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I find it hard to get people to write down anything. And if they do, they often times don't put enough effort into it, like writing down some bullet points without context or screenshots without adding text. This is a personal and cultural problem at companies and in teams. A lot of people don't know how to generate value from taking notes/documentation and aren't good writers in general. I'm still thinking about how you can teach people what's important when it comes to writing and when to take notes.

I couldn't agree more with your second point. Search is probably even more important than taking notes in the first place. I find myself searching through my notes multiple times a day, even if it's something you can find at Google at the same speed. But my notes are mine, meaning I know what I can't remember or in which form I need some piece of information. Sometimes, I write a long article about something and other times some bullet points are good enough. When I share my notes on a team/organization I try to make sure the context is clear. It's a bit like code: it's read by an order of magnitude more often than written/changed.

We built Emvi [1] to make note taking more collaborative and with focus on searchability and ease of use. I hope I can write more about this topic on our blog. In case you have ideas on how to solve these cultural problems, please let me know.

[1] https://emvi.com/



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