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Ask HN: How do you take notes?
2 points by brandonjlutz on April 27, 2015 | hide | past | favorite | 3 comments
For the past 3 or so years I've just kept an open Sublime window and tabs for my notes but recently I've been trying Evernote. I really dislike the lack of plain notes in Evernote so I'm going to switch back to Sublime and keep a project on my iCloud drive.

What's your note workflow?




Trusty old pen and paper.

When you type your notes most people tend to take notes that are too in-depth with unnecessary details or get distracted by other things.

When you use pen and paper you are forced to only jot down the important bits. You can't write fast enough to write down too much. Chances are you'll learn to take better notes.

I then type my notes up later to ensure future legibility (no smears from paper rubbing together) as well as being able to organize them to easily reference sections later.

I'm not saying its impossible to take good notes if you type them to begin with; but there is a strong correlation between typing notes and taking poor notes.


I use pen/paper generally for brainstorming and fleshing out ideas but for storing ideas and code chunks I use my computer. Notebooks fill up quickly - my computer has tons of space.


Pen + paper, photographed and saved into Evernote.




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