
How to take smart notes with Org mode - noelwelsh
https://blog.jethro.dev/posts/how_to_take_smart_notes_org/
======
shakezula
> Notes aren’t a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process.
> – Richard Feynman

I haven’t ever found a quote that described how i approach software as
succinctly as this. I use a bullet journal religiously and it’s specifically
because of this.

Great article.

~~~
chrisweekly
Love the quote and the idea too. Check out Roam^1 which completely changed my
relationship to note-taking.

1 [https://roamresearch.com](https://roamresearch.com)

~~~
shakezula
I actually use Roam quite regularly! However, I have found Roam is better for
solidifying and consolidating my handwritten notes at a later point.

For me it goes: 1 - handwritten brain dump 2 - Re-read my notes, analyze them
and prep them for consolidation. This means writing down questions I have,
updating notes I took that I might have better understanding of now, etc... 3
- Consolidate and import them into Roam with links and supplementary materials
(images, code snippets, etc...)

------
rgoulter
I've seen it suggested before that while 'tasks' need to be well-structured,
reference/notes don't.

I like the idea of not trying to store notes in a hierarchy, but using search
and/or tags to try and reference (or discover relations between) notes.

I like the article's emphasis on "how do I want to access this later?". TBH
Sometimes I've looked up previous bookmarks or notes, and they didn't have the
keywords or tags I was expecting. I'd suggest
[https://github.com/EFLS/zetteldeft](https://github.com/EFLS/zetteldeft) as
another project which more/less supports some of the workflow suggested in the
article.

That said, yeah, I do prefer pen and paper for worklog notes.

~~~
feanaro
> TBH Sometimes I've looked up previous bookmarks or notes, and they didn't
> have the keywords or tags I was expecting.

I also use a personal set of scripts for Zettelkasten (in combination with
rofi) and I do encounter this sometimes. I've come to the conclusion that it's
not a large problem: as long as you find the notes you're looking for most of
the time, it's good.

I think the problem of _always_ finding _all_ notes that are relevant to
_each_ search is too hard and has diminishing returns. It's best to simply
avoid it by relaxing your expectations.

~~~
efls
Part of the Zettelkasten philosophy is that it _requires_ you to actively work
on links between notes. Some notes are simply forgotten, Luhmann (the original
Zettelkasten master) used to say, unless they are indexed into your system.

~~~
feanaro
Yes, and I do actively work on the links. My point is there is no need for
perfection here. Good enough is good enough.

If some of the notes are forgotten, so be it. I place my requirements and
expectations on the system as a whole, not on each particular note. If the
overall system is useful and serves me well, I don't care if some of the notes
are forgotten _and_ I've reduced my workload and note loss anxiety by several
orders of magnitude. This is what I meant by diminishing returns.

However, with full-text search, it's hard to imagine how any note could be
forgotten completely, unless it contains no text at all. This is something
Luhmann did not have.

------
zelly
I used to use Evernote then org-mode heavily but switched to pen and paper
notes and haven't looked back. Whenever I used org-mode I started tweaking
Emacs and writing macros for hours.

~~~
MarcScott
Yeah, I'm a big emacs and org mode fan, but use pen and paper now for note
taking.

I think this is mainly due to the fact that my note pad sits at my desk as a
constant reminder of what needs to be done. Org files sit in my file system
and are often forgotten.

~~~
bcrosby95
Interesting. I always have my notes window open in one half of my monitors. I
use it for everything while developing, including pseudocode, developing SQL
queries, planning my changes, etc. I use it as a digital scratchpad.

~~~
machawinka
Same. This process works but I have realized the crucial need of tags.

------
ssivark
Jethro Kuan’s earlier posts on Org mode for planning finally made the idea
click for me (maybe just the last straw on the camel’s back). I strongly
recommend checking those out too.

Btw, to Notion users — does anyone feel that it’s matched/surpassed Org mode
in the breadth of workflows it supports?

~~~
rushsteve1
I've actually been flip-flopping between Notion and Org-mode for months, and
just the other day decided to finally organize myself all on Notion.

I love Org-mode, and will likely continue to use it for various things, but I
agree that Notion is the only thing that (to me) surpasses it.

~~~
immigrantsheep
My two biggest problem with notion are no offline storage of data and monthly
payments.

~~~
Scarbutt
Yeah, notion looks great but for this particular case, the part the about
being tied to a montnly fee to be able to write my personal notes didn't felt
right. Also the friction to write notes felt higher, unless you leave your
browser always opened and logged in.

------
jethroksy
Hi! Author here, happy to answer any questions.

~~~
giloux
I'm in the process of moving all my organization stuff into org-mode. This
includes agenda, todo lists, project management and notes. This is a long
process with a lot of fine tunings and try/errors. But, for me it's like what
you said about writing : it's in the process of doing it that you think. This
helps me understand my actual needs. And emacs/orgmode is so powerfull and
customizable that it's a very goos tool to do that.

Some weeks ago, I read your series of articles about org-mode workflow. I was
especially insterested by the one about zettelkasten. This was a trigger for
me to switch my notes into org-mode. So I would like first to thank you for
your good quality articles !

What interests me in your new package is the automatic link/backlink detection
between notes. This is a really great feature I was missing that in the other
packages. I'm currently using zetteldeft and I insert hashtags into my notes
to be able to search them by tag.

I would like to try org-roam. My question is : in what way should I modify my
current note files to be compatible with org-roam ?

~~~
jethroksy
Glad you enjoyed the articles!

> My question is : in what way should I modify my current note files to be
> compatible with org-roam ?

In contrast to zetteldeft, the links in org-roam are real file links. This
means you need to replace all of the zetteldeft links with actual org file-
links.

That should be all the changes required I think.

~~~
giloux314
I just gave it a try. It is so easy to insert a link/backlink ! Adopted.

~~~
jethroksy
good to hear (: feel free to make feature requests/bug reports on the repo. It
should become a lot more stable soon, then we can start making it more
awesome.

------
ggm
I wish orgmode would apply Todo to simple bullet or number lists and not only
* * _(.. ) form.

I wish orgmode used space)tab indents not _ / * * /* * * stacking

~~~
rgoulter
> Tab intends and not * stacking

The org-hide-leading-stars variable visually hides the leading stars, which
sounds like it might suit your preference. [https://orgmode.org/worg/org-
tutorials/org-appearance.html](https://orgmode.org/worg/org-tutorials/org-
appearance.html)

> TODO to simple bullet or numbered lists

Org-mode lists can have checkboxes (like markdown has on GitHub).
[https://orgmode.org/manual/Checkboxes.html](https://orgmode.org/manual/Checkboxes.html)

But I feel this is exasperated by org-headings not having a 'closing' syntax
(like XML elements). Since you can't "close" a heading, you can't easily just
continue the content of a heading after the content of its sub-headings; so to
have a 'TODO' list within the contents of a heading, subheadings aren't an
option.

~~~
ggm
Thanks TIL

------
geokon
is asciidoc similarly powerful?

I have everything in org/githubpages but I often get a bit frustrated with
Emacs and its clunkiness. My issue is that orgmode has no spec and is so
tightly coupled to Emacs - so ive ended up unintentionally married to the
whole ecosystem.. I've been considering migrating away from org but I don't
have any great alternative in mind

~~~
jolmg
Asciidoc seems to be just a format.

For me, the main benefits of org-mode are the Emacs keybindings to handle the
docs semantically, to e.g. move the headings around, nest a whole hierarchy,
archive a heading, etc. Also, the agenda view is really useful.

I've been using org-mode mostly to keep day-by-day notes in files such as
~/org/diary/2020-02-15.org, which I create for a given day from a keybinding.
I've been thinking of starting to make personal backlogs in the form of org-
mode files, keeping the headings ordered by priority, and archiving each
heading when I'm done with them. All the benefit of using org-mode here comes
from the keybindings.

> My issue is that orgmode has no spec and is so tightly coupled to Emacs

The spec is the org-mode manual. What other programs do, like Orgzly on
Android, is to just support what they can of the format. They don't need to
have feature-parity with org-mode on Emacs to be useful.

~~~
rudedogg
Spec for the curious: [https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-
syntax.html](https://orgmode.org/worg/dev/org-syntax.html)

------
lbj
I used to be a religious Org-mode user. Over time, accumulating lots of info
and time registrations, I felt I lost the big picture.

~~~
bzg
What did you lose exactly?

How can we feel in love again with Org?

------
terminaljunkid
I find org mode little complicated for my taste.

My note taking is some plain text files in hierarchy and vim. It works even on
Android phone using termux. And I am pretty much used to it.

For todo, I have a shellscript that takes an argument and open text file of
that name. Works reasonably well.

Plus, prefix your text files with .md and get all the formatting stuff.

~~~
woadwarrior01
Have you tried vimwiki[1]? I’ve been using it for a daily journal for the past
couple of weeks and it’s been quite good. I was using it for tasks as well,
but then found Taskwarrior[2] and have since moved on to using it.

[1]: [https://vimwiki.github.io/](https://vimwiki.github.io/) [2]:
[https://taskwarrior.org/](https://taskwarrior.org/)

~~~
terminaljunkid
I am not a prolific vim user, I used nano for same purpose a month ago, where
its keybindings were so customized that I thought I'd rather take a chance to
learn vim (I am a student).

Have heard about vimwiki. But maybe because I am a student, text files suffice
for my purpose. Thanks for reminding about it.

------
animalnewbie
What level of emacs knowledge does org mode require such that it is actually
useful to me and can do stuff Microsoft onenote cannot?

~~~
mikekchar
I love org mode, but to be honest I think the killer feature of org mode is
that it is implemented in the same editor I use for programming. In fact, I
had moved from Emacs to Vim several years prior, but moved back to Emacs
simply for org mode (and luckily Evil is good enough that I don't really miss
Vim at all). Additionally, everything is ascii. There aren't different editors
for different kinds of objects because there aren't different kinds of
objects. Even tables are just arbitrary pipes, dashes and pluses. I can hack
together something that looks kind of like a row in a table, say, "Emacs,
please format that to look pretty" and then carry on hacking away. Dates are
just text until I tell Emacs, "Oh, please make that date tomorrow". And then
it's just text again. I can do crazy things like write some code in one and
think, "Oh I need to remember to check that constant to see if it's right".
Then I hit a button and I've got a TODO with either a link to the line of the
code, or even a link with the _context_ of the code so that stays valid if the
line moves. When I am going through my TODOs, I press a button and my TODO
list pops up. I press another button and it jumps to my code. I edit it. Rinse
and repeat. It's all just normal text in my normal text editor. I don't think
there is anything at all like it.

~~~
animalnewbie
Thank you. Well written.

------
animalnewbie
All this is good but then those notes aren't accessible on my phone

~~~
noelwelsh
There are a few apps that support org-mode. For Android there is
[http://www.orgzly.com/](http://www.orgzly.com/) For iOS there is
[https://beorgapp.com/](https://beorgapp.com/) I think there are a few more
but those are the ones I see people talk about.

~~~
harperlee
My problem is with the corporate firewall that inhibits me from using
dropbox/box/etc. to sync notes between my mobile phone and the work laptop.
Just yesterday I tried to connect through Github (which I can access, for the
time being), and running a "Working Copy" (an iphone app) webdav server that
shares the github repo clone in the phone with Beorg. It was completely
unusable. Does anyone have an alternate suggestion, perchance?

~~~
jaipilot747
Setup a hook that exports to HTML and send the file to your mail? Not an
elegant solution, but gets the job done.

