| I experimented for a while until I found my favorite solution, which I'm really quite thrilled about. I treat my notes as if they were a software project, which is to say, a collection of text files organized according to domain-specific methods. I use a code editor to write and edit notes (Textmate in my case) -- this has the bonus of not just using my familiarity with my code editor, but it actually adds to the value of improving my skills with the code editor, since that makes me better at notes and at code. I keep two projects -- "life" notes and "work" notes. They are stored in Dropbox (and are additionally put in version control, although I commit changes rarely). Storing them in dropbox makes them all accessible on my mobile phone, which is nice. In the root directory of my "life" notes, I have: a few scratchpad_{identifier}.txt files (alpha, beta, etc.) -- so I always have an easy file to jump to to take notes on anything. I then synthesize these notes into a more useful location. todo.txt -- a todo list
schedule.txt -- notes on my schedule (typically to aid planning things a few weeks ahead, not a replacement for a calendar app)
goals.txt -- keep my life goals front and center and then directories, which included .txt files related to their title, or further subdirectories: career
culture (notes on articles)
finances
identification (keep track of useful info like VIN #)
journal
knowledge (non-career related learning)
lifestyle (hobby-related notes, fun ideas)
media_lists (books to read, books read, movies (watched/to watch), podcasts, etc.)
projects (personal software project notes, ideas, before they deserve their own repo)
travel
self_improvement
writing Like a software project, I sometimes "refactor" the notes; the goal being to improve the ease of storing and the value of retrieval of the notes -- as a bonus, going through the notes refreshes valuable information for me. My work notes are organized in a similar manner, but related to work things. It's an awesome workflow -- almost everything I write starts in a scratchpad, and either gets migrated and synthesized elsewhere, or (like code) deleted if not worth maintaining. After a lot of exploring solutions, returning to the core concept of files in folders and a text editor has been a perfect fit for me -- I never used to be big on notes, now I relish it. |
The only difference is I keep most everything on Dropbox Paper. Really love the markdown editing and ability to add images.
Monthly Plan - daily time blocks and a master tasks list
Active Project Notes - I keep a page with a section for every project I'm working on. I'll take log as much as I can, especially any problems I fix. Screenshots and the code markups help in case the issue arises again.
Documentation - The nice thing about Paper is that it serves as a great knowledge sharing platform. So our team will document as much as we can in here. Much better than our previous solution (Dokuwiki). I liked Dokuwiki but other people in our company didn't fully understand the syntax. It's also much easier to add photos and add data tables in Paper.
Then individual files for more specific things I want to keep track of (movies to watch, places to visit, etc..)
I use Evernote for dumping in anything I'm mildly curious about or might be valuable in my development work. But anything of more value and curation will go into Paper.