If you are truly interested in sustainable methodologies, I think one area that requires acceptance is that the volume one consumes needs to be second to the volume one can take meaningful notes on. There is no sustainable notes strategy that can support randomly opening HN and skimming a random article on the front page during a break at a bus halt.
If you want to take notes of what you are reading, no matter what method you choose you need to synthesize your ideas. You need to make them your own. That takes time. Personally, I found that for the time I was taking notes* I had to first discipline myself in how I consumed material. This lessened how much I read and made me focus on quality which in turn made me focus more on what I was reading which then turned into a positive feedback loop.
This answer may feel like a cop out, but I add it only because too many people try to find a note taking methodology to support an unsustainable consumption habit and then they think the note taking method was the issue when it really wasn’t.
* - I ultimately stopped taking notes on most things when I decided one day that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I narrowed my areas of interest to ones where mostly practical experience mattered much than theoretical knowledge (eg: illustrating). The only areas I take notes in still is security research and even that is far more practical
I second this, I found that I truly understand the material when I am in the position to explain it, to ensure that, I write my notes as if I am an instructor and I explain things to a class under the assumption that they won't attend the lectures.
As I write notes, I find myself needing to further explain things - so as to fit the requirements - which results in consuming more material and reasoning about it.
This requires a non trivial amount of effort, and not everyone has the capacity to do it, but for a student, this probably works, the Feynman method and all that.
I agree with the idea of "making them your own." I often found myself forgetting about something I "learned." Simply jotting down notes on Notion or any other software is not practical. Having some context and identifying how it relates to your problems is far more critical for understanding and learning something deeply.
I find everything fails eventually anki, Zettelkasten, markdown, text files, obsidian, one note, wiki, notion etc.
You need to very clearly define what you want and you should know how your brain works. Some people want loose links to job memories, some people think slower but more deeply. Some people get math better than biology, and so on and so on.
You should have a good idea how you learn and what you are good/bad at. Then develop a system that works with YOUR brain. Also you must emotionally accept you aren't going to get it right the first couple times.
Very good point. Just like I only learned how to properly study in the last 2-3 years of university (which was quite a 'perfomance' increase, i.e. time spent studying decreased quite a lot yet grades went up; partially driven by the topics being more interesting, but still..) I tried a bunch of things. Only to figure out that the exact tool used doesn't matter a lot, it just needs to be easy enough to work with and preferrably plain text - I settled with Obsidian in the end because it's simply pretty good at what it does, and FF Simple Tab Groups for links used often.
What did matter is that I needed to use the tool consistently and not be like 'oh let's quickly add a text file with a note on my desktop' or 'oh here's a shiny new tool let's take some notes in it and paste some bookmarks in it'. That, and figuring out categories: not too much, not too little.
Stinos - I'm curious what techniques you learned that made such a difference in your studying. I still struggle and believe it's technical, so am grateful for your sharing any details you can!
Unfortunately a) this happened like 20 years ago and I don't remember all details b) I'm not very good at explaining things especially not when it comes to explaining thought processes. Which in any case is a very personal thing, so it's not because it works for me that it works for you. Could be, or not. Basically the point I was trying to make earlier :)
Anyway here's an attempt: key for me was first getting a proper, deep understanding of how something works. At that point I would just spend time doing that alone, not caring about how, not caring about spending extra time on reading on tangential topics which wouldn't even be part of the exam. Just internalize the principle. Can't explain how that works, sorry.
After accomplishing that, I'd just read through the text once or twice more to pick up some details. Or in case of math for instance to go over some proof again to make sure the individual steps are also clear. Turned out that's then enough to almost completely memorize the whole thing. I.e., as opposed to just starting with the idea of memorizing everything through merely repetition.
I'd visualize the principle of why that meomrization works as a tree: the phase where the understanding is built is like a leafless tree in winter where it's not too hard to remember the location of the main branches. Once that is done, it's easier to 'hook' details onto that: the smaller branches attached to the bigger ones. And then the leaves onto that. Same tree, same shape, just more detail.
Whereas when I was younger studying would often basically be the counterpart: starting by memorizing the location of one single leaf, then another one, and so on. Often never seeing the shape of the whole tree in the end, and obviously also often forgetting the location of many leaves.
Stinos - you rock. This rings true for me and is very helpful! Thank you.
Going to keep this handy.
I've had a gripe with fragmented learning and memorization approaches. They just don't work for me long term. Many methods rely on silly imagery to make something memorable.
I do think visualization is key, but using it as a part of deep understanding rings true on a deeper level. Rather than using visualization for a false scaffolding, the way you are using it, the imagery becomes a true working model and seems much faster for the intuition to work with rather than translating the pieces to reconstruct meaning, the meaning is inherent in the image.
you can use any of those tools with the wrong technique and get zero effect, or any with the right technique and get the full effect.
at the end of the day the tool is irrelevant, except in the sense that you stuck with it because you enjoyed using that tool with the right technique.
in my case, I've stuck with anki with great results. but only after i started writing my own notes and developed my personal system for them. but it's true it never used to work too well when i downloaded other people's stuff.
I don’t think this is true. I’ve been using a folder full of text files for 10+ years now and still use it basically the same way I did when I started (now with Ulysses rather than NValt, but few technique changes).
For me this is because I just slotted it in as the answer to the mental question “where should I write this down?” I don’t take notes because I think taking notes is good, I take notes because I want to remember things or be able to find them later.
I've gotten a lot of use from a version of Zettelkasten in Roam recently.
The general idea is this.
1. Take "Literature Notes" in your own words as you consume content. These are little summaries of ideas in the text that are usually 1-3 lines. For paper books, I do this in a little Muji notebook. For digital resources, these go straight in Roam.
2. When you have finished the resource, copy your notes to one page and summarise them in "Permanent Notes".
3. Keep your Permanent Notes in one Permanent Note page and link everything together.
The best guide I found for getting this kind of system set up was https://www.nateliason.com/blog/smart-notes. The original "How to Take Smart Notes" book is also good, but much less concrete.
Really, I found step 1 to be the most valuable. I was previously processing highlights from articles and books and that weirdly took more time. Writing little notes as you go along saves only what is relevant and it's much more direct for your use cases.
As a word of warning though, I really haven't gotten this stuff to work very well for programming (or disciplines where you need to exercise knowledge rather than archive it in a system). I either find I need to memorise the stuff more directly with Anki, or having to practice skills in a real world context.
I find that something magical happens when you write things out by hand. Thinking slows down, you subconsciously explore the problem, and your expression becomes much more deliberate.
Also, you activate more of your capabilities as a thinking creature that way. Why just approach a problem with your fingertips on a keyboard when you can activate your visual, spatial, and temporal processing capabilities?
Personally, I’ve recently fallen in love with Leuchtturm notebooks. I bought the great big 83+ one, a nice Japanese mechanical pencil, and I’ve been going to town on problems ever since.
I thought a lot about this and tried several different methods in my early twenties.
I encourage you to abandon this pursuit and let your human mind perform it’s most wonderful magic: synthesizing, compressing and expanding mental inputs.
Don’t get in the way of this magic:
throw everything you can into the input chute and marvel at the connections that result.
I cannot echo this enough. As someone who's experimented with this a whole bunch with a million things, here's the thing I realized: Get good at understanding what the COMPUTER is good at vs what the HUMAN is good at. For me, all the wasted time was a result of me misunderstanding and mixing these two up.
Namely: Things like mindmaps and lots of little individual connected nodes (e.g. Obsidian) appeal in theory to human minds, because that's how our minds work.
But for me, I realized they weren't good tools for this because my brain is much much better at doing this than the software.
Ah, yes then: The software is good at 1) writing things down verbatim for detail and 2) re-reminding me of them when I go to look at them. The other stuff, the thinking and the connections, that's ME. That's NOT the software.
So for me that means. What I look at on the computer needs to be dense and well organized, not a mess of nodes. Which usually leads back to bigger, simpler chunks. I still use http://zim-wiki.org, but try to minimize the number of pages.
(To go broader, yes, this has very much deepened my skepticism of AI and machine-sentience)
I'd say decent notes are still important in a way that's not contrary to what you're saying. Our minds are very good processors but are not the best memory banks. Knowing what to take note of is part of that skill.
Sure there are people with eidetic and impressive memories but for most it's easier to just take notes of something and know where to look for the info later. That's one reason why I still keep to-do lists and calendars. Sure I can just use my brain to store all of these things, but it's easier to just have notes to look back onto and use my mental energy for other tasks it's more suited for.
>abandon this pursuit and let your human mind perform it’s most wonderful magic: synthesizing, compressing and expanding mental inputs.
Not sure if you're trying to convey some "zen" advice but the way I actually synthesize & connect information is to take notes. My previous comment on how many thinkers use notes like this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30331114
If you're suggesting that the mind makes more synthesis & connections without notes, I guess that's possible but that's not what happens in my case. Maybe that just means brains are different.
The point of taking notes is not to preserve the information (or at least not primarily) but to load it into the brain where the connections can magically be made, as you put it. Rich Hickey has a nice talk on this called "Hammock Driven Development".
Commonmark with a few essential pandoc extensions like attributes and pipe tables.
Unfortunately, Commonmark and Markdown have a widespread ecosystem and are recognized everywhere. There are commonmark preview tools available even for the terminal (glow, mdcat). Its ecosystem makes Commonmark a necessary evil, at least for me. You can also find literate programming tools for Commonmark. You can edit Commonmark in lots of different editors and many static site generators work primarily on Commonmark (Mkdocs Material, Hugo, Zola).
The only other viable alternative I know of is Emacs Org Mode. However, OrgMode is tied to Emacs and you'll have to be comfortable with Emacs to use OrgMode. There are some addons for editors like Neovim but they're not at feature parity and probably never will be because of the inherent limitations of a terminal (showing multiple different monospace fonts, for example). Emacs can generate HTML using Org documents. There's ox-hugo for the Hugo static site generator.
20 years in academia, trying many different solutions and surprisingly I've come back to... A word doc for each project/topic.
File format not going away. Sync on onedrive. Outlining. Formatting. Integration with referencing software. Already installed on any windows machine I use. And when I want to write a paper I'm in the right app already.
Crazy huh.
Equation editing is horrible if there are lots of them but in the plus side word mostly understands latex math these days.
I also learned to love word docs again after trying many tools. My word docs usually have three sections. A vocabulary section explaining the jargon. A section with the core equations and diagrams. A section that attempts to summarize-synthesize the concepts
Most formats aren't going to stand the test of time and unless you want to spend a lot of time converting from one format to another its usually best to stick as close to just text as possible. Initially I used simple ascii text documents in a folder structure which I maintained backups of and then gradually I have used more markdown and use Dokuwiki currently for the software to display and edit. It still works from files so it is still just text but it links them together and offers some benefits beyond just text but it is still completely readable and will be in 20 years time long after I dump that software and use something else.
Whatever you do consider its got to last 40+ years of a career and if it becomes too difficult to maintain you will likely stop.
Yeah, my notes from online courses and things all go into org-mode documents. Still plaintext, but with the convenience of inline LaTeX math and executable code snippets. 20 years from now the in-line Python or R might not still run, but the output gets saved into the file at least.
In recent years, many tools have been created in the note-taking space. They often market themselves as something like "personal knowledge management tools", "Zettelkasten" or "second brain".
There are just so many solutions now (and it seems like every week someone develops a new one). I keep a list where I note down solutions I see mentioned. In case you are still in search of a tool, here is a short extract containing some of the more popular tools from my note:
Now I don't know what you are referring to with "sustainable", if you mean finding a note-taking workflow that is easy to keep up for you, then of course that highly depends on your personal needs (method of input, type of content, multi-platform requirements etc.).
My advice would be:
1. pick something that works outside the browser
2. pick something that you can sync, and that has a mobile solution for quick notes on-the-go
3. pick something that works on a "future-proof" plain-text format, e.g. .txt files or .md
4. some tools offer spaced repetition integration, either as core functionality, as plugin, or by syncing to a dedicated SRS app like Anki. If you find a way to frictionlessly create SR cards in your notes, that can be a nice way of keeping some knowledge "cached"
5. keep it simple in general, don't rely too much on specific tools or workflows. they will all cease to work/go out of business at some point.
6. If you are going with any solution that operates on a local folder of .md/.txt/.org files, a nice goodie is that you can actually version your notes with git.
Relatively simple, but effective at least for me. I've a notes folder, and every day I'll save a text file called YYYYMMDD.txt, and in it I'll write lots of one liners like,
Note: Do something
Read later: some url and description
Bug: whatever
Then I'll just grep on a particular term and keyword and rank by filename to get the most recent.
I follow the same approach, I use obsidian to create the daily note with a button. When I study I take notes there and then if I have to, I move them to different files
Either don’t take notes and read more, in clusters by topic, or write about what you read. You’ll still forget a lot but at least you’ll be able to find out what you thought about something at the time. Or you could use Anki or another spaced repetition system.
This can only be an individual question. Try things.
I use a text editor (usually notepad++) for my notes. Just simple bullet lists. If I need to convey a flow, I’ll use combinations of various brackets and arrows and stuff. Then at some point I go through these notes and format them to a markdown file in Joplin, which gets backed up to the cloud. I haven’t found a simpler way to take notes than this and I feel like folks trying hard to minmax this process are losing the plot.
I keep a relatively large amount of notes (1), which are fundamental to my learning.
My notes are essentially books in markdown format, which I can open with the editor/IDE I use when working on any project.
My opinions are:
- the vast majority of the effort is spent on cataloguing knowledge when adding new notes (that is, keeping each book consistently structured); this is something that no tool can do, and as a consequence, any tool will probably do equal.
- a consequence of the cataloguing effort is that the brain better remembers the topics stored.
- searching is where the other effort goes; I've found that as long as the books are consistently structured, and one puts a bit of effort to make concepts easily findable, a textual search does well. probably, a tool to do fulltext search may help in some cases, but I rarely find the need
- there are interesting differences between doing a google search and searching a stored concept: 1. the stored concept is processed 2. the search follows my brain organization, not a search engine's
- I do only very basic cross-referencing; my method will probably be inadequate if this is a requirement
For things that require rote memorization (say, System-V x64 calling conventions), I use Anki.
I take notes almost only for computer/science related stuff. If I had to catalogue diverse topics, I'd probably just use subdirectories.
I'm using Orgzly. But to be honest my use case doesn't involve much use of org-mode on the phone. And I just a had more thorough look and it doesn't support a lot of important features, to the point I should probably retract that bulletpoint not be misleading:
- No codeblock support (execution not working is probably to be expected, but I would expect at least syntax highlighting, but it doesn't do that either)
My methodology became sustainable when I stopped taking notes [1] and accepted that learning happens through repetition.
Which is to say, rereading and multiple sources spread over time is much much more effective...and rereading and repetition from multiple sources is what note taking is.
But only if you go back and read your notes. And I didn't. So I stopped taking them.
What I realize now, writing this, is my note taking was driven by fear of missing out. That's how we are taught in school. If you don't take notes during the lecture, you will miss what you need to know for the test.
Life after school isn't that way. There's no final exams every sixteen weeks, no pop quiz on Tuesday, and no problem set tonight...or at least it's all optional.
And on the bright side, to a first approximation life entails missing out on almost everything. Time on Physics is time away from poetry, geology, and the pub.
Good luck.
[1]: I still make actionable notes. And I still make notes of my potentially actionable ideas.
> As I've mentioned elsewhere, I have a fairly straightforward "personal knowledge management" (PKM) methodology.
1. Capture: every interesting idea that I think up or read is immediately stored in Google Keep (on mobile or laptop). It can be very rough at this point, the goal is simply to not forget.
2. Transcribe & Organize: every weekend, I go through the notes I accumulated during the week. It tends to be between 10 and 30 notes. Sometimes the note is "read this article" or "catch up on all newsletters", so understanding a single note can take over an hour. On some tough weekends the process takes an entire day, but that is invariably a day where I feel like I learned a ton. Once the note is cleaned up (transcribed), I feel like I understand it. At this point I rarely forget it - it has been absorbed into my brain. The final step here is "categorizing" the note. I classify it using OneNote with tabs like "Clinical psychology" (nested under "Psychology") or "Investment management" (nested under "Finance") or "Math" or "Physics". This way, in the future, I don't have a million notes scattered around, but one clear place I know where to look. On average, this process takes 2-4 hours per weekend. I never accumulate bookmarks, Google Keep notes or unread emails more than a week to prevent existential dread.
3. Revisit: generally, people recommend you revisit your notes from time to time. I almost never do this. But if I ever am thinking about "Marketing" or "Sociology", I have an immense, high SNR repository of everything I've ever found valuable on the topic. I've done this for software interviews and it's been incredibly helpful.
Overall, I attribute this system to making me much smarter. It has been an invaluable investment.
The first two steps look like the GTD methodology, which I also follow. The point is to remove the cognitive load by putting all todos into an inbox for sorting later.
Pilot Vanishing Point Fountain Pen
(Or Lamy Safari 2000)
After using Remarkable tablet (and iPad with pencil) for nearly 2 years, and various notes tech (mem.ai, roam, logseq), for “serious”
notes (I.e learning a new topic) I went back to my handwriting days and realized what I was missing. Key features:
1. You can flip through pages really fast and find your notes from visual cues. Ah yes I remember how the page looked, here it is.
2. You can create an index page to quickly find topics you’ve written about. No need to build an exhaustive index right away. When you find yourself hunting for “where did I write about this equation”, then make an entry after finding it.
3. You can freely make diagrams, link things on a page with arrows, circle portions of text or equations and write side notes in different color pens (stabilo pens are good for this)
4. No shoulder/wrist strain issues from computer typing.
5. You really do find yourself revisiting your notes often. Even if you don’t, remember Feynman:
>”A visitor came to Richard Feynman's office. When he saw Fenyman's notebooks, he was excited to see "records of Feynman's thinking." Feynman replied, "They aren't a record of my thinking process. They are my thinking process." Writing is thinking. Plenty of people think, then write.”
Of course “write” can be interpreted as writing on computer, but Especially for “mathy” notes, I believe writing with pen + paper makes a huge difference in learning, thinking, retention, recall.
I’m no Luddite but I’d like to focus on what really matters (my learning and recall, and yes the quality of my experience) and avoid contributing to some startup’s ARR and a VC’s returns.
I still use logseq (and Apple notes) for less serious things like quick meeting notes or pasting receipts etc.
I've tried a lot of different solutions and none really work for me.
In the end, I went back to pencil and paper. Not pen, but pencil. I buy good quality notebooks like the Midori MD Paper A5, and good quality pencils like the Mars Lumograph.
I use the most minimal "system" possible which is a pared-back version of Bullet Journaling with all the dumb stuff removed.
Because I can't write nearly as fast as I can type it forces me to paraphrase, and I feel like the cognitive processing therein increases retention.
As an added benefit, it's trivial to incorporate diagrams, arrows and stuff to show logical links, etc.
Pen and paper (a notebook) served me very well. If copy and paste from screen is important to your learning, anything that can handle markdown, because of portability. No proprietary apps or formats.
...where I said, before updating it: "I have a very structured proces that has grown up over time, using OneModel (aka OM) software I wrote (AGPL; link and some more info in my profile). I often capture thoughts using voice notes on my phone, then roughly daily I commit those to the OM notes in the right place so that I will come across them again at the most convenient time for me -- they go in the calendar, topic notes, long-term planning, todo list, in-progress-ideas notes, staging of tasks I haven't prioritized yet, etc. Then daily, I review eac of those areas and update the plan for the day before starting on it. My daily routine of processing those things, then using them, has been very helpful to me, not just for staying organized, but deciding & remembering what to focus on in my practicing/improving of habits next, periodic reviews (some of which are also in Anki), etc."
I have been using this about daily for over 10 years and it is extremely helpful to me in a variety of ways, in daily use. Helps me keep track of long-term purpose, short-term todos, everything in between, and more.
See Tiago Forte's "Building a Second Brain" (esp. the PARA approach, and Progressive Summarization note-taking technique) for a comprehensive system that answers precisely your question.
More generally, this topic has come to be referred to as PKM (Personal Knowledge Management) and TFT (Tools For Thought). IME Obsidian.md stands out for its power and flexibility and community, though Roam Research (and Athens, its OSS counterpart), logseq, and Notion have their merits.
What's "sustainable" is probably subjective. To my mind, it's these characteristics: 1) being able to write or dictate from any device 2) accessible in future 3) assists with recall 4) uses formats that can be read decades later even as technology around it is constantly changing
2) and 4) make any kind of third-party service/SaaS a no go. Otherwise, you'll have to set up periodic export to a preservable format, which acts as a speed bump. If the service becomes popular, it may attempt lock-in by throttling export features.
For now, I'm using Obsidian. It's accessible from all my devices. Because it uses markdown, the notes will remain accessible even if the software dies. It supports searching but I can also search using any search tool.
Additionally, I use Anki flash cards and its spaced repetition features to recall key info. I link them to my notes in case I feel like delving deeper into a topic. Unfortunately, because Anki uses SQLite locally and its own closed-source server for syncing, it doesn't satisfy many of my criteria. For now, I've set up periodic exports until I can find a sustainable alternative to Anki.
I'm a fully trained German lawyer and my method of knowledge acquisition at University was distilling books down to If-then-else statements, systematic relationships but mostly definitions and schemes. Putting it all in Anki and recording notes to audio files. My mantra was: I should know it all. I was working on the side to finance my studies 2-3 times a week as well. It was a full-time job 247 for almost a decade.
After University, I wanted to approach the same rigor to the topics I care about. Becoming the next Humboldt, Goethe and alike but all note-taking systems I have used over the past couple of years (PARA, Cornell Notes, Zettelkasten, Obsidian, Anki, recording audio files, simply writing in a text file, physical Journal, hope of simply remembering information etc.) always seemed promising first but eventually, I ran into the following problems:
1. Too time-consuming to maintain
2. Too detailed or too extensive to be useful to future me
3. Too constraining (Learning for me is a mix of organic accumulation [coming across same/similar topics over time] and guided thinking) and foreign to the way my brain operates
4. Not enough time for revision (big one)
... and probably many more problems I haven't discovered yet.
Since then, I've created my own system:
1. Using any text editor or pen and paper
2. I jot down my dominant feeling or dominant feelings after reading a piece of information (for example, I feel X after I've read Y)
3. Writing down answers to a couple of Why questions until I have found the root of feeling X
4. Writing out a thought experiment (if variable Z of [causes or root of feeling X] changes, how would it effect feeling X?)
A note-taking system should help you reflect on the information you take in and since we reflect in different ways, designing your own system will help you understand and remember information better. Occasionally wondering about the same topics over and over again and then remembering that you have already written about it a couple of times already, will start an inner dialogue that will get you further into a topic than you would have expected.
Learning for life and studying for a profession, is vastly different. It depends on whether you want to just know or to apply, and then throw as much time at it as you possibly can, in a way that enables you to differentiate between the important and irrelevant bits. Any note-taking system is just a platform for this process.
I usually keep a project open in Overleaf where I keep jotting down everything that I like. Then on a second pass on my own - I expand or cull the information usually and double checking the information as well.
I used to write things down. But I am very OCD about the page yellowing or creasing. Also if I made a mistake I usually trash the sheet and rewrite it. For me notes are a way for regurgitating digested information in good details. I do not ever want to look through the book or course, once I have already covered it. So, yes its a bit tedious, but I save time on the long run
The graphs are from Jupyter notebooks/Pytorch + Matplotlib. Neural networks schemes are made in Latex Tikz. Several others (flowchart & generic) just Google slides. I have latex macros to build the template & sections quickly - and then just focus on writing
A text editor is what I use, the pattern is a comment line beginning with a # sign followed by the thing or things I'm noting, interspersed with comment lines if needed, followed by one or more blank lines to separate the concept.
Make sure they are searchable, and favor more recent notes over older notes.
In most cases, make sure each note are self-contained and can be reviewed without the original text or other notes. Referencing is okay, but usually, you don't want to keep an idea contained in a million places.
If needed, add a diagram or tree or nested tags to show where each note fits in the scheme of a grander picture on a topic.
Looking for a set of notes in a helpful sequence is usually not going to be as effective, aside from chronologic notes of what happened in what sequence.
I am using Anki for basically everything now. Everytime I need to look up something in Stackoverflow it goes to my Anki collection. Same for things I like to be able to remember from books.
1. Make sure your note taking system supports your goals. My goals: (A) assist my learning, (B) easily share content and get feedback from others.
2. When you produce content, consider (A) what you want to achieve by producing the content, and (B) how you want to find the content later.
3. Use one global namespace for named concepts. Category / taxonomy / tags belongs in metadata.
Why the goals? If your system supports your goals, you will continue to use it and get value from it. If your system doesn't support your goals, it becomes tedious to use, and you'll abandon your notes.
I encourage you to put your notes publicly on the web. Public notes have URLs, and there's no easier way to read content. You're going to remember notes.yourname.com/THING, or just go via notes.yourname.com to list / search.
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My information architecture consists of named concepts, journals and metadata.
Named concepts is the top level. Wikipedia uses this structure. There's one global namespace with sufficiently qualified names. You are going to remember your note by this name. Disambiguate in your global names.
Journals are organized by date. The advantage of journals is that you don't have to name anything. In general, it's nice to start with a journal, and collect named concepts on demand. Journals don't have to be discoverable.
Metadata helps you discover and index your notes. Categories and tags go here. But don't go nuts on categorization, think about what those categories should achieve. Remember the fact boxes on Wikipedia? Those are driven by concept metadata. Sometimes it's better to embed a table or a nested list on a concept page than introduce metadata. "Is this helpful to understand the concept?" - put it on the page. "Is this helpful to find/index your content?" - it's metadata.
Let's say you want to learn FUSE (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace). Create a journal page for learning FUSE, and tag it as "open problem". Make sure you can list open problems. Each time you've got some time, open your FUSE journal, and work to understand something. Read the man page. Read wikipedia. Read the source. But annotate! Take notes in your journal as you go. When you revisit your FUSE journal, you can easily rediscover where you were last time, and decide where you want to go next.
I think it’s important to have a system that works for you. For me, the key is having an organized way of capturing and organizing my notes so they are easy enough find when needed but not too much effort required at any given time (i don't want them taking up more than 1/2 hour per week).
I use Evernote which has been great because its web-based allowing access from anywhere with internet connection as well being able sync across multiple devices including mobile phones etc.
No tool is as versatile as pen and notebook. The limitation is that you don't have access to data / images / tools. Indexing the notebook to a filesystem where each subject in the notebook has an affiliated folder, and the filesystem gets backed up to storage regularly, with occassional archival storage (basically freeze a picture of the filesystem to a USB drive once a year and store it somewhere safe) is a decent approach.
I use logseq to take study notes in org mode, which are then published to my public slipbox by post-processing with emacs in a github action. The consistent part of this has been plain text notes -- the slipbox has stuck for the past year, and hopefully will continue.
This is really cool, would you mind sharing the project code? I'd be interested in automatically updating/publishing my notes in such a way with org mode.
I haven't yet cleaned up the slipbox code enough to publish it, but I do have my site generation code public: https://explog.in/config.html -- which does something similar but doesn't generate the cross links.
The slipbox code is just a bunch of python to pre-process the org files and "fix" links, which then passes them on to emacs subprocesses to generate html.
I've been using the second brain system in Roam for a while now and I really like it -- it helps me connect between topics, especially as someone with many competing interests. I will say that it only works when I remember to do it, which is a downside of any of these systems. Organization is also super important here.
More often than not, I have found the Google results for highly specialized topics and areas that I know well enough to Google, but not remember all of the details, to be very sub-par, superficial, or rudimentary in nature.
It seems like there is a lack of good quality highly specialized information that flies under the radar or just isn't indexed properly. I have now turned to hn.algolia.com [1] for certain specific searches, as well as in the process of downloading entire archives of books (PDFs and ePUBs) that I will be running OCRmyPDF [2] on just to ensure search-ability.
This way, I know for a fact I can search for almost any topic of relevance and it will be indexed/cached on my local machine.
Google has gotten terrible at displaying information that is very niche and or highly specialized and I want to take that control back into my own hands.
I'm using zk and the zk-neovim plugin. Works well, its easy to link between notes and navigate. They are future proof because they are stored as plain text. Would like to auto commit and push the notes to github every once in a while, but I've yet to set that up.
I usually vary my note-taking style a lot but my current favourite is to just use handwritten outline style (bullet points) and then later transcribe those to flowchart.fun for the useful visualization.
I've been learning illustrative drawing and while studying anatomy have reached this axiomatic conclusion, one which I've seen elsewhere: make it a laborious effort to take notes and your recall of them will subsequently improve.
You see, the way in which I've taken up the anatomy study is simply to copy every drawing in "Morpho" (a 300-plus page volume full of anatomical reference material, different perspectives and poses). This takes months, even with the relatively brief treatments I've giving to each drawing. No school class sits you down at the start and says "your assignment for the class is to copy every page in the textbook".
But the results speak for themselves. My understanding of figures and faces has improved a ton by simply going through the book and drawing what I see over and over. Where it's lacking the most is in the places where I haven't yet finished my study.
And it makes sense. We don't teach sports by quizzing athletes with lengthy descriptions of the situation, but by drilling the muscle memory in small chunks and then putting it together. There's no reason why learning of other topics wouldn't be the same.
But it's also high effort to put in that degree of drill. Most people searching for an ultimate knowledge system aren't willing to forsake that much and want to focus on the tools and the data collection process. But this isn't a good adaptation to an info-saturated world. Collection and organization is a professional field all its own: that's the type of thing a library scientist does. If you collect in an overly general way, you compete with the librarians. To do better than them you have to filter and apply the more intensive method to a smaller number of topics.
For example, a mediocre way to keep up with news is to consume predigested news products. The headline usually says about as much as is necessary; the rest is formulaic and designed for engagement. Looking to an expert is also misleading because they'll make a statement from within their own self-interest(e.g. medical professionals with disease) and build up an echo chamber around their seniority. To go deep on any one news subject you have to start compiling your own data, ask your own questions, pursue your own leads. But you can't do all of them.
What you can feasibly do(and which I do from time to time) is look at statements coming from within corporations and public institutions about data: earnings reports, surveys, and so on. While occasionally misleading, these modes of information are usually designed to clear up confusion and present credible explanations for stakeholders. They are not as exciting as gossip journalism, but they often signal underlying trends, and you can summarize those into small-p principles that you'll filter future data through. So then you become more efficient without changing any of your habits around consumption.
I noticed that I take different kinds of notes:
- Technical notes: How to do X in Python?
- Technical concepts: GitOps, IaC concepts, Distributed systems ideas
- big ideas concepts: Fat Tails, etc.
- Things that I am curious
I don't really think about it as linking notes. At least, "creating links" isn't the goal. Mostly, I'm trying to explore what I'm curious about.
I create links in two situations: (A) when I'm reading someone else's content, or (B) when I'm working on my own content.
When I'm reading someone else's content, I want to understand what they mean. I try to do that by building on other things I know. I also want to think further than the author. Apply it to my context.
When I'm creating my own content, I want to build on ideas. Refer to examples, compare to other ideas.
I primarily use backlinks as a method of tagging and finding my notes easily using queries. I just write and link without thinking about it too hard. After all, Zettelkasten is for effortless and fluid writing; to transfer your knowledge digitally, and use it to offload mental work to something more spacious.
If you want to take notes of what you are reading, no matter what method you choose you need to synthesize your ideas. You need to make them your own. That takes time. Personally, I found that for the time I was taking notes* I had to first discipline myself in how I consumed material. This lessened how much I read and made me focus on quality which in turn made me focus more on what I was reading which then turned into a positive feedback loop.
This answer may feel like a cop out, but I add it only because too many people try to find a note taking methodology to support an unsustainable consumption habit and then they think the note taking method was the issue when it really wasn’t.
* - I ultimately stopped taking notes on most things when I decided one day that I didn’t want to do it anymore. I narrowed my areas of interest to ones where mostly practical experience mattered much than theoretical knowledge (eg: illustrating). The only areas I take notes in still is security research and even that is far more practical