I'm somehow on the same boat as you. I've tried dozens of "fancy" tools but they never stuck. A plain text file, kind of a "flat wiki", that you can search with your text editor may be the grail of note taking. What I consider critical is to "tree-shake" it often to remove the cruft. Hints:
- Tree-shake your notes each time you iterate them. You'll leverage your excitement and it won't be a chore.
- Maintain part of your notes public, it will be a catalyst to polish them. A git repository is perfect for that. Serendipitously, I started a related thread a couple hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28895647
I use gjots2, a hierarchical plain text note taker. If I need photos, LaTex, inline math, or such, I use Zim -- a local desktop wiki. And of course, I use text files, permanent and otherwise.
The nice thing about both gjots2 and Zim, is that their source files read almost as easily as text. This is especially true for gjots2.
I like the hierarchical arrangement of gjots2. I still have Ctrl-F if I want to search, but sometimes in browsing a category, I find things I would not have found with search -- sometimes how I refer to things changes with time -- and I've got many years of gjots entries.
I do not, as gjots author Bob Hepple does, keep separate topics in separate gjots files -- one big tree in the left panel holds all topic headings.
- Tree-shake your notes each time you iterate them. You'll leverage your excitement and it won't be a chore.
- Maintain part of your notes public, it will be a catalyst to polish them. A git repository is perfect for that. Serendipitously, I started a related thread a couple hours ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28895647