[atomashevic]

I've spent a good (unproductive) part of 2022 tinkering with notes/TfTs and I'm stuck with "optimizing" note-taking for more than few years (started with zettelkasten and Roam Research I guess).

I'm stopping with all of that - zero results and tons of wasted time (and fair ammount of subscription money). If I spent all that time tinkering with LaTeX at least I would leveled up my skills.

Judging from comments on HN, I'm not alone and quite a few of us went down weird notetaking rabbit holes. I'll just stick with few scratch plaintext files and handwritten legal pad notes to capture stuff as I work and then transfer/delete stuff at the end of the day without any special system behind the whole process.

[rektide]

I appreciate the warning & hazard, but I wish it were coached in a little humility too. For every comment you cite:

> Judging from comments on HN, I'm not alone and quite a few of us went down weird notetaking rabbit holes.

I see one person who did find their way. Often they recommend something fairly mild & not ultra-aggressive, but thinks like getting links or having weekly templates seems like it can be a huge help.

I'd like to see some mildness mixed in with this naysaying curmudgeonliness.

[atomashevic]

I agree and I guess I wasn't clear in my comment. It didn't work for me, but for other people and/or use cases it might, no doubt.

Seeing others quit TfTs and intricate zk systems on HN helped me realize that I should probably do that too, again given my situation. So, just sharing my experience, not trying to preach :)

[achileas]

These are two extremes, there's a major gulf in the middle, and this is something that doesn't lend itself to min-maxing. The content creators have convoluted setups that take more time to use than they're useful for because they're selling their content. My setup is simple, and after solving the major problems I had with overly simplistic systems (bullet journals, evernote, markdown files, etc.) like difficult retrieval, lack of portability, etc. over the years, I got into Roam (very early 2020?).

I went hard on organizing and templating things, and eventually found it to be more overhead than it was worth. I starting paring back since then, and moved on to Obsidian (still useful for evergreen-style notes) and Tana (more for planning and organizing projects). With a very simple organization, I'm more able to quickly store and retrieve information, and I've come to a pretty happy medium. It's not perfect, but it's saved me enough time to make the investment useful for me.

But maybe you don't have a personal use for note-taking. For someone like me, with ADHD and a horrifically bad short-term memory, note-taking saves me tons of time, daily. There's just the (not easy!) matter of prioritizing what you're storing, minimizing the overhead that comes with storage and retrieval, and minimizing the steps to retrieval.

[gofreddygo]

You're not alone.

Plaintext just works. Figure out a grouping structure and stick to it. mine is just yyyy-subject (2022-travel, 2022-rust). Long documents with subheaders and dates.

Currently on google docs. I like the mobile apps and syncing across devices. its just text in under a dozen files.

Backup strategy is ctrl--a / ctrl-c / ctrl-v.

I have taken a preference for drawing small diagrams in staples composition books last 2 years. A 2 column table of contents with numbered pages as the first page of the book. Made lookups super quick. My usage took off.

I dont write much on paper. Just draw small cohorts of words with some sentences on most pages. This layout helps the knowledge to self organize in graph like structure for my mind. Very useful when watching videos and in meetings.

Going to get me a nice fountain ink pen soon.

[soulofmischief]

I gotta be honest, with Logseq note-taking comes very naturally, at the speed of thought; it's helped me become a more effective writer and thus thinker.

[nicbou]

In the end, any notes app plus Notability end up working great. Pen and paper are another excellent option.

I'd like to have everything neat and tidy, but the effort just isn't worth it.