
Ask HN: Do you take notes during work? If so, what do you use? - django-boy
Hello Hacker News,<p>I have been trying to take notes using Evernote, Bear and Apple Notes. None of them compare to writing my notes down on paper. However, writing my notes down on paper has none of the benefits these apps have (sorting, searching, etc).<p>Do you take notes during work? If so, have you found a &quot;perfect app&quot; or way of doing it?
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clubm8
A 4 color pen + cheap amazonbasics moleskine knockoff

Black = facts. numbers, locations, new edicts, etc Blue = thoughts. musings.
edge cases I think of during meetings but don't want to derail over, etc green
= events (after work social, conferences, etc) red = todo

It's not perfect (ex: I usually write the details of meetings such as
time/location and add a red star with "TODO: enter meeting X into calendar"
but the line between a meeting an event can blur. Is an intern presentation an
event or a meeting?

My main distinction is meetings are mandatory, events can be moved.

(Ex: I won't schedule a doctor's appointment during a client meeting. I would
list the day there's an evening drinks session as a time I could meet the
doctor)

It's not perfect, but the general idea is that the notebook is to store things
until the end of the meeting - then they go into my calendar, into my todo
list, or onto my whiteboard as problems to be brainstormed.

~~~
tedmiston
You might appreciate the Action Method notetaking format that separates next
actions from just the notes themselves.

[https://the-gadgeteer.com/2017/11/15/action-method-notebooks...](https://the-
gadgeteer.com/2017/11/15/action-method-notebooks-review/)

[https://design-milk.com/ghostly-behance-action-method-
notebo...](https://design-milk.com/ghostly-behance-action-method-notebook-
designers/)

------
mtmail
"Ask HN: How do you keep track of your notes at work?"
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16838093](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16838093))
has more pointers.

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acutesoftware
Yes, I take a lot of notes - I used to use physical notebooks (
[http://cloudeddesigns.com/img/design-
books.jpg](http://cloudeddesigns.com/img/design-books.jpg) ) and have tried
many digital products.

I wrote and now use [https://www.lifepim.com](https://www.lifepim.com) as my
primary note source, it uses a simple markdown format and is working well for
me.

------
albumdropped
Religiously. MacDown

[https://macdown.uranusjr.com/](https://macdown.uranusjr.com/)

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hazz99
Vim, or Notion.so. Notion is great software, and I'll recommend it to anyone
who listens.

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dawidw
[https://bulletjournal.com/](https://bulletjournal.com/)

I'm not following exactly that system but even though it's been great change
in my life to remember and organise notes, events, ideas etc.

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tedmiston
I keep a notes folder full of markdown files, one per project or high-level
topic to constitute an "engineer's notebook". Then within each file, I add an
h2 for each day I work on that project.

I would rather keep paper notes honestly, but the power of digital text wins
out here quickly. The ability to copy & paste URLs and terminal sessions, and
to be able to project-wide search for them later when I can't remember the
particular args used on a command from weeks ago.

This setup mostly works but it would be nice to have a little more of a
software layer on top.

For personal notes, I like Day One setup with multiple notebooks and tags.

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piocho
Like you, I tried several tools for taking notes (work or personnal). However,
I didn't succeed using them during a long time.

So I switched to little notebook with one pen that is smooth to use. For now I
find (quite) easily my notes, but in the future I'll probable need an easy why
to search and find notes.

Usinge Markdown might be the newt thing I'll do. It's super easy to get
perfect/clean notes with it.

So you might have a try with a notebook and see if it's enought for you.

All my note are "simple", they are only ideas or TODOs. But if you want to
keep some code/dev/scripts notes you should concider markdown tool.

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icedchai
Early on in my career, I used to take notes, then realized I never looked at
them. Now, I don't bother. I sometimes send emails to myself if I want to
remember something. No point in a separate note app.

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makecheck
Honestly I now use text files in “vim”.

If they’re “how-to” things, I give the files really obvious names that
describe the problem being solved by the content.

If they’re to-do lists, I generally have only one per unique project and keep
it to about a page (any longer and I’ll never read them all; things that are
truly important will make their way into the list naturally, I don’t need “4
weeks from now” items in there).

It’s actually pretty easy to search and organize text this way, and you can
use Unix tools to filter and sort them if your lines have the right info in
them.

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beatgammit
I've been playing with emacs org mode, and it's nice. I use Orgzly on my phone
and have my devices sync with Syncthing and it has been mostly okay.

I'm still finding a rhythm (I'm a vim person), but it seems to be really
useful. I like that it can handle scheduled things and automatically make
notifications for me on my phone. I also like that it's just a text file, but
has a ton of features that most text-based organization systems lack.

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bradknowles
If I write down any kind of notes, that would be on paper. With a pen. Lately,
I'm liking the Papermate Inkjoy Quatro four-color pen. I'd love to try a
better pen, but I'd be afraid of losing it in a bathroom somewhere, so I
should probably stick to the Papermate.

Tickets are in JIRA.

Documentation goes into Confluence.

Discussions tend to happen in e-mail.

Sometimes I remember to take the results of tickets or discussions and write
them up as documentation in Confluence.

~~~
bradknowles
Years ago, I had tried a LiveScribe pen, and automatically uploading and
transcribing my notes in Evernote.

That worked really well for a couple of weeks. Then a co-worker flipped out
that I had been recording his voice without his permission, and worse I was
uploading the files to the cloud.

I never picked up a LiveScribe pen again.

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duke_of_newyork
I use dropbox paper almost exclusively now. It has great code snippet support
and uses markdown. Sometimes I just use good old paper too.

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PeOe
For short notes or reminders which should last about an hour, I use just
sticky post its. For further info and task-related stuff, I use our own tool
[https://zenkit.com](https://zenkit.com). It's really good to visualize your
notes and tasks.

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tmaly
For work related info, I have my team take notes in structured pages in
Confluence.

We use this to help onboard new hires as well as to communicate better.

I have used some of the information in the book Organizing Knowledge by
Patrick Lambe to help keep things accessible

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arduinomancer
I use the built in notes in outlook. The feature is a actually pretty bad and
glitches out a lot on me but I find its one less window to keep open since
you're usually constantly reading emails as a developer anyway.

~~~
tomjen3
Oh man, I would hate to be in a place where I would constantly be reading
e-mail.

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akulbe
Standard Notes

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

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smarri
I take my notes on excel. One sheet for current items, one sheet for closed
items.

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cm2012
I type doc.new into the url bar.

