[taigi100]

I often see people in this community being fans of note taking apps. Yet, I never really found why it's useful, maybe someone can enlighten me on that :D

1. For tech articles / knowledge databases -> tech seems to change so fast that research done 3-4 months ago is mostly useless (except for a few more high level areas)

2. For recording / knowledge database purposes -> i never seem to go back to them tho, googling (or duckduckgoing?) seems faster to reach an answer.

3. For current note-taking / todo lists / etc they work well, but so does a simple notepad. A history of those doesn't seem to help me with anything specifically.

4. Same for book notes / reading notes, i never seem to go back to them, actually.

So, in what domains or where do find those apps actually useful?

[dm319]

I use it for two purposes:

1. Useful practical information or checklists on disease topics (I'm a physician). Sometimes they are reminders, or useful knowledge that is generally gleaned from experience / colleagues. Things that can be hard to google.

2. Notes on general business stuff - i.e. "called such and such agency and Wendy said I need to speak to other person next Monday on tel xxxx". Or dates my car needs servicing, or who I'm insured with.

At the moment I use vimwiki, and it works well.

[taigi100]

Yep, your 1 makes sense and that's a very good reason to use it - thanks for your work ^_^.

For 2, I usually just use notepad + calendar, seems to work good since it also has notifications

Thanks :)

[theshrike79]

My brain not remember good. I write thing down to remember better.

Basically my brain doesn't remember things fully, it's more of a set of index cards with tiny summaries.

When I need some data I'll remember that I read an article around spring and it might've been on either X, Y or Z site. My notes are tagged and configured so that I can actually go find that stuff.

Also I use pinboard to store the stuff other people hoard in tabs. That Very Important Article that has been sitting on a faraway tab for a week? Add it to pinboard with a few tags and close it. It's just as easy not to read it from there too =)

[jiggunjer]

Apart from the transfer aspect I identify two other reasons for taking notes:

The act of note taking itself may help structure and focus thoughts, regardless of intent to review or transfer the note.

It may also be cathartic. It gives peace of mind to know I own the detailed information on X, just in case. Or perhaps making a pretty list about something random lets me take my mind of work for a few minutes.

[WA]

For me it’s similar. I want to write it down to get it out of my head.

But I think it’s important to understand one thing about notes and organization systems in general: do you optimize for speed of writing stuff down or do you optimize for retrieving the information?

I know that I am in the former camp. That’s why my note taking system is as follows:

I have a folder called Notes in Sublime. I create a new file, use a text snippet to insert the current ISO date (2021-10-18) give it a headline, write everything down in free-form without a structure, save it as a plain text file and be done with it.

When I want to read a note (doesn’t happen that often), I mostly remember the headline I used: Cmd+O to open that file. If nothing comes up, Sublime has good regex search capabilities.

[jiggunjer]

agreed, thats often enough for text but what about tables and images. We quickly enter the complexer realms of rich text and database forms. I often write down the price of an item while shopping using a database input app, but there's no easy way to transfer this to a wiki or markdown file.

[krzrak]

> in what domains or where do find those apps actually useful?

5. creating your own ideas and making your own connections

[mifrai]

I've been investing in taking notes to enable better understanding of the material. I tend to follow Andy Matuchak's philosophy on note taking (https://notes.andymatuschak.org). But, I've only really started taking notes, so grain of salt about this.

Some thoughts and responses to what you've said:

1. I try to make sure anything I enter into my notes are intended to last, filtering/processing is a key step to that. This often means I won't enter notes unless they can contribute to my understanding of some lasting higher level concept. For example, I don't have any notes on tech library X, Y, Z. But I do have notes on concepts, like "Required accidental complexity should be avoided or separated" and if a library Z has a unique way of doing so, I may incorporate my understanding of the strategy to further my understanding of the concept.

2. My goal is less to simply collect links/articles, it's to process and assimilate. I write everything in my own words to clarify my understanding. I link it to other topics in my notes to help build stronger associations, which helps me ground and recall the knowledge. I'm also exploring whether I want to put some spaced repetition in with my notes to help keep pieces of information fresh.

3. I treat my notes as separate from my todo lists. The extra bit that these tools give you is the linking and clustering of information. I find the associations useful for encouraging identification/contextualization of where that knowledge sits in my current understanding and, periodically, discovering serendipitous connections.

4. I rarely revisit old books as well, but I also find that my recall of those books are terrible. Part of my note taking is to make sure that I have a better chance of understanding and taking away valuable information from those books. It's also worth mentioning that that I don't aim to have notes on the book, I aim to have new concept notes or updating existing concepts with new information.

So what domains do I find these apps useful? It's unclear to me how much I can attribute to the linking the app encourages. But, I do find myself recalling what I've noted much more frequently in my day to day as an software engineer. The identification and concretization of patterns/concepts has helped me be more articulate and have more clarity in my work, particularly when giving feedback to others.

All that said, everybody is different. This process might not work for you, or you may find you don't need it to get the same effects. I know plenty of successful people that don't. And if it doesn't work for you, I wouldn't worry too much about it.