Digitized notes are a good idea in theory, in practice most notes are write-only and are never read back ever again. Add the fact that writing a note by hand is proven to be a much better memory aid than storing it in a computer.
I suffer from terrible memory retention because of ADHD, so I need to rely to external storage more than most people—yet after obsessing about note taking for a while I reached productivity enlightenment: I really do not need to remember and categorise most of my thoughts and notes. I produce millions of ideas every day, and I have, hopefully, other 50 years ahead of me of potentially interesting thoughts I might feel I want to remember, only to collapse under this ever-increasing weight of nonsense, of things that seemed important one day, and really were not in the grand scheme of things.
No, these days I write, seldomly, on a paper notebook. I embrace my terrible memory and use it as a tool, to aggressively cull every extraneous thought du jour. If it's important, it'll come up again. If it's truly important, it'll keep me awake at night. That is the real problem of digital notes: they never fade away.
The only things I keep in Org Mode are memories from decades ago I am sure I will want to reminisce about when I am 80. Like my family tree, the list of video games I loved as a kid, the important dates of my life.
I suffer from terrible memory retention because of ADHD, so I need to rely to external storage more than most people—yet after obsessing about note taking for a while I reached productivity enlightenment: I really do not need to remember and categorise most of my thoughts and notes. I produce millions of ideas every day, and I have, hopefully, other 50 years ahead of me of potentially interesting thoughts I might feel I want to remember, only to collapse under this ever-increasing weight of nonsense, of things that seemed important one day, and really were not in the grand scheme of things.
No, these days I write, seldomly, on a paper notebook. I embrace my terrible memory and use it as a tool, to aggressively cull every extraneous thought du jour. If it's important, it'll come up again. If it's truly important, it'll keep me awake at night. That is the real problem of digital notes: they never fade away.
The only things I keep in Org Mode are memories from decades ago I am sure I will want to reminisce about when I am 80. Like my family tree, the list of video games I loved as a kid, the important dates of my life.