
Ask HN: How do you take notes? - AJRF
I&#x27;ve been looking through my paper based notebooks recently and noticed that chop and change between note taking systems, and there is no structure to my notes.<p>I was wondering if anyone could point me to structured note-taking systems or methods they use to bring some consistency to their note taking.
======
noir_lord

        #!/bin/bash
    
        date="$(date +"%Y-%m-%d")"
        location="/home/developer/Dropbox/Personal/journal"
        filename="$date.md"
        output_path="$location/$filename"
    
        echo $date
        echo $location
        echo $filename
        echo $output_path
    
        # No existing file so lets create it
        if [ ! -f $output_path ]; then
            echo "Creating Journal Entry"
            touch $output_path
            echo "Journal: $date" >> $output_path
            printf "==================\n\n" >> $output_path
            echo "$output_path:20000"
            code -n -goto :2000 "$output_path:2000"
        else
            echo "Opening Existing Journal Entry"
            echo "$output_path:20000"
            code -n -goto :2000 "$output_path:2000"
        fi
    

Bound to the star key (I have an Ergo 4000 that has a non-standard key right
in the middle).

All it does is create a markdown file with the name of the current date and
then open that in vscode and move the cursor to the end of the file unless the
file already exists in which case it skips creating it and just opens it at
the end.

vscode realtime markdown preview is lovely.

I'm aware the bash is horrible, it was a 30s hack to see if it'd work (about
6mths ago...).

------
nataz
Pen and paper - dot grid notebook with a systematic approach. Addition details
in the hn thread below.

For professional life: Pen + dot grid notepad - developed independently, but
similar to the bullet journal technique. Dot grid plus pens make the whole
thing ultra customizable. I can sketch engineering designs, make a calendar,
track action items, take detailed notes, all in the same format. The key is to
be strict with page numbers, dates, and index as much as possible.

Things I occasionally miss - keyword search (I can still look things up by
date or subject in the index), multimedia inserts (think dragging
video/photos/sound clips into one note), never ending space (notebooks run out
of pages), easy backups (thinking about digitizing with photos or scans), team
collaboration (if this is necessary I use Trello).

Things I like - no OS/tech stack compatibility issues, "it just works",
lighter then a laptop) tablet, don't need to charge, easy to read, can bring
into a secure area (where outside electronics are not permitted), travels
well, hard to damage.

[http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/](http://bulletjournal.com/get-started/)

For personal life: add Google keep for simple lists, and then a mix of Trello
and dot grid for larger projects (less strict formatting than professional
life project management).

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17537675](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17537675)

~~~
tomerbd
very interesting. i just wonder about merge, do you find yourself merging
knowledge about a single item scattered along different pages and then
creating a new page for the merged item? if so how much percentage of the
logging does this take, if short how come? tips?

------
0x54MUR41
There are some discussion about note-taking in the past:

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6406198](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6406198)
(123 comments)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945882](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11945882)
(85 comments)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15579047](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15579047)
(77 comments)

\-
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1750534](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1750534)
(69 comments)

------
mobitar
I use and develop Standard Notes. It’s an open source encrypted note taking
app available on all platforms:

[https://github.com/standardnotes/web](https://github.com/standardnotes/web)

------
dmitripopov
Went through a million of note taking apps and got back to pen and paper.

------
maxmouchet
If you're oriented towards academic writing, "How to Take Smart Notes" from
Sönke Ahrens describes the Zettelkasten method which is akin to the GTD method
but focused towards writing. Besides, the book contains interesting insights
on how we learn and get motivated to work. Recommended reading.

------
drakonka
When it comes to notes in meetings or daily notes/to do lists, I use a
notebook. The only "organization" is the date at the top. When it comes to
taking notes in lectures or conference talks, I use a text editor on my
laptop.

I usually write down _a lot_ of stuff when listening to conference talks in
person. Then I go through the notes in detail and compile them into a blog
post that hopefully makes sense, which also forces me to organize the notes
and review what I'd learned. Because of the sheer volume of text and the need
to keep up with the talk I use a laptop for this, typing being much faster
than my writing.

For meetings or other more relaxed occasions where I have more time and less
volume, I just jot stuff down on paper. Aside from marking everything by day I
don't really have a system there.

------
vs4vijay
I used to use Evernote but now I have completed Switched to StandardNotes
which has end to end encryption. Link:
[https://app.standardnotes.org/](https://app.standardnotes.org/)

~~~
Someone1234
If it legitimately uses end to end encryption, then them hosting a webapp
which presumably allows you to view and edit your notes seems odd.

Even if it asks for your vault key each time, since they control the
JavaScript delivered to the webapp, it largely negates the benefit of E2E
encryption.

~~~
hondadriver
The key could be only on the client side, derived from your password. Ok they
could be evil and send it to their server in the next update, we will have to
trust them not to do so.

~~~
Someone1234
If the argument is trust, then end to end encryption isn't much of a selling
point, you could make the same argument when they have raw access to the
messages themselves.

------
oftenwrong
repeating a previous comment of mine:

"What works for me is taking notes via email. Backing up, organizing,
searching, and distributing email is more-or-less a solved problem, and my
note-taking inherits those solutions. I can read and add notes from my phone
and from my computer, with the ability to choose from a plethora of
applications. I have multiple backups of my email around the world via
standard email syncing. My email host has been 100% reliable in not losing my
emails, as well. If I want to migrate to a different email host, that is
trivial."

I wouldn't say my notes have much structure, though.

------
mroll
emacs org mode. with a heavy customization inspired by bernt hansen
([http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html](http://doc.norang.ca/org-mode.html)).

------
kashyapc
Emacs Org-Mode (4 years & counting) for daily work-related notes, design
documents, conference talk notes, TODOs -- I'm happy with the default
structure it offers (and I use checkboxes and related built-in features). And
a plain white notebook and pen for ad-hoc design, diagrams, and other
unstructured notes. My handwriting is pretty decent, if I may say so myself,
and I appreciate the rotary motion from writing with a pen. I find myself
writing on the paper more and more.

------
likeclockwork
Post-it notes for notes that have a lifetime of a few hours or less. One of my
notebooks for notes that have a longer lifetime, for math, for figuring things
out, for diagrams. Org-mode for planning, documenting research, and structured
note taking. Stylus on my phone or laptop for drawing diagrams by hand that I
need to share with others. (Also this is the best way I've found to practice
my penmanship without wasting paper for no reason.)

------
polyterative
I trello everything in my life. Todos/bookmarks/everything. Linked to IFTTT I
have my completed todos in G calendar and some other integrations like that.

------
mrks_
At the beginning of the day, I pull tasks from Notion
([https://www.notion.so/](https://www.notion.so/)). I use a dot grid notebook
(this one is good and cheap [http://a.co/fQUVPpF](http://a.co/fQUVPpF)) for
general notes and design. At the end of the day I review and put the important
stuff back into Notion.

~~~
rkho
Notion looks really cool. Does it work offline?

~~~
mrks_
Their solution for offline work is to view the page when you’re online so it’s
cached, then any changes you make while offline will be synced once back
online.

------
acutesoftware
I use [https://www.lifepim.com](https://www.lifepim.com) (disclaimer: I wrote
it) for all my notes now. It has a simple cut down version of markdown with
headings, code blocks and linking which works very well for me.

I manage the structure through the folders feature so notes are grouping into
my categories (Dev, Design, Study, Fun, Home, Work, Health, Business)

------
zumzumzum
I use nvALT, Todoist, and a calendar to organize everything. I don't have a
good system for writing the notes specifically though.

------
du_bing
I write down notes in diary form through Notes on macOS.

It's light and fast, enough for casual notes taking. Too complex thing is hard
to last.

------
heycesr
Workflowy changed my life [https://workflowy.com/](https://workflowy.com/)

------
motiw
For meeting summaries I use paper, if i need it searchable I will type it into
a single google doc title meeting summaries. For actionable notes I forward to
my email (android app named Mail Mysels), and then I use Centask to manage and
schedule a single outline composed of emails, todos, notes, links, and google
drive files/images

------
writepub
Shameless plug: [http://write.pub](http://write.pub)

We're evaluating moving entirely to the browser using webassembly. Our
experiment is here: [http://www.write.pub/wasm-
demo/hello.html](http://www.write.pub/wasm-demo/hello.html)

------
ralphc
I'm trying to figure this out myself. I do some pen and paper, but for online
I use OneNote, used to use Evernote. OneNote is free, and on any given day I
could be on iPad, iPhone, Windows, Mac or Linux. OneNote has a web client and
iOS clients so things stay synced up.

------
androidgirl
I use a graph paper notebook for planning, a blank paper notebook for design
and software notes.

When I need to take longer or more important notes, I use markdown and vim. I
keep them in ~/Dev/notes/

------
vinhnx
I keep to notebook at my work-desk, it is to sketch out diagram, pseudo code,
quick thoughts...

For digital, I use Notes.app because it has iCloud sync and it works well for
me for multi device notes.

------
kumartanmay
Loose A4 Paper + Pen - new note always on a new paper; bundle similar papers
with a paper clip; I also add sticknotes on the first page of a bundle to
uniquely identify it.

------
huydotnet
org-mode, with this snippet:

    
    
      (defun open-new-journal ()
        (interactive)
        (find-file (concat "~/notes/journal/" (format-time-string "%Y-%m-%d") ".journal.org")))
    
      (defun open-things-todo ()
        (interactive)
        (find-file "~/notes/dashboard.org"))

------
colecut
simple markdown files enhanced with search+tagging via qOwnNotes synced with
NextCloud

[https://www.qownnotes.org/](https://www.qownnotes.org/)

------
craftyguy
jrnl: [https://github.com/maebert/jrnl](https://github.com/maebert/jrnl)

------
duxup
Google Keep + a small Moleskine notebook.

------
collyw
Pen and paper.

------
user68858788
Workflowy

------
lugg
Blank A4 sheets from the printer folded twice and ripped apart.

Too cheap for notebooks and I'm a lefty.

Notes I want to keep/search are in keep.google.com

I use clocker to track my time so I don't worry too much about noting what I
do each day because it's mostly in there.

Paper is mostly for just remembering things, todo, doodling, or drawing up
system flow when I need it.

The paper is mostly ephemeral I find the things I want to look back at
historically are what I did when which is in clocker, old scribbles are just
that. If it's important it went in keep or email.

Edit, now that I think about it, has anyone looked at digital paper solutions?
I use a mix of hand written and typed and find hand written doesnt lead to
distractions like context switching on my laptop often can.

~~~
jeremywho
Do you have a link for clocker? The only thing I can find is a world clock.

~~~
lugg
Whoops, clockify not clocker. [http://clockify.me](http://clockify.me)

It's buggy (components reloads on server response even if you're in the middle
of updating something else) but it's a free toggl and works decently well.

~~~
jeremywho
I'm gonna give it a go. They have an interesting business model: > You can use
cloud version for free, or pay for a self-hosted version and host Clockify on
your own servers and premises.

------
some_account
I use [https://slite.com](https://slite.com) \- it's a very nice, clean modern
markdown editor with keyboard shortcuts and ability to paste images from
clipboard.

You categorize notes in collections and you can search them, export them to
markdown or pdf, and work as a team. It has Slack integration as well if
that's your thing.

Highly recommended!

