note taking is a surprisingly difficult task. it is not hard in the sense of exhaustive labor, or time consuming. it's the part of making good decisions about how to do the taking of note which will lead you to a reliable knowledge database. i failed to make good decisions at the beginning and now i have better: had. i deleted all my useless notes a worthless collection of markdown files which amount to less useful information than this entire website
other pitfall i stumbled upon was the software to use. although i did manage to avoid it before it became unhealthy. i will talk about knowledge management software at the end of this post. there are two types of notes i used the most: atomic notes and to-do lists.
atomic notes are small writings about a subject, usually not more than a paragraph, and are descriptive in nature. the power of atomic notes come in numbers: you should link them together to create webs of relationships of concepts, which in theory would facilitate remembering topics and facilitate to encounter relationships between concepts you haven't considered yet. there is three main ways of creating links: by hierarchical ordering, where one note (or group of notes) can have N children connected to it, but at most one single parent. by tags, which are keywords you use to associate numerous notes. and by direct referencing, where you simply write that a note has a relationship with another note. i used all these methods for note taking
the first issue with atomic notes is that you can't keep track of all of them. once you hit the hundreds you will start to forget what you have previously written, but you won't check it again because you have notes about it, and having a note suggests you know what you have written about. this is also kind of an issue of note taking in general. it also hinders change. if one note says something which you do not agree with anymore you have to go to the note and edit it, and maybe change all other notes which use them as a premise. even if you have extremely good typing speed, nice software to aid you in editing or anything else, it can't beat the speed of just thinking differently. thoughts are relatively inexpensive to manipulate in your head. obviously, as the natural habitat of ideas is the human mind did you like this quote i came up with it myself i'm so proud of it :DDDDDD
the second issue is that note relationships are generally not helpful, unless you work towards it. this is more of a tool issue rather than an issue with the atomic notes themselves. associating notes with one another doesn't mean you understand how or why are they related. they also give a false sense of understanding. having many notes with many connections gives you the illusion of deep knowledge. it looks like you've spent a lot of time pondering over each note and how they relate to your wide array of manuscripts, but you couldn't be farther from the truth. connecting notes doesn't take half the time to write the notes. and considering we are already using small notes for everything, the time spent thinking how notes connect is usually the same time i take to make a terrible decision
the third issue is that they actively hide information from you. this model of note taking takes pride in brevity. i want to make it clear that i'm not against minimalism, quite the opposite, but forsaking clarity for the sake of brevity clutters your mind with shallow information. i much prefer lengthy texts which i risk forgetting most of the content rather than not even having the information available to me. having very granular information about a subject isn't that useful to generate ideas and naturally coming up with links between subjects. for me, my best ideas came from deeply analysing a certain topic, getting to the barest of the bones of it, and reevaluating the concept with their premises in mind. atomic notes go against deep understanding of topics
the fourth issue, which is more about the act of note taking, is that information is far closely tied to time than what one might think. some notes are useful only during a certain period in life, specially when it comes to hobbies and interests. i had lots of notes about things which didn't interest me anymore. ideas for projects which were bad from the start, and would never see the light of day anyway. none of these notes have any purpose for me anymore. what i learned is that if i forget about something, it is very likely it wasn't important to me. i used to be very paranoid about my own memory and forgetting things, and now having experienced forgetfulness being beneficial relieves me a lot of stress
to-do lists are lists of tasks to accomplish. they are supposed to help with explaining tasks and getting things done. my issue with them is more on how i misuse them, rather than an inherent problem with such lists
i started writing to-do lists when i was around 13yo to keep track of school assignments. at that time they were pretty rough. i used the last few pages of my notebook to write about all assignments i had, with a date and some useful info about it. i erased them as i completed, and then wrote over the blank space for new assignments. no order, no priority, just scattered blocks of memos. over time the pages would become frail and grey. i remember looking at that mess at the back of my notebook and thinking it represented me very well
later in life i started making these to-do lists for other aspects of my life. list of books to read, chores to get done, games to play, things to draw, and so on. they were far more sophisticated than my old lists. usually saved as text files in my computer and phone, separated by topics. the issue i always had with these lists is that i forgot to look at them!! at one point i had a to-do list of to-do lists to check because i kept forgetting them! that annoyed me so much!!!
another type of to-do lists i used were routines. i would separate days in blocks of 30 minutes and assign a task to each block. it was likely my most productive era when i used these routines. however they were extremely stressful after some months using them. first, i had a timer ring every 30 minutes which was extremely annoying. i remember getting small panic attacks minutes before they rang. second, i practised hobbies in times where i wasn't currently in the mood of, so i was doing them mostly out of obligation, which killed my passion to do them. sometimes when i wasn't in the mood for anything i just slept through the day, but with the alarm going out every 30 minutes, which didn't help me rest. i kept the alarm active because i didn't trust myself to remember to reenable them later. they are also not that great if you need to sync your plans with other people
this is why i have deleted my old todo page. there were things there that i honestly didn't care about anymore. although i know this goes against my policy of never deleting anything, this one was because it wasn't needed anymore and was just bothering me
i have used joplin, markor, mindforger and neovim as knowledge management software. the good points in all of them is that they are free (as in no cost to use) and open source software. they all have markdown support. they all serve their purpose, but some serve me better than others
joplin is the second worst one of the list. it has been some years since i used it so some information might not be accurate anymore. first, by default it saves your location with your notes. i can't see how this could be useful. it is not like i can't write where i am when i want to. the fact that the default is on is ridiculous. i can only see this as helping me to accidentally dox myself. is has vim keybinds but it's kinda bad. joplin runs on electron so it consumes a lot of memory all of the time and it is slow. i don't like the excessive useless features which only help to bloat the program. it separates notes inside notebooks, which work as containers for notes, and notebooks are stored hierarchically. is has a tagging system which although i used to enjoy, now i know it is an anti-pattern
markor is the second best note taking software of this list. it is a note taking program for android. relatively lightweight. my issue with it is that i feel like there are lots of features i don't use. it is not like i use my phone a lot though so whatever. i like how simple it is. i find their to-do format needlessly complex and at the same time too limited for my uses
mindforger is the worst one of the list. it takes the "second brain" buzzword too seriously. every button and menu attempts to reflect some mental operation. it uses "Mind" instead of the classic "File" context menu. it uses "Recall" instead of "Search" or "Find". it wants to be a program to substitute my thinking, and not simply a program to help me write. i really dislike that i have to learn their quirky idiom just to interact with the program. there was no reason to do this, mind you pun not intended. the actual program is ok. i just found the organizing notes part to be exhaustive. i dislike the tag navigator. i think it is too hard to navigate and looking at it makes me nauseous from the visual pollution, so i don't use it
you can guess which position on the list this one is. neovim is by far the best note taking program for me. it is a very simple program. it doesn't take more than half a second to open. it doesn't stutter while i'm using it. it works via text and text only, no weird google docs-like dynamic formatting. it has vim keybinds, which are my preferred form of keyboard shortcuts. it doesn't force me to use any specific layout for my notes. no weird directory structures someone decided for me. it is a general text editor, so i use it for coding too. i'm using it right now. the downside is that it takes a while to get accustomed to it. when referring to this program, most people like to cite the fact that it is highly customizable. i enjoy the customizability but i think i'm part of the minority which just needs two or three plugins and nothing more. i like how seamless it integrates with the rest of my machine. i use mostly the terminal, so it helps a lot there. i guess this is as good as it can get. i think it would only be surpassed by an editor i write it myself foreshadowing, maybe?, so i think this is good enough
my current solutions for note taking are keeping all to-dos and notes in a single directory in my computer. i can see them all at the same time, which should help me with remembering old notes. notes are now a single file of a subject which i periodically add more to. i try writing in a style similar to essays, trying to justify every assertion i make. kinda like my own wikipedia pages. i like this style of writing because it forces me to think about what i write. they can also help me find flaws in my thinking, or even get new ideas from them! also, justifying every assertion helps to fix the issue of knowing something, but not fully remembering why/how you know that
to make sure notes are relevant to me with time i check them from time to time. notes which aren't useful to me anymore are deleted. this strategy is inspired by the idea of flashcards, although i don't like them for note taking. i try keeping the note count down as much as possible
i wrote three shell scripts to help me organize my notes: enq-get eng-next and enq-get-prev. enq-get returns me the least recently modified file it can find in a directory hierarchy, enq-next updates the date of the oldest file to the current time, so i know i have seen it, and enq-get-prev returns the most recently modified file, which i use in case i accidentally run enq-next. dead simple concept and implementation
they are so simple i will post the source code of them here. should work both on linux and bsds but i didn't test them yet. i think there might be a better way to do this but at least it works
# enq-get
filedate="$(find . -type f -printf '%T@ %p\n' | sort -n | head -n1)"
echo "${filedate#* }"
# enq-next
touch $(sh enq-get)
# enq-get-prev
filedate="$(find . -type f -printf '%T@ %p\n' | sort -n | tail -n1)"
echo "${filedate#* }"
to search in notes i can use the classic grep and the telescope plugin for neovim. very fast search. grep has nice integration with other programs
i'm still testing this new note taking framework, so maybe i'll make changes to it. i was thinking on grouping all of my to-do lists into a monolithic to-do list of everything, so i can keep track of everything i should do easier. i'm also thinking on some way of marking dates on parts of notes so i know which ones i left unattended for too long. this should reduce the issue of forgetting old stuff