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My model for notes is converging on Org Mode. But... With a review process every day and every week, GTD-style. I see this need from my notes over the last cou

by berntb 10y ago

My model for notes is converging on Org Mode. But... With a review process every day and every week, GTD-style. I see this need from my notes over the last couple of years from the job. Not usable for documentation (as I had planned) or helpful for other people. I read about a guy at MIT(?) that could be mobile with a relevant setup years ago. It should be simpler now than it was for Mann et al. Just use an eyeglasses screen (Google, where are you?) and a chording keyboard strapped to your hand.

vidarh 10y ago
> But... With a review process every day and every week, GTD-style. I see this need from my notes over the last couple of years from the job. Not usable for documentation (as I had planned) or helpful for other people. I've resorted to a big folder of paper for this very reason. I really want to do it all electronically, but my experience is for my own part I'm too likely to go off and start jotting notes in some random file somewhere, or test a new tool, and the notes end up sitting there, not getting referenced because I forget all the places I've made notes. I've started looking at a computer screen as a window into a space that is otherwise largely hidden. The problem is there can be clutter everywhere you're not looking, and things get forgotten, or lost, unless they're regularly reviewed. Paper solves that for me by being physically there, cluttering up my desk if I don't organise them, or in my notebook, making it easy do review and distill. Even when there's a lot of them, the physical bulk of it creates an implicit reminder to flick through it and see if its still relevant. Whatever is not still relevant goes in an archive for scanning. Things that requires too much writing for me to want to do it on paper I still do electronically, but I'll make a paper note of it: e.g. it may be referenced from my list of projects. I still hope to find an electronic setup that I can stick to consistently, but I think for that to work for me, I'd need to e.g. be able to dedicate a large enough workspace to be able to set aside a separate screen to keep my notes up and physically visible all the time (even if just as an icon on the desktop), or find another way of keeping them "physically there" in the same way.
- berntb 10y ago
  I keep all notes in Org Mode, stored in a simple and shallow hierarchy in my Dropbox. (~/Dropbox/orgs/w for job notes. Etc.) Since I have Emacs open anyway, the notes are just a few chars away. (The best feature with Org Mode is that after I learned it, the note taking doesn't take much attention; it is transparent for cognitive load in a way that only a Pilot G-TEC-C4 + paper ever was for me. I only think about what I want to add, not how to do it. Ymmv.) My main problem is to access those notes from phone/ipad/etc. I started https://github.com/berntb/attorg https://github.com/berntb/attorg but got lost in the GUI/UX.
- summarite 10y ago
  sounds like a typical case of "perfect is the enemy of good (enough)"

by berntb 10y ago

vidarh 10y ago

> But... With a review process every day and every week, GTD-style. I see this need from my notes over the last couple of years from the job. Not usable for documentation (as I had planned) or helpful for other people. I've resorted to a big folder of paper for this very reason. I really want to do it all electronically, but my experience is for my own part I'm too likely to go off and start jotting notes in some random file somewhere, or test a new tool, and the notes end up sitting there, not getting referenced because I forget all the places I've made notes. I've started looking at a computer screen as a window into a space that is otherwise largely hidden. The problem is there can be clutter everywhere you're not looking, and things get forgotten, or lost, unless they're regularly reviewed. Paper solves that for me by being physically there, cluttering up my desk if I don't organise them, or in my notebook, making it easy do review and distill. Even when there's a lot of them, the physical bulk of it creates an implicit reminder to flick through it and see if its still relevant. Whatever is not still relevant goes in an archive for scanning. Things that requires too much writing for me to want to do it on paper I still do electronically, but I'll make a paper note of it: e.g. it may be referenced from my list of projects. I still hope to find an electronic setup that I can stick to consistently, but I think for that to work for me, I'd need to e.g. be able to dedicate a large enough workspace to be able to set aside a separate screen to keep my notes up and physically visible all the time (even if just as an icon on the desktop), or find another way of keeping them "physically there" in the same way.

berntb 10y ago
I keep all notes in Org Mode, stored in a simple and shallow hierarchy in my Dropbox. (~/Dropbox/orgs/w for job notes. Etc.) Since I have Emacs open anyway, the notes are just a few chars away. (The best feature with Org Mode is that after I learned it, the note taking doesn't take much attention; it is transparent for cognitive load in a way that only a Pilot G-TEC-C4 + paper ever was for me. I only think about what I want to add, not how to do it. Ymmv.) My main problem is to access those notes from phone/ipad/etc. I started https://github.com/berntb/attorg https://github.com/berntb/attorg but got lost in the GUI/UX.
summarite 10y ago
sounds like a typical case of "perfect is the enemy of good (enough)"