[JohnFen]

I think I've tried just about every note-taking app, as well as a few fancy "smart notepads" and the like, and in the end, I returned to using pen and paper.

None of the electronic alternatives worked for me because they seriously reduced the quality of the notes I took. Apparently, pen and paper is just how my mind works best.

I still wish I had a solution that let me search them, but it appears that's just not a thing for me. In practice, I'm pretty good at searching my notebooks, though. I seem to have a navigational sense that takes the various doodles and diagrams as landmarks and gets me there.

My use case is rather different than what the article and others here are talking about, and that might matter. I don't take notes in meetings at all, because if I do so then I don't really absorb what's happening in the meeting. I take constant notes about what I'm doing when I'm actually working, though.