
| HTH!
| affgrff2 wrote:
| I am using Anki for basically everything now. Everytime I need to
| look up something in Stackoverflow it goes to my Anki collection.
| Same for things I like to be able to remember from books.
| PaulKeeble wrote:
| Most formats aren't going to stand the test of time and unless
| you want to spend a lot of time converting from one format to
| another its usually best to stick as close to just text as
| possible. Initially I used simple ascii text documents in a
| folder structure which I maintained backups of and then gradually
| I have used more markdown and use Dokuwiki currently for the
| software to display and edit. It still works from files so it is
| still just text but it links them together and offers some
| benefits beyond just text but it is still completely readable and
| will be in 20 years time long after I dump that software and use
| something else.
|
| Whatever you do consider its got to last 40+ years of a career
| and if it becomes too difficult to maintain you will likely stop.
| tonyarkles wrote:
| Yeah, my notes from online courses and things all go into org-
| mode documents. Still plaintext, but with the convenience of
| inline LaTeX math and executable code snippets. 20 years from
| now the in-line Python or R might not still run, but the output
| gets saved into the file at least.
| rsync wrote:
| I thought a lot about this and tried several different methods in
| my early twenties.
|
| I encourage you to abandon this pursuit and let your human mind
| perform it's most wonderful magic: synthesizing, compressing and
| expanding mental inputs.
|
| Don't get in the way of this magic:
|
| _throw everything you can into the input chute_ and marvel at
| the connections that result.
| jrm4 wrote:
| I cannot echo this enough. As someone who's experimented with
| this a whole bunch with a million things, here's the thing I
| realized: Get good at understanding what the COMPUTER is good
| at vs what the HUMAN is good at. For me, all the wasted time
| was a result of me misunderstanding and mixing these two up.
|
| Namely: Things like mindmaps and lots of little individual
| connected nodes (e.g. Obsidian) appeal in theory to human
| minds, because that's how our minds work.
|
| But for me, I realized they weren't good tools for this because
| my brain is much much better at doing this than the software.
|
| Ah, yes then: The software is good at 1) writing things down
| verbatim for detail and 2) re-reminding me of them when I go to
| look at them. The other stuff, the thinking and the
| connections, that's ME. That's NOT the software.
|
| So for me that means. What I look at on the computer needs to
| be dense and well organized, not a mess of nodes. Which usually
| leads back to bigger, simpler chunks. I still use http://zim-
| wiki.org, but try to minimize the number of pages.
|
| (To go broader, yes, this has very much deepened my skepticism
| of AI and machine-sentience)
| gandalfgreybeer wrote:
| I'd say decent notes are still important in a way that's not
| contrary to what you're saying. Our minds are very good
| processors but are not the best memory banks. Knowing what to
| take note of is part of that skill.
|
| Sure there are people with eidetic and impressive memories but
| for most it's easier to just take notes of something and know
| where to look for the info later. That's one reason why I still
| keep to-do lists and calendars. Sure I can just use my brain to
| store all of these things, but it's easier to just have notes
| to look back onto and use my mental energy for other tasks it's
| more suited for.
| jasode wrote:
| _> abandon this pursuit and let your human mind perform it's
| most wonderful magic: synthesizing, compressing and expanding
| mental inputs._
|
| Not sure if you're trying to convey some "zen" advice but the
| way I actually synthesize & connect information is to _take
| notes_. My previous comment on how many thinkers use notes like
| this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30331114
|
| If you're suggesting that the mind makes _more_ synthesis &
| connections _without_ notes, I guess that 's possible but
| that's not what happens in my case. Maybe that just means
| brains are different.
| rsync wrote:
| I don't know anything about zen.
|
| I just observed myself cataloging facts and trivia ... and I
| noticed the real insights came about spontaneously.
|
| I decided that every minute spent note taking was better
| spent reading or re-reading or simply walking and thinking.
|
| I agree with you that YMMV.
| boris wrote:
| The point of taking notes is not to preserve the
| information (or at least not primarily) but to load it into
| the brain where the connections can magically be made, as
| you put it. Rich Hickey has a nice talk on this called
| "Hammock Driven Development".
| dev_0 wrote:
| I write alot of notes physically and within the margins. But
| after a few days, I will forget these notes
| na85 wrote:
| I've tried a lot of different solutions and none really work for
| me.
|
| In the end, I went back to pencil and paper. Not pen, but pencil.
| I buy good quality notebooks like the Midori MD Paper A5, and
| good quality pencils like the Mars Lumograph.
|
| I use the most minimal "system" possible which is a pared-back
| version of Bullet Journaling with all the dumb stuff removed.
|
| Because I can't write nearly as fast as I can type it forces me
| to paraphrase, and I feel like the cognitive processing therein
| increases retention.
|
| As an added benefit, it's trivial to incorporate diagrams, arrows
| and stuff to show logical links, etc.
| clircle wrote:
| I used a paper and pencil or pen. It works well in school and at
| work. I use org-mode (org-capture) for tasks though.
| d4rkp4ttern wrote:
| Apica CD Notebook (96 sheets, 192 pages)
|
| https://www.jetpens.com/Apica-Premium-C.D.-Notebook-B5-7-mm-...
|
| +
|
| Pilot Vanishing Point Fountain Pen (Or Lamy Safari 2000)
|
| After using Remarkable tablet (and iPad with pencil) for nearly 2
| years, and various notes tech (mem.ai, roam, logseq), for
| "serious" notes (I.e learning a new topic) I went back to my
| handwriting days and realized what I was missing. Key features:
|
| 1. You can flip through pages really fast and find your notes
| from visual cues. Ah yes I remember how the page looked, here it
| is.
|
| 2. You can create an index page to quickly find topics you've
| written about. No need to build an exhaustive index right away.
| When you find yourself hunting for "where did I write about this
| equation", then make an entry after finding it.
|
| 3. You can freely make diagrams, link things on a page with
| arrows, circle portions of text or equations and write side notes
| in different color pens (stabilo pens are good for this)
|
| 4. No shoulder/wrist strain issues from computer typing.
|
| 5. You really do find yourself revisiting your notes often. Even
| if you don't, remember Feynman:
|
| >"A visitor came to Richard Feynman's office. When he saw
| Fenyman's notebooks, he was excited to see "records of Feynman's
| thinking." Feynman replied, "They aren't a record of my thinking
| process. They _are_ my thinking process. " Writing is thinking.
| Plenty of people think, then write."
|
| Of course "write" can be interpreted as writing on computer, but
| Especially for "mathy" notes, I believe writing with pen + paper
| makes a huge difference in learning, thinking, retention, recall.
|
| I'm no Luddite but I'd like to focus on what really matters (my
| learning and recall, and yes the quality of my experience) and
| avoid contributing to some startup's ARR and a VC's returns.
|
| I still use logseq (and Apple notes) for less serious things like
| quick meeting notes or pasting receipts etc.
| lovelearning wrote:
| What's "sustainable" is probably subjective. To my mind, it's
| these characteristics: 1) being able to write or dictate from any
| device 2) accessible in future 3) assists with recall 4) uses
| formats that can be read decades later even as technology around
| it is constantly changing
|
| 2) and 4) make any kind of third-party service/SaaS a no go.
| Otherwise, you'll have to set up periodic export to a preservable
| format, which acts as a speed bump. If the service becomes
| popular, it may attempt lock-in by throttling export features.
|
| For now, I'm using Obsidian. It's accessible from all my devices.
| Because it uses markdown, the notes will remain accessible even
| if the software dies. It supports searching but I can also search
| using any search tool.
|
| Additionally, I use Anki flash cards and its spaced repetition
| features to recall key info. I link them to my notes in case I
| feel like delving deeper into a topic. Unfortunately, because
| Anki uses SQLite locally and its own closed-source server for
| syncing, it doesn't satisfy many of my criteria. For now, I've
| set up periodic exports until I can find a sustainable
| alternative to Anki.
| Wolfbeta wrote:
| You can use a custom sync server on desktop and android.
|
| https://github.com/ankicommunity/anki-sync-server
| AreYouSirius wrote:
| ss48 wrote:
| Make sure they are searchable, and favor more recent notes over
| older notes.
|
| In most cases, make sure each note are self-contained and can be
| reviewed without the original text or other notes. Referencing is
| okay, but usually, you don't want to keep an idea contained in a
| million places.
|
| If needed, add a diagram or tree or nested tags to show where
| each note fits in the scheme of a grander picture on a topic.
|
| Looking for a set of notes in a helpful sequence is usually not
| going to be as effective, aside from chronologic notes of what
| happened in what sequence.
| esc-CorK wrote:
| Used to use zettlr, but now I run a BookStack instance. Honestly
| the perfect wiki for me.
| user3939382 wrote:
| If you don't remember a topic well enough to google the details
| when you need them, have you really learned it?
| gzer0 wrote:
| More often than not, I have found the Google results for highly
| specialized topics and areas that I know well enough to Google,
| but not remember all of the details, to be very sub-par,
| superficial, or rudimentary in nature.
|
| It seems like there is a lack of good quality highly
| specialized information that flies under the radar or just
| isn't indexed properly. I have now turned to hn.algolia.com [1]
| for certain specific searches, as well as in the process of
| downloading entire archives of books (PDFs and ePUBs) that I
| will be running OCRmyPDF [2] on just to ensure search-ability.
|
| This way, I _know_ for a fact I can search for almost any topic
| of relevance and it will be indexed /cached on my local
| machine.
|
| Google has gotten terrible at displaying information that is
| very niche and or highly specialized and I want to take that
| control back into my own hands.
|
| [1] https://hn.algolia.com/
|
| [2] https://ocrmypdf.readthedocs.io/en/latest/index.html
| mulholio wrote:
| I've gotten a lot of use from a version of Zettelkasten in Roam
| recently.
|
| The general idea is this.
|
| 1. Take "Literature Notes" in your own words as you consume
| content. These are little summaries of ideas in the text that are
| usually 1-3 lines. For paper books, I do this in a little Muji
| notebook. For digital resources, these go straight in Roam. 2.
| When you have finished the resource, copy your notes to one page
| and summarise them in "Permanent Notes". 3. Keep your Permanent
| Notes in one Permanent Note page and link everything together.
|
| The best guide I found for getting this kind of system set up was
| https://www.nateliason.com/blog/smart-notes. The original "How to
| Take Smart Notes" book is also good, but much less concrete.
|
| Really, I found step 1 to be the most valuable. I was previously
| processing highlights from articles and books and that weirdly
| took more time. Writing little notes as you go along saves only
| what is relevant and it's much more direct for your use cases.
|
| As a word of warning though, I really haven't gotten this stuff
| to work very well for programming (or disciplines where you need
| to exercise knowledge rather than archive it in a system). I
| either find I need to memorise the stuff more directly with Anki,
| or having to practice skills in a real world context.
| nstart wrote:
| If you are truly interested in sustainable methodologies, I think
| one area that requires acceptance is that the volume one consumes
| needs to be second to the volume one can take meaningful notes
| on. There is no sustainable notes strategy that can support
| randomly opening HN and skimming a random article on the front
| page during a break at a bus halt.
|
| If you want to take notes of what you are reading, no matter what
| method you choose you need to synthesize your ideas. You need to
| make them your own. That takes time. Personally, I found that for
| the time I was taking notes* I had to first discipline myself in
| how I consumed material. This lessened how much I read and made
| me focus on quality which in turn made me focus more on what I
| was reading which then turned into a positive feedback loop.
|
| This answer may feel like a cop out, but I add it only because
| too many people try to find a note taking methodology to support
| an unsustainable consumption habit and then they think the note
| taking method was the issue when it really wasn't.
|
| * - I ultimately stopped taking notes on most things when I
| decided one day that I didn't want to do it anymore. I narrowed
| my areas of interest to ones where mostly practical experience
| mattered much than theoretical knowledge (eg: illustrating). The
| only areas I take notes in still is security research and even
| that is far more practical
| lin368 wrote:
| I agree with the idea of "making them your own." I often found
| myself forgetting about something I "learned." Simply jotting
| down notes on Notion or any other software is not practical.
| Having some context and identifying how it relates to your
| problems is far more critical for understanding and learning
| something deeply.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| > You need to make them your own.
|
| I second this, I found that I truly understand the material
| when I am in the position to explain it, to ensure that, I
| write my notes as if I am an instructor and I explain things to
| a class under the assumption that they won't attend the
| lectures.
|
| As I write notes, I find myself needing to further explain
| things - so as to fit the requirements - which results in
| consuming more material and reasoning about it.
|
| This requires a non trivial amount of effort, and not everyone
| has the capacity to do it, but for a student, this probably
| works, the Feynman method and all that.
| pmontra wrote:
| Pen and paper (a notebook) served me very well. If copy and paste
| from screen is important to your learning, anything that can
| handle markdown, because of portability. No proprietary apps or
| formats.
| ayushnix wrote:
| Commonmark with a few essential pandoc extensions like attributes
| and pipe tables.
|
| Unfortunately, Commonmark and Markdown have a widespread
| ecosystem and are recognized everywhere. There are commonmark
| preview tools available even for the terminal (glow, mdcat). Its
| ecosystem makes Commonmark a necessary evil, at least for me. You
| can also find literate programming tools for Commonmark. You can
| edit Commonmark in lots of different editors and many static site
| generators work primarily on Commonmark (Mkdocs Material, Hugo,
| Zola).
|
| The only other viable alternative I know of is Emacs Org Mode.
| However, OrgMode is tied to Emacs and you'll have to be
| comfortable with Emacs to use OrgMode. There are some addons for
| editors like Neovim but they're not at feature parity and
| probably never will be because of the inherent limitations of a
| terminal (showing multiple different monospace fonts, for
| example). Emacs can generate HTML using Org documents. There's
| ox-hugo for the Hugo static site generator.
| kbigdelysh wrote:
| I use OneNote for note-taking and repetico to memorize important
| things.
|
| I also use OneNote as a temporary place for holding relevant
| information (screenshots, text or pdf printouts) about a bug or a
| feature I'm developing.
| oldjavacoder wrote:
| A text editor is what I use, the pattern is a comment line
| beginning with a # sign followed by the thing or things I'm
| noting, interspersed with comment lines if needed, followed by
| one or more blank lines to separate the concept.
| beernet wrote:
| I think it's important to have a system that works for you. For
| me, the key is having an organized way of capturing and
| organizing my notes so they are easy enough find when needed but
| not too much effort required at any given time (i don't want them
| taking up more than 1/2 hour per week). I use Evernote which has
| been great because its web-based allowing access from anywhere
| with internet connection as well being able sync across multiple
| devices including mobile phones etc.
| taccicardia wrote:
| I use a text editor (usually notepad++) for my notes. Just simple
| bullet lists. If I need to convey a flow, I'll use combinations
| of various brackets and arrows and stuff. Then at some point I go
| through these notes and format them to a markdown file in Joplin,
| which gets backed up to the cloud. I haven't found a simpler way
| to take notes than this and I feel like folks trying hard to
| minmax this process are losing the plot.
| sideshowb wrote:
| 20 years in academia, trying many different solutions and
| surprisingly I've come back to... A word doc for each
| project/topic.
|
| File format not going away. Sync on onedrive. Outlining.
| Formatting. Integration with referencing software. Already
| installed on any windows machine I use. And when I want to write
| a paper I'm in the right app already.
|
| Crazy huh.
|
| Equation editing is horrible if there are lots of them but in the
| plus side word mostly understands latex math these days.
| fancy_hammer wrote:
| I'm a fan of writing things in my own words. Don't just copy and
| paste chunks of text verbatim.
|
| Andy Matuschak has written about his techniques for keeping
| notes. https://notes.andymatuschak.org/About_these_notes
|
| Molecular notes is another take on keeping notes
| https://reasonabledeviations.com/2022/04/18/molecular-notes-...
| zevulous wrote:
| I've been using the second brain system in Roam for a while now
| and I really like it -- it helps me connect between topics,
| especially as someone with many competing interests. I will say
| that it only works when I remember to do it, which is a downside
| of any of these systems. Organization is also super important
| here.
| quickthrower2 wrote:
| Notion is not bad: the killer feature is you can export so not
| locked in.
| teodorlu wrote:
| 1. Make sure your note taking system supports your goals. My
| goals: (A) assist my learning, (B) easily share content and get
| feedback from others.
|
| 2. When you produce content, consider (A) what you want to
| achieve by producing the content, and (B) how you want to find
| the content later.
|
| 3. Use one global namespace for named concepts. Category /
| taxonomy / tags belongs in metadata.
|
| Why the goals? If your system supports your goals, you will
| continue to use it and get value from it. If your system doesn't
| support your goals, it becomes tedious to use, and you'll abandon
| your notes.
|
| I encourage you to put your notes publicly on the web. Public
| notes have URLs, and there's no easier way to read content.
| You're going to remember notes.yourname.com/THING, or just go via
| notes.yourname.com to list / search.
|
| -----
|
| My information architecture consists of named concepts, journals
| and metadata.
|
| _Named concepts_ is the top level. Wikipedia uses this
| structure. There 's one global namespace with sufficiently
| qualified names. You are going to remember your note by this
| name. Disambiguate in your global names.
|
| _Journals_ are organized by date. The advantage of journals is
| that you _don 't have to name anything_. In general, it's nice to
| start with a journal, and collect named concepts on demand.
| Journals don't have to be discoverable.
|
| _Metadata_ helps you discover and index your notes. Categories
| and tags go here. But don 't go nuts on categorization, think
| about what those categories should achieve. Remember the fact
| boxes on Wikipedia? Those are driven by concept metadata.
| Sometimes it's better to embed a table or a nested list on a
| concept page than introduce metadata. "Is this helpful to
| understand the concept?" - put it on the page. "Is this helpful
| to find/index your content?" - it's metadata.
|
| Let's say you want to learn FUSE
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace). Create a
| journal page for learning FUSE, and tag it as "open problem".
| Make sure you can list open problems. Each time you've got some
| time, open your FUSE journal, and work to understand something.
| Read the man page. Read wikipedia. Read the source. But annotate!
| Take notes in your journal as you go. When you revisit your FUSE
| journal, you can easily rediscover where you were last time, and
| decide where you want to go next.
| davesailer wrote:
| Yeah, so all I can do is maybe throw more gas on the fire by
| offering some things I found.
|
| Karl Voit did a dissertation on using tags, and developed some
| software to help...
|
| How to Use Tags https://karl-voit.at/2022/01/29/How-to-Use-Tags/
| (and there are several other posts on the subject)
|
| Tagstore: https://karl-voit.at/tagstore/en/papers.shtml
|
| Personally, me still be try to find system to work in own small
| head. Many head acheings yet.
| dev_0 wrote:
| For those using Zettelkasten, how do you know whether the
| connection you are making are useful? I can imagine it is easy to
| just link concepts.
| coldblues wrote:
| I primarily use backlinks as a method of tagging and finding my
| notes easily using queries. I just write and link without
| thinking about it too hard. After all, Zettelkasten is for
| effortless and fluid writing; to transfer your knowledge
| digitally, and use it to offload mental work to something more
| spacious.
| teodorlu wrote:
| I don't really think about it as linking notes. At least,
| "creating links" isn't the goal. Mostly, I'm trying to explore
| what I'm curious about.
|
| I create links in two situations: (A) when I'm reading someone
| else's content, or (B) when I'm working on my own content.
|
| When I'm reading someone else's content, I want to understand
| what they mean. I try to do that by building on other things I
| know. I also want to think further than the author. Apply it to
| my context.
|
| When I'm creating my own content, I want to build on ideas.
| Refer to examples, compare to other ideas.
| yasser_kaddoura wrote:
| https://zettelkasten.de/ via https://orgmode.org/ and
| https://github.com/org-roam/org-roam
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