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Ask HN: What do you use for you personal note taking activity?

16 points by aryamaan ↗ HN
Currently, my notes are scattered in unnamed Sublime tabs, pockets, 'safe for later' on fb, pinboards. And they don't end up much useful later.

So, fellow hackers, how do you take notes? What do you use?

I envision a platform which is very accessible (on phone/ laptop), easy and lightweight to jot down things (like sublime tabs, they are very light and I end up using them more than Evernote files, even when I am a premium member).

At the access side, those notes are easy to search, they follow some graph-like data structure, super smooth to add new updates (like if I have a movie node in my db, and I see some interesting movie somewhere, it should be super easy to add them in my list). If I am reading about some new topic, I can create stories out of them and should be able to add notes to it, like adding tweets in a tweet conversation.

I am thinking to make something of my own which cater my needs but meanwhile, I am thinking I will make what already is there rather than not using anything at all.

18 comments

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aryamaan
Bonus points if I can query them like what should I do now? Which movie should I watch (but those are secondary requirements which I would like to have some time in future).
jldugger
Right now I have two general repos:

1. tomboy desktop wiki. Realistically, this is usually a write only repository for me to get ideas out that I never follow up on. But I like to think the exercise is beneficial, or at least thereapeutic.

2. rocketbook wave + frixion pens. Phone calls, meetings, random engineering diagrams, and the occasional Nikoli puzzle go in here. I just went through my first scan-in and heat erasure cycle, seems to work? These notes I do occasionally refer back to, with I'd imagine an exponential decay model. Needing to know the name of the recruiter I talked to and what they said is more important in the week after than the month or quarter after. Some day I'll try adopting bulletjournal's note style. But for now, meh.

Edit:

I don't even think of these as notes, but I do use a lot of todo lists. I have a Trello board for my video game collection, to track what I have, whether I can sell it, and where i've listed it for sale (and at what price). I have another Trello board for general todos, a caldav server that I've been ignoring lately, and some tasks in google cal that I've also been ignoring.

icedchai
I send email to myself. Sometimes I just keep them in drafts.
taejo
Notebooks. They're surprisingly easy to search: if you use them a lot you'll notice that you often remember exactly which page a certain note appears on. You can also help by always starting a new note on a new right-hand page, and writing one or two keywords in the top-right corner.
_tulpa
I keep it simple: A bunch of semi-organized markdown files + resilio sync (+ an old always-on android phone for a resilio 'server'). I can continue living in Emacs (and a markdown-friendly android app).

I tried to bespoke notetaking things (evernote, google keep, trello, orgmode, et al) before I figured out I was just dumping bits of text and never actually used the organizational/tagging/convenient features.

I guess it would be nice to have quick and easy ways to search and archive notes on my phone but I can live without it.

RepressedEmu
I normally use Evernote but its been getting very slow on my phone(2-8 seconds before i can input my text) so I was thinking of writing a simple bot for Telegram that would log my messages and set cron-like reminders. I guess i would search it by sending something like "/s words to be searched for" Is that something you would use?
theknarf
I'm quite happy with Apple Notes. But there are a few things I'd like to fix (Git support, Code highlighting) so I have started on making my own app.
iDemonix
Out of interest, did you do research first to see if anything else would fit? I see a big trend on HN of "This doesn't do X, I'll make my own" - we end up with 5000 weather apps and 8000 'game changing' note taking apps.
mod
I use a real-life notebook for anything real-life. I enjoy keeping notes offline. I use a bullet journal style.

For quick meeting notes or todo notes at work, I send myself an email.

crypticlizard
Google docs. Sync, offline, voice dictations. I use it many times a day
Rainymood
No mention of Vimwiki yet. I'm a hardcore Vim user so it works well for me.

<Leader>ww to open Vimwiki and <Enter> to follow (and create) links and <Backspace> to go up one level. Works like a charm for me.

sabarasaba
This. I've been using it for years and its one of the things that keeps me the most productive nowadays.
PeOe
Hey, maybe http://zenkit.com would be an option for you. You can create different data collections (Kanban Board for example) and then add your data there. There´s also a pretty cool global search feature..as your notes are becoming more and more they might be harder to find so you can just search throughout the whole app. Web-based platform - super easy to use.
tedmiston
I've also done the untitled tabs in Sublime thing.

Workflowy (https://workflowy.com) is worth a try.

It's still very lightweight. You have one doc which has one master root. Then, you can create arbitrarily nested lists of things and zoom in and out of the overall list. You get a daily email of your delta from the day before. There's an okay mobile client but the desktop one is much better feature wise.

I've been using for it everything from an inbox to blog post ideas lately (I just start drafting the post inside Workflowy).