
Ask HN: How do you keep your notes organized? - d-d
I am a serial note taker that is continually logging thoughts, ideas, links, todos and stuff. No matter what tool I use things eventually spiral out of control and become unusable, and deletion ensues. Is there a trick to keeping things more organized and useful long-term?
======
cbanek
I've recently started using [https://jrnl.sh/](https://jrnl.sh/) and I'm
hooked. It is on the command line, and easy to use. I've been using it more
for daily journal entries, but it has a tagging system so you can do @idea and
then search for all the entries with the tag @idea. I've been trying to
organize my cooking recipes with tags. Also, it's encrypted on disk, so I just
sync it to iCloud and a few backups.

Maybe it's just me, but because it's a diary, I don't feel the need to delete
things. If anything, not deleting it is the point. Even if it's a disorganized
mess, I would suggest keeping things around! It's really fun to look at your
old writings and notes!

~~~
vladsanchez
I've insistently read these note-taking AskHN entries in pursuit of something
akin to TaskWarrior[1] and TimeWarrior[2] but for notes/journaling, all
command-line, portable, fault-tolerant and time-tested.

At one point I thought about building one in Python, but it seems like jrnl
devs were thinking alike and made it happen.

@cbanek thanks for sharing this golden nugget as it will help me dump my
disorganized brain somewhere for persistence and search-ability.

[1] [https://taskwarrior.org](https://taskwarrior.org) [2]
[https://timewarrior.net](https://timewarrior.net)

------
digitalsushi
I have a 15 year old svn-turned-git repo called commonplace-book and keep my
notes, plans, quotes and tidbits in there under a terse, relevant filename in
a flat directory.

And I have a bash function called 'cheat', that will look for things in there
based on the filename, or contents or however I happen to have it written.

As I learn new things I can append an existing file; I run 'cheat git' once
per week and 'cheat tmux' every time I forget how to clone a session. Since
this all invariable dumps to stdout, I can continue grepping when it suits.

I have another very dirty hack that will get me in trouble eventually - I'll
share it because I find I can often improve my code by self shaming - ghetto
secrets management:

echo '1,$'|vim --cmd "set key=${password}" ${filename} -es

This is the nugget around a lot of boilerplate, but this invokes vim and makes
it decrypt a file and dump to stdout. From here I have my own little grammar
and grepper for storing quasi-secure strings or even just secure texts. I'm
positive it's going to get me into hot water but it's been extremely portable
for me and I trust it on systems that I have the audacity to believe I am
alone on.

I know there's a vimdecrypt plugin floating around that is almost definitely
superior, but, mine works on stock linux, mac, and git bash.

~~~
robsun
This. I do exactly the same. I have bunch of python scripts in git repo that
manage my notes / flashcards and so one stored in csv files.

------
vinliao
There's 2 note taking service that I use: todoist and dropbox paper. Todoist
is for quick notes and "to-do list-ish" stuff and dropbox paper is for long
term note taking.

Here's the step of how I usually do it.

1\. Have a phone with me anywhere I go. Anytime I have an interesting
thought/idea, I'll add a new item on my todoist inbox.

2\. Every night, I'll process that inbox. Most of it will be to-dos, but
sometimes I jot down some ideas there. If the ideas is interesting enough,
I'll move it in a writing project (e.g., I think I should write why I love
cats.) If an idea is not worth writing about, then I'll just re-articulate the
ideas and mark it done.

3\. I use dropbox paper to write. There's only two important folders: a rant
and completed folder. For each item on my todoist writing project, I will
create a document in the rant folder and I write about it. E.g., On todoist,
I'll have the entry "I think I should write why I love cats." Later on, on
dropbox paper I'll create a document with the title "Why I love cats."

4\. Write. I don't finish everything though. I usually just stop writing if it
gets boring.

5\. If it's finished, then I'll move it in a finished folder. It contains my
essays, blog entry and book notes.

I tried Notion, but it's too complicated and it gets overwhelming really fast.
Another huge cons of Notion is that you can't jot ideas quickly (I can do it
in seconds in todoist). I'm happy with these two services.

Edit: typo

------
peterbozso
I was in similar shoes as you. I even had my notes scattered all over the
place, some on paper, some in different softwares. Now I use only OneNote both
personally and professionally and I cannot be happier. It has a lot of
features, which helps because I can keep every idea/info/todo in one place. It
has apps for everything (except Linux, but the web app works great in that
case), so I can access my data anywhere. I even had a client where we all used
it and we were easily able to make it work like a wiki for that project. It
might seem obvious, but what really helped me with keeping my notes organized
(and my browser bookmarks too, because I have a ton of those as well) is
revising them periodically, in my case weekly. If you do it frequently enough,
then it's really just a couple of minutes of reorganizing each time and you
can keep everything nice and tidy.

------
brain5ide
I used to imagine I can have a system that would keep concepts together and
continuously reorganize them manually as the goal is to both not keep it in
the head, but also know what's there. However, as the time passes, the
cognitive load of reworking it increases dramatically, and the use and the
ability to find stuff in it drops as contexts mutate through that
rearrangement. It is very difficult to manage change in that kind of system no
matter if it's low-tech or high-tech. After some mismanagement you just lose
trust in it and drop for a new one.

About a year and a half ago I started a lowtech weekly diary approach.
Documents folder on your computer or a GDrive/Dropbox/whatever. Folder for the
year, and then folder for each week of the year. Usually create it on monday
and transfer what I expect to need that week. Treat that folder as my desktop
for that week and move on the next week. I now have a year and a half of such
notes, am confident I can find stuff and when I open such snapshot I'm quickly
able to gather all the needed contexts that were relevant then.

~~~
dmvinson
I think you would be very interested in Roam Research if you’re ever looking
for a high tech solution again. Only recently entered public beta, but it
seems to by nature organize notes very easily and fluidly.
[https://roamresearch.com/](https://roamresearch.com/)

~~~
heliostatic
Just signed up yesterday and I've been really impressed with how natural it
feels, coming from other outliners. I found this interview useful as an
introduction: [https://roamresearch.com/#/app/sunk-
costs/page/eYPz5-W6n](https://roamresearch.com/#/app/sunk-
costs/page/eYPz5-W6n)

------
jbc1
Regularly organise them. Dump everything in to an inbox as it comes to you
throughout the day and then have a set time to edit, curate, and label it
properly.

For to-do's which can vary in time sensitivity this might be straight away for
some that need to be done that day, that day for some that need to be later
that week, or weekly for those you hope to get done just eventually.

For your links, ideas, and thoughts you could probably do it weekly.

The trick is to not let it build up so much that when you get around to
looking through it, you're looking at three full days worth of organising
work, much of which you can't do anyway because you've long forgotten the
context within which your short hand notes made sense.

Specifically for to-do's, Getting Things Done is a very (the most?) popular
organisational system with a book by the same name.

Here is a much shorter summary of it:

[https://hamberg.no/gtd/](https://hamberg.no/gtd/)

------
randomsearch
After years of Evernote and OneNote, discovered “Bear”.

If you’re on iOS and value great design and simplicity, I cannot recommend it
strongly enough. And it’s really cheap.

Everything is in markdown and hashtagged.

~~~
aldanor
There's also Notion (notion.so) which is a bit more functional (although not
as 'native'). Bear is more for pure writing, Notion - more for tracking,
organization etc.

~~~
randomsearch
Looks more like trello or basecamp, rather than a note taking system.

------
galfarragem
The trick is to _tree-shake_ and regroup your notes agressively. If you treat
them as _read only_ soon you'll not be able to extract useful info from your
data.

------
j7ake
I found that over time, it's more advantageous to be disorganized but have
good search features than to have a system that required good habits.

I found Google Keep to be good for search features, because it extends beyond
text and into images.

~~~
digitalsushi
I put my snowblower, lawnmower, bandsaw, anything with parts that regularly
break, into Google Keep, and now when I am out at Kings, Ames, Sears,
Lechmere, Circuit City et al I can quickly pull the model number up and get a
replacement part while I am remembering at just the right place.

------
Jaxkr
I also use multiple services to take notes/store info and I like to make an
“index of organization”.

Basically, just write down all of the different services/folders/notebooks you
use and what you use them for.

For example, in Notion I write that I use: \- Notion for boards and knowledge.
\- Todoist for tasks \- Day One for quick notes and journals \- OneNote for
school.

Etc...

I find listing where you store different types of information (because
different tools are built for different use cases) helps keep it all
organized.

------
cyberpip
NextCloud and GitHub. I use NextCloud for the browser/mobile syncing and more
journal/quick todos type of notes. I use GitHub for my technical notes. My big
thing is minimizing the time between a thought and getting it down and freeing
that space in my mind. Whatever is fastest is what I need because I forget
things pretty quickly, or I don't trust my memory. Being able to pull out my
phone, open the NextCloud Notes app to make a note, and then being able to
access that anywhere in a browser really cuts down on syncing issues and
delays. This is an evolution from my earlier years where I wrote in notebooks
which I favored that for the longest time until I saw the value in minimizing
the delay between thought and writing.

I use markdown for everything and have txt files going back to 2013 that I'm
slowly formatting to markdown as they were dumped from a Google Docs exodus I
haven't made the time to clean up. My goal is to eventually make a database of
my thoughts and look for patterns and insights while learning the tools
required to do that in the most modern ways :)

------
eftokay83
I use a self hosted Bookstack Instance for Notes, Blog Posts and Knowledge
Base plus StandardNotes for my daily diary.

Permanently trying out other stuff (basecamp, todoist, notion, etc.) but keep
coming back.

I also have a self hosted Nextcloud instance, where I started to put down
thoughts which won't fit in the other two (like "lessons learned this week")
but eventually will be moved to Bookstack.

------
ianmcgowan
I've tried a bunch of different programs, apps and approaches but have
(hopefully) finally settled on plain text files in Markdown, stored in a git
repo in dropbox. It seems to be working better than anything else I've tried,
though OneNote was very close to perfect. I just have too many MS accounts
because of contract work, and syncing/keeping it all straight became an issue.

I was inspired by all the posts about emacs org-mode, but couldn't go all the
way to emacs, because VSCode has become the center of my coding universe. I'm
surprised that's not the #1 answer (yet).

It's very liberating to be completely in control of the format and
organization, and it's very easy to move things around as needed using
familiar tools. I don't have a lot of screenshots or non-text things to
remember, so markdown is fine for me.

    
    
      Customers
      ->Customer A
      --->Projects
      ----->Project A
      Journal
      ->2019
      -->201912
      TechNotes
      ->Unix
      ->SQL
      ->Infolease
    

etc. etc.

------
polyterative
Notion after years of trello. Once you get how it works and how to use it your
way it just blows everything else out of the window. I have sql like relations
through notes,topics,websites,people and much more. My setup:
[https://i.imgur.com/Cd22G8x.png](https://i.imgur.com/Cd22G8x.png)

~~~
andrewbinstock
I used Notion for about six months, including paying for the service. I could
never get the hang of it. I wrote to the company and said: "Give me an
overview explanation of how it all fits together so that I can distinguish
pages from templates, etc."

But instead all they could point me to was endless reference pages on one
feature or another. So, I was never able to get the hang of it, which as you
say, is necessary to put it to best use. After several months, I cancelled my
subscription and told them they need better docs: an overview/getting started
guide, rather than a series of man pages.

------
dublin
Check out TiddlyWiki [http://tiddlywiki.com](http://tiddlywiki.com) \- it's an
open source program that's been around for 15 years. TiddlyWiki wraps up a
bunch of web-type resources (text, images, pages, etc.) into a single
JavaScript file that works on anything that can run a browser, and can be run
straight from a file, or integrated with a variety of web backends. It's
actually one of the most interesting pieces of software I've seen in the past
20 years, predating many of the capabilities of iPython/Jupyter notebooks,
although aimed at different use cases. That said, although I have some
TiddlyWiki notebooks, I find that OneNote is my primary go-to notetaking
choice these days, at least partly b/c I have a Surface and taking notes with
the pen (both text and sketches) while still having the ability to use pretty
good handwriting recognition is really my killer app.

------
adawg_4
I went old school and asked for a filing cabinet as a gift for the holidays,
never been so organized in my life! A tip from me would be dont sort by
categories in files but by the periods of time you worked on stuff, like the
clusters of work during an entire month for example helps me recall what was
happening and find files I need/ an old idea.

------
taggenblu
I used to be in a similar situation, with multiple notebooks for different
things and apps for others - became totally unmanageable. I've gone totally
offline with my note-taking now, using a variation of the bullet journal
concept. I've found it very useful for keeping track of the day to day notes
and tasks, along with longer term ideas and plans (technical or otherwise).

Anecdotally, having a single notebook for everything has made me feel more in
organized and in control of my notes as everything is there, indexed into a
single notebook.

\- [https://bulletjournal.com/](https://bulletjournal.com/) \-
[https://simpleprogrammer.com/bullet-journal-productivity-
pro...](https://simpleprogrammer.com/bullet-journal-productivity-programmers/)

------
supersrdjan
Software: Vimwiki[1] System: Johnny Decimal[2]

[1]: [https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki](https://github.com/vimwiki/vimwiki)
[2]: [https://johnnydecimal.com/](https://johnnydecimal.com/)

------
heisenzombie
Roam Research. Past HN submission here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440289](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21440289)

It feels effortless, almost fun, to me unlike any other tools I’ve used.

~~~
aldanor
Wondering why you would use that over e.g. Notion? Looks like a mix of notion
and tiddlywiki (?), but also really stripped down. Also: can you export the
entire Roam notes database into text files? (i.e. do you actually own your
data?)

~~~
heisenzombie
1\. Compared to Notion, it encourages emergent organization rather then top-
down/up-front organization. One of the key features here is how it handles
`backlinking`. As I mention a [[subject]] during research, note-taking, diary
writing, or whatever -- the page for [[subject]] gets implicitly filled with
content.

2\. Yes, it exports to org-mode structured text.

------
qnsi
I have written my own app. Is it Zettelkasten + vim + keyboard shortcuts.

I have one main document with general topics like Programming Startups Social
science, and inside more general topics.

I don’t think this is the best way to structure it

------
m-p-3
Joplin on desktop and mobile. End-to-end encrypted, and stored in OneDrive
(could use Dropbox, etc). It uses markdown.

[https://joplinapp.org/](https://joplinapp.org/)

------
k4ch0w
I currently use Quiver [https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quiver-take-better-
notes/id866...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quiver-take-better-
notes/id866773894)

I've had a hard time replacing it so far.

I really want a note taking app that securely stores and syncs my notes
between colleagues and does code snippets/attachments well. I haven't found
anything I like yet, I've tried Bear/Notion. I love OneNote, but we don't have
MS licenses at my current gig.

~~~
christefano
Do you use the iOS app, too? I’m curious what you might think of it.

[https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quiver-take-better-
notes/id977...](https://apps.apple.com/us/app/quiver-take-better-
notes/id977882194)

I saw it has a 2.2 rating, compared to the 4.3 stars for the macOS app.

~~~
k4ch0w
No I haven't used the IOS app, so I can't comment. I can imagine the biggest
issue is not having an iCloud sync to backup your notes. I just the use the
builtin notes app on my phone.

------
patrickwalton
I've kept extensive notes for years and always find I never use them, so now
I'm transitioning towards only taking notes in actionable format, as GitHub
issues, task list items, etc.

------
finsrud
I've used [https://simplenote.com/](https://simplenote.com/) for ~5 years
because it's clean, fast, cross-platform, supports Markdown, has decent search
and tagging features, and it's free & open source.

Every day I open a new note named #[YYMMDD] Scratch, and use it as my daily
scratchpad. That makes it easy to search for notes by year, month, and day.

In my experience, simpler is better.

------
mirrortits
After more than 1 year of tinkering with various apps, I've finally settled
for Todoist for todos and Standard Notes for notes. Extremely satisfied.

------
bn7t
I use Trilium notes. Their search and linking function is very useful for
finding notes again.

------
JJarrard
I started using Google Keep until I was up to around 200 project ideas. I then
moved it all to Trello, fleshed out each idea, prioritised, and labelled every
idea. Ever since I've just been adding ideas directly to the Trello board via
the app.

------
dhagz
I'm vacillating between using Drafts and nvAlt. I like nvAlt because it's
plaintext, but it's not as readily available as Drafts - I haven't found a
mobile client that I like for working with plaintext yet.

~~~
k24883
Way back was an iPhone app called notesy which worked pretty much the same way
as nvAlt. Elements is my app of choice right now for searching/editing my
nvAlt folder on the phone. (Sync backend I use is Dropbox)

------
tomjuggler
Trello is my favorite. Hooked on the kanban style.

------
phodo
You might want to check out bullet journal, as an organizational system that
can help you out irrespective of tool choice.

~~~
yitchelle
I am trying out the pen and paper version of it. Writing stuff down with pen
on paper has some therapeutic effect, at least on me. It slows my thinking
down so it is coherent and in an meaningful manner. But I hate that I can't
see the find my own notes or thoughts easily.

------
johnwalkr
Finally, a topic on HN where I can be somewhat of an old-timer.

For my first 7-8 years as a professional, I used notebooks. I was taught in
mechanical engineering school to use notebooks with bindings and write notes
about everything to cover my ass in case of a legal issue. I developed a
simple system:

\- front front to back, write notes from meetings, brainstorms or anything

\- from back to front, write todo lists.

\- Actions from meetings are noted in the “front” notes with an arrow in the
left hand margin but copied to the “back”. Normally I never refer to the front
unless I forget why I made an action

\- For actions: checkmark completed, cross out cancelled and crossout with an
arrow “moved” actions

\- when my actions page fills up, I simply cross the page out and “move”
unfinished actions to the next page (from back to front)

\- when the notebook is full I “move” actions to a new notebook and start
over.

\- the act of physically rewriting actions is a great tool to understand what
you’ve been procrastinating on and what you can drop without much consequence

When I moved to a new industry that doesn’t put people at risk, therefore no
need to cover my ass legally, I switched to the equivalent system using
markdown notes and Todoist. I thought it would be great to be able to search
previous notes and see statistics. After another 7-8 years I realized I never
ever searched my previous notes and missed being able to thumb through
notebooks. I got advice from a mentor that taking notes in a book is more
professional/ less distracting in a professional setting. I also missed the
exercise of manually copying/ consolidating/culling actions. I found myself
mindlessly postponing Todoist actions to tomorrow or next week. However, I
work in a larger team now and need to delegate actions.

So I developed a hybrid system which has worked well:

\- notes in a notebook, written from front of the notebook to back

\- actions have an arrow in the margin

\- each day I add all actions to the most recent page of actions. This is no
longer from back to front but “inline” with the rest of the notes, so I get a
chronological sense of when the page is filled and actions moved to a new
page. Actually, I move to a new page whenever I feel the urge to prioritize
something, which goes to the top of a new page. If I have a tough day ahead of
me, the first thing I do is start a new actions page and follow the order
without reconsidering it. If I have a really tough day I will add “check
email” as an action and put it far from the top.

\- at the end of each workday, for any case where other stakeholders are
involved, I type meeting minutes and duplicate actions as tickets in our
system

\- whenever I move actions to a new page I close tickets corresponding to my
actions and follow up on others actions

\- if I don’t have my notebook on me, I use notes on my phone temporarily

I don’t actually manage to keep things consistent daily but whenever I make a
new action page I tend to update everything. And I find it much less mental
load to update tickets based on written notes (I trust a written check mark
and tend to remember why I made the check mark) than to update tickets based
on emails or comments or whatever (they are usually a rabbit hole)

------
primozk
Google Keep for todos & shopping list, Evernote for everything else.

------
thomasedwards
I use a paper notebook with an index with page number in the front.

------
hemantv
GoodNotes 5 on iPad is the best way I have found :)

------
johnmarcus
I'm digging Notable on a cloud synced and encrypted KBFS folder these days.
Simple markdown note taker.

------
buboard
todo.txt in my dropbox

