[gofreddygo]

I believe this does not work well. At least it did not for me.

We routinely conflate todos/plans ('need to do this') , observations and patterns ('this is what i see happening when...'), events ('this happened...') and learnings ('this is what i did wrong, right...') as "notes".

I started with dropping everything in notational velocity (till it broke on my Mac upgrade) and / or 'email thyself' and like you said, it builds and its there but of little or no use. Unless its in my brain, I can't make connections. Without connections I cannot recall when I need it. It really does not help. Its actually net negative with the effort that goes into putting it in there.

I now use Google docs. One doc for each topic I am currently working on (e.g interview preparation, home purchase research, kubernetes, etc..) This builds topic wise documents which are exponentially faster to navigate/guess without needing text search or any filing system. I can skim through 1-2 documents and it provides context, history, insights, quotes in 1 place that I try and read more often which tends to stick in my head. Also given that I am more a visual learner, the place where something particular was on a document also brings in what was written next to it simply because I've seen it so often.