7 ms·

Serious question: what are people keeping so many notes about? I understand if you're a writer, or seriously studying something or involved in some creative pur

Serious question: what are people keeping so many notes about? I understand if you're a writer, or seriously studying something or involved in some creative pursuit. But I don't get why this resonates with so many everyday people. Maybe I'm just dense. I bookmark a lot of things and clip some things here and there and then, every once in a while, I just delete it all. If it mattered that much, I'd have looked it over or otherwise retained it. I know this comes across as a nihilistic viewpoint, but things just don't matter that much. I think there's a fantasy of "storing up" knowledge and it gives people some false sense of accomplishment. Just my 2c. Let the downvotes commence :P

bbv-if 7y ago
Same for me. I delete old notes every now and then, just to keep them manageable. Who cares how many notes I have if I don't even remember about them.
peterlk 7y ago
My notebook is a todo list. If your email/request/etc. doesn't end up in my notebook, I will probably not do it. This is a forcing function for me for prioritization, delegation, and escalation. It's become more relevant as my work has shifted away from pure software engineering. I'm still working on which items to duplicate to work systems, but usually the point is to capture ad-hoc work that is not already in the system.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  > If your email/request/etc. doesn't end up in my notebook, I will probably not do it. Haha, I like that!
- vvanders 7y ago
  +1000 I've tried a ton of digital workflows and systems, only thing that came close to a physical notebook was Org Mode. There's a couple reasons why I like a physical notebook: 1. It's a good log of what you've accomplished in a day. Lots of times I'll have days that didn't feel like much happened, reviewing my notes however brings into sharp relief all the things that I either dealt with or accomplished. 2. There's something incredibly satisfying about striking an item off the list with a physical motion. Hard to explain but definitely something I've noticed. 3. It's a great catch-all that's always on you. I've found an A6 size is just about perfect for this. 4. I review each item from the previous day in the morning, carry though the ones that aren't done, strike off the ones that are. Not only does it put you in the right head-space but also you start to develop a sense for things that aren't getting completed. It's a good forcing function for knowing if you need to dig into something a bit more depth than you previously thought. 5. I tend to work a notebook from both ends. Todo/items to track start from the front to the back, ideas/sketches/anything else I take pages from the back towards the front. Once they meet in the middle I'll retire the notebook and grab a new one.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
kashyapc 7y ago
Personally, a lot of notes I write down everyday are inspiring thoughts and ideas from the books I'm reading. Something about the rotary motion of pen on paper, and the way it deliberately focuses my thoughts helps me recall them better. (Also ... people tell me my handwriting doesn't exactly suck :-).) Another example: In the last two weeks, I've visited four different museums and exhibitions of an artist I'm studying (Peter Bruegel the Elder[+]; 2019 is his 450th anniversary). Based on these study visits, in a good few pages, I jotted down what I learnt so far (on language, art, culture and science), drawings and copperplate engravings I wanted to further study, Dutch proverbs I learnt, several threads to further explore, new things I wanted to learn, relating ideas from Bruegel's work to topics I've learnt from a recent book I've completed, and so forth. Do give the handwriting thing a try. [+] https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/%2Fm%2F0h6nl?hl=en https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/%2Fm%2F0h6nl?hl=en (This Google Culture project has some splendid high-resolution scans of Bruegel's paintings.)
runjake 7y ago
Ideas, notes, random thoughts, code examples, part numbers, when I worked out or went to class, lists (books,movies,grocery, etc), to-dos, diagrams, planning, sketches, etc.
burlesona 7y ago
There’s a famous quote that I think is the best answer to this question: “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it to remember it now.” There’s a lot of research on this, but in short, most people develop much stronger memories of the things they physically write (typing is less effective IIRC), whether they ever refer back to the notes or not. Your mileage may vary, but for most avid note takers, that’s the gist of it.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  Oh I couldn't agree more, great quote. Verbalizing or writing down your thoughts absolutely crystallizes your thoughts and the act of writing is most of the benefit. But this and other articles have all these systems of tagging and organizing and other things which seems to indicate they're building out some perfect reference for later use. In my mind, the crystallization benefits of writing can be accomplished without any of the other fancy add-ons.
- joegahona 7y ago
  > There’s a lot of research on this, but in short, most people develop much stronger memories of the things they physically write (typing is less effective IIRC), whether they ever refer back to the notes or not. Do you remember why typing would be less effective? Is it something to do with writing being much slower, therefore you have to think about it more while recording it?
  - Shank 7y ago
    > Is it something to do with writing being much slower, therefore you have to think about it more while recording it? I am not of any importance as a person, but my hypothesis is exactly this. For most of the HN audience, I expect that typing is well within the 70-100wpm range if not more, and at that rate, it becomes much faster to get something out of one's mind and into a system that it doesn't take time to "buffer" and linger. I somehow personally doubt that actually forming the words on paper is enough to create memories, but I suppose anything is possible given how humans have evolved so far.
  - seventhtiger 7y ago
jshaqaw 7y ago
Legit question. I think people are just different. I need to take a ton of notes because without them I’m lost on my work and life. My memory needs a refresh tool. I work with someone who can juggle 50 complicated situations at once and keep it all in his head. If I could do that too I would.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
I take a lot of notes, switching platforms occasionally. In the past I used Evernote, Google Keep, Emacs with org mode, and then Apple notes. I tend to toss out old notes periodically. A few months ago I copied current notes back to Google Keep and that is what I am using now. I write a lot (20 books, 1300 blog articles) and I just need to write notes with new ideas, links to resources, etc. My oldest notes are probably a few years old. Deleting old stuff is easy and feels tidy.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  Oh hey Mark, I know you :) You worked for us for a while at Grasswire. Hope you're well!
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - mark_l_watson 7y ago
    Hello Levi, life is good, thanks for asking.
analog31 7y ago
Because I'm a scatterbrain, and I'm often dealing with 100 things at once including projects, interruptions, and so forth. And I deal with a flood of disparate information. Maybe those things are all related. Of course 99% of my notes are useless, I just don't know which 99%. Sadly, my notes are as disorganized as my brain, but I'm doing what I can. I've been trying to make consistent use of Evernote. The only problem is that many of my notes include calculations. Being able to insert a Python cell in Evernote, a la Jupyter, would be the bees knees.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  That would be pretty cool. There's no plugins to do that kind of thing (does EN have plugins?)?
jecxjo 7y ago
I've found that while I can keep a lot in my head, my ability to prioritize doesn't maintain the life of the thoughts. Everything is some form of Todo list but they range from tasks I need to do to ordering my purchasing habits to fit within my financial constraints to listing books, movies and TV shows I want to watch. Working an 8 to 5 plus a side business with kids means my time is very limited. The less I need to remember the better and trying to go from work mode to relax mode needs to be as easy a transition as possible. Otherwise I just stay working.
jessmartin 7y ago
I’ve been keeping a notebook with multiple entries a week since about 2005. I’ve got 30 of them, full. Which makes me feel pretty nice. But in reality, I don’t actually revisit my notebooks very often. Their main purpose is to be a canvas on which I work out my thoughts. I’m an external processor, which means I need to get my thoughts out of my head in order to flesh them out. I talk them out often (see my burgeoning YouTube channel) but a notebook is an effective and societally acceptable way for me to work them out while in a coffee shop, during a lecture, or on an airplane. I tell people often when I am taking to them: “I’m writing while you talk because it helps me listen better.”
jessmartin 7y ago
To answer your original question, I keep notes in an unlined black Moleskine “work journal” about: - talks, lectures, sermons I’m listening to - meetings I’m attending - ideas that I have - outlines of a talk or an article I am about to give or write - sketches of product designs - diagrams for explaining complex concepts visually - quotes I hear that I enjoy - product ideas or business model ideas that I have I have a “personal journal” where I write a prose account of my life and take time to process the events and think through what I’m feeling, thinking, and learning.
jplayer01 7y ago
Note taking has become such a core part of my process, no matter what it is. You’re always learning (or at least, ideally, you should be), whether it’s at work or engaged in a hobby, and I find it invaluable to record the things that I learn and in which situations I learn them, because I’ve noticed that even if I “learn” something now, I probably won’t remember in a week, much less in a month or a year. At some point I grew tired of googling for a certain command usage in Linux yet again, or the solution to a certain sort-of-rare problem that crops up every couple of months but it would be a waste of effort to memorize what it is. So I started recording it. I have tons of text files filled with solutions, command usages, tips on possible problems/bugs, issues I’ve run into and what caused them, etc. I’ll even take notes on what programming practices seem to lead to issues and my thoughts about it, as well as resources I can find about it about better practices that avoid the problem. Programming, using Linux, learning Starcraft 2, learning guitar, learning a new programming language. I’ve reached a point where if I have to google something a second time, it gets written down. Hell, I think it makes more sense to turn your question around - why aren’t you keeping any notes? Human memory is abjectly terrible, and becomes worse the more time passes until it’s less a “saved image” and more of a drawing of a painting of a polaroid of an image of a memory, filtered through years of experiences and growth.
- hliyan 7y ago
  Writing notes is part of my thinking process too. Sometimes people would find me staring at a list of just 3-4 items on a piece of scrap paper, or a whiteboard with just three boxes connected with arrows (usually representing a part of a system) and ask me, "That's just 3-4 items, why do you need to write it down?" For some reason, getting it out of your head into a physical medium helps to reason about it better.
  - xwowsersx 7y ago
    100% agree as I mentioned in another comment. The act of writing or verbalizing allows you to assimilate knowledge in a way that is just completely absent otherwise. Sometimes I simply CANNOT get something clear in my mind until I write it down as clearly as I would if I were writing a README for public consumption.
Baeocystin 7y ago
I can only assume that other people get something out of it. The most I do is use Google Keep for shopping lists or the like. I have tried many times over the years to use a journal or notebook. It has never felt like anything more than a waste of time, and I gave it genuine, honest tries. It's just a lot easier for me to simply remember what I want to remember in the first place, and if I'm hashing out an idea, I can refine ideas mentally more rapidly than if I involve the written word. My father, on the other hand, was a fastidious note-taker his entire life. His books are brimming with marginalia, and he was never without a notepad within easy reach at home. His note-taking vs. my not didn't seem to make any difference in terms of the quality and nature of our ideas; we just used different means to get there. I will say that now that he is gone, it leaves me with a wistful, warm feeling to be able to look through he more favored tomes and follow along with his thoughts.
- larrywright 7y ago
  As I approach middle age, I can definitely say that my ability to “simply remember what I want to remember in the first place” has diminished. I take a lot of notes, both digital and analog, and even if I don’t refer back to them the act of recording it helps me remember.
kube-system 7y ago
There's a lot of people here stating that notes help them retain material. Maybe that works for some people, but it doesn't work for me. I find myself more likely to forget things when I write them down, especially in a meeting/lecture/discussion. Maybe it's just because my hand just doesn't go fast enough to get the information down on the page, or maybe I can't concentrate on thinking at the same time I write.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  Ah very interesting. What about in a situation where you aren't rushed? Say you're learning/studying/hacking something on your computer and came across something worth remembering or committing to memory?
markus_zhang 7y ago
As a business analyst (and looking forward to moving to Business Intelligence in a couple of years), notebooks are invaluable tools. They are more convenient than laptops and I have yet to find a note-taking application that is as flexible as handwriting. The pain point is that it's extremely difficult to find a suitable notebook because most notebooks do not have computer professional as target customers. What I need is something with a lot of tabs, with one tab takes about 10-15 pages. as that's pretty much the amount of pages I need for one small project. But again this might be too much for a notebook because I'd also need to move the tabs to any page, so the only viable solution is to make my own tab notebooks with an ordinary notebook and some stickers. I think maybe there are some hardware and software out there that allow us to write on a screen with the same flexibility and speed, but so far I didn't find one. Would be very nice if I can write quickly and comfortably in OneNote as it's so easy to tab in an application.
matwood 7y ago
For me at least, writing is the best way to organize my thoughts. I think writing requires more precision and thought over talking or just thinking. I believe this is one of the reasons Bezos makes people present ideas starting with a short written memo. When I have an idea, even if I'm going to share it with the team by talking, I will share a document first. Just the act of making those notes will help me see holes in the idea. Taking notes also adds another retention mechanism. Taking notes frees my brain from dwelling on or thinking about something that I don't want to forget. Taking notes captures me at that point in time. I have stacks of workout notebooks. Writing down my numbers every workout plus how I felt probably gave me the biggest leap forward in my workouts than anything else. I'm doing the same now with BJJ and it really does help. I do understand your point though. I used to be the same way until it dawned on me that a more general notebook was just like my stacks of workout notebooks, except for my entire life. Now I take notes, journal, etc... whenever I have thoughts rolling around in my head.
guidoism 7y ago
A good deal of what ends up in my notebooks are just random thoughts I’ve had. Ideas for stuff to make, questions I want answered about everything from some pedantic programming thing to the meaning of life. These little insights help me construct larger patterns of thoughts.

bbv-if 7y ago

Same for me. I delete old notes every now and then, just to keep them manageable. Who cares how many notes I have if I don't even remember about them.

peterlk 7y ago

My notebook is a todo list. If your email/request/etc. doesn't end up in my notebook, I will probably not do it. This is a forcing function for me for prioritization, delegation, and escalation. It's become more relevant as my work has shifted away from pure software engineering. I'm still working on which items to duplicate to work systems, but usually the point is to capture ad-hoc work that is not already in the system.

xwowsersx 7y ago
> If your email/request/etc. doesn't end up in my notebook, I will probably not do it. Haha, I like that!
vvanders 7y ago
+1000 I've tried a ton of digital workflows and systems, only thing that came close to a physical notebook was Org Mode. There's a couple reasons why I like a physical notebook: 1. It's a good log of what you've accomplished in a day. Lots of times I'll have days that didn't feel like much happened, reviewing my notes however brings into sharp relief all the things that I either dealt with or accomplished. 2. There's something incredibly satisfying about striking an item off the list with a physical motion. Hard to explain but definitely something I've noticed. 3. It's a great catch-all that's always on you. I've found an A6 size is just about perfect for this. 4. I review each item from the previous day in the morning, carry though the ones that aren't done, strike off the ones that are. Not only does it put you in the right head-space but also you start to develop a sense for things that aren't getting completed. It's a good forcing function for knowing if you need to dig into something a bit more depth than you previously thought. 5. I tend to work a notebook from both ends. Todo/items to track start from the front to the back, ideas/sketches/anything else I take pages from the back towards the front. Once they meet in the middle I'll retire the notebook and grab a new one.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

kashyapc 7y ago

Personally, a lot of notes I write down everyday are inspiring thoughts and ideas from the books I'm reading. Something about the rotary motion of pen on paper, and the way it deliberately focuses my thoughts helps me recall them better. (Also ... people tell me my handwriting doesn't exactly suck :-).) Another example: In the last two weeks, I've visited four different museums and exhibitions of an artist I'm studying (Peter Bruegel the Elder[+]; 2019 is his 450th anniversary). Based on these study visits, in a good few pages, I jotted down what I learnt so far (on language, art, culture and science), drawings and copperplate engravings I wanted to further study, Dutch proverbs I learnt, several threads to further explore, new things I wanted to learn, relating ideas from Bruegel's work to topics I've learnt from a recent book I've completed, and so forth. Do give the handwriting thing a try. [+] https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/%2Fm%2F0h6nl?hl=en https://artsandculture.google.com/entity/%2Fm%2F0h6nl?hl=en (This Google Culture project has some splendid high-resolution scans of Bruegel's paintings.)

runjake 7y ago

Ideas, notes, random thoughts, code examples, part numbers, when I worked out or went to class, lists (books,movies,grocery, etc), to-dos, diagrams, planning, sketches, etc.

burlesona 7y ago

There’s a famous quote that I think is the best answer to this question: “I’m not writing it down to remember it later, I’m writing it to remember it now.” There’s a lot of research on this, but in short, most people develop much stronger memories of the things they physically write (typing is less effective IIRC), whether they ever refer back to the notes or not. Your mileage may vary, but for most avid note takers, that’s the gist of it.

xwowsersx 7y ago
Oh I couldn't agree more, great quote. Verbalizing or writing down your thoughts absolutely crystallizes your thoughts and the act of writing is most of the benefit. But this and other articles have all these systems of tagging and organizing and other things which seems to indicate they're building out some perfect reference for later use. In my mind, the crystallization benefits of writing can be accomplished without any of the other fancy add-ons.
joegahona 7y ago
> There’s a lot of research on this, but in short, most people develop much stronger memories of the things they physically write (typing is less effective IIRC), whether they ever refer back to the notes or not. Do you remember why typing would be less effective? Is it something to do with writing being much slower, therefore you have to think about it more while recording it?
- Shank 7y ago
  > Is it something to do with writing being much slower, therefore you have to think about it more while recording it? I am not of any importance as a person, but my hypothesis is exactly this. For most of the HN audience, I expect that typing is well within the 70-100wpm range if not more, and at that rate, it becomes much faster to get something out of one's mind and into a system that it doesn't take time to "buffer" and linger. I somehow personally doubt that actually forming the words on paper is enough to create memories, but I suppose anything is possible given how humans have evolved so far.
- seventhtiger 7y ago

jshaqaw 7y ago

Legit question. I think people are just different. I need to take a ton of notes because without them I’m lost on my work and life. My memory needs a refresh tool. I work with someone who can juggle 50 complicated situations at once and keep it all in his head. If I could do that too I would.

mark_l_watson 7y ago

I take a lot of notes, switching platforms occasionally. In the past I used Evernote, Google Keep, Emacs with org mode, and then Apple notes. I tend to toss out old notes periodically. A few months ago I copied current notes back to Google Keep and that is what I am using now. I write a lot (20 books, 1300 blog articles) and I just need to write notes with new ideas, links to resources, etc. My oldest notes are probably a few years old. Deleting old stuff is easy and feels tidy.

xwowsersx 7y ago
Oh hey Mark, I know you :) You worked for us for a while at Grasswire. Hope you're well!
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  Hello Levi, life is good, thanks for asking.

analog31 7y ago

Because I'm a scatterbrain, and I'm often dealing with 100 things at once including projects, interruptions, and so forth. And I deal with a flood of disparate information. Maybe those things are all related. Of course 99% of my notes are useless, I just don't know which 99%. Sadly, my notes are as disorganized as my brain, but I'm doing what I can. I've been trying to make consistent use of Evernote. The only problem is that many of my notes include calculations. Being able to insert a Python cell in Evernote, a la Jupyter, would be the bees knees.

xwowsersx 7y ago
That would be pretty cool. There's no plugins to do that kind of thing (does EN have plugins?)?

jecxjo 7y ago

I've found that while I can keep a lot in my head, my ability to prioritize doesn't maintain the life of the thoughts. Everything is some form of Todo list but they range from tasks I need to do to ordering my purchasing habits to fit within my financial constraints to listing books, movies and TV shows I want to watch. Working an 8 to 5 plus a side business with kids means my time is very limited. The less I need to remember the better and trying to go from work mode to relax mode needs to be as easy a transition as possible. Otherwise I just stay working.

jessmartin 7y ago

I’ve been keeping a notebook with multiple entries a week since about 2005. I’ve got 30 of them, full. Which makes me feel pretty nice. But in reality, I don’t actually revisit my notebooks very often. Their main purpose is to be a canvas on which I work out my thoughts. I’m an external processor, which means I need to get my thoughts out of my head in order to flesh them out. I talk them out often (see my burgeoning YouTube channel) but a notebook is an effective and societally acceptable way for me to work them out while in a coffee shop, during a lecture, or on an airplane. I tell people often when I am taking to them: “I’m writing while you talk because it helps me listen better.”

jessmartin 7y ago

To answer your original question, I keep notes in an unlined black Moleskine “work journal” about: - talks, lectures, sermons I’m listening to - meetings I’m attending - ideas that I have - outlines of a talk or an article I am about to give or write - sketches of product designs - diagrams for explaining complex concepts visually - quotes I hear that I enjoy - product ideas or business model ideas that I have I have a “personal journal” where I write a prose account of my life and take time to process the events and think through what I’m feeling, thinking, and learning.

jplayer01 7y ago

Note taking has become such a core part of my process, no matter what it is. You’re always learning (or at least, ideally, you should be), whether it’s at work or engaged in a hobby, and I find it invaluable to record the things that I learn and in which situations I learn them, because I’ve noticed that even if I “learn” something now, I probably won’t remember in a week, much less in a month or a year. At some point I grew tired of googling for a certain command usage in Linux yet again, or the solution to a certain sort-of-rare problem that crops up every couple of months but it would be a waste of effort to memorize what it is. So I started recording it. I have tons of text files filled with solutions, command usages, tips on possible problems/bugs, issues I’ve run into and what caused them, etc. I’ll even take notes on what programming practices seem to lead to issues and my thoughts about it, as well as resources I can find about it about better practices that avoid the problem. Programming, using Linux, learning Starcraft 2, learning guitar, learning a new programming language. I’ve reached a point where if I have to google something a second time, it gets written down. Hell, I think it makes more sense to turn your question around - why aren’t you keeping any notes? Human memory is abjectly terrible, and becomes worse the more time passes until it’s less a “saved image” and more of a drawing of a painting of a polaroid of an image of a memory, filtered through years of experiences and growth.

hliyan 7y ago
Writing notes is part of my thinking process too. Sometimes people would find me staring at a list of just 3-4 items on a piece of scrap paper, or a whiteboard with just three boxes connected with arrows (usually representing a part of a system) and ask me, "That's just 3-4 items, why do you need to write it down?" For some reason, getting it out of your head into a physical medium helps to reason about it better.
- xwowsersx 7y ago
  100% agree as I mentioned in another comment. The act of writing or verbalizing allows you to assimilate knowledge in a way that is just completely absent otherwise. Sometimes I simply CANNOT get something clear in my mind until I write it down as clearly as I would if I were writing a README for public consumption.

Baeocystin 7y ago

I can only assume that other people get something out of it. The most I do is use Google Keep for shopping lists or the like. I have tried many times over the years to use a journal or notebook. It has never felt like anything more than a waste of time, and I gave it genuine, honest tries. It's just a lot easier for me to simply remember what I want to remember in the first place, and if I'm hashing out an idea, I can refine ideas mentally more rapidly than if I involve the written word. My father, on the other hand, was a fastidious note-taker his entire life. His books are brimming with marginalia, and he was never without a notepad within easy reach at home. His note-taking vs. my not didn't seem to make any difference in terms of the quality and nature of our ideas; we just used different means to get there. I will say that now that he is gone, it leaves me with a wistful, warm feeling to be able to look through he more favored tomes and follow along with his thoughts.

larrywright 7y ago
As I approach middle age, I can definitely say that my ability to “simply remember what I want to remember in the first place” has diminished. I take a lot of notes, both digital and analog, and even if I don’t refer back to them the act of recording it helps me remember.

kube-system 7y ago

There's a lot of people here stating that notes help them retain material. Maybe that works for some people, but it doesn't work for me. I find myself more likely to forget things when I write them down, especially in a meeting/lecture/discussion. Maybe it's just because my hand just doesn't go fast enough to get the information down on the page, or maybe I can't concentrate on thinking at the same time I write.

xwowsersx 7y ago
Ah very interesting. What about in a situation where you aren't rushed? Say you're learning/studying/hacking something on your computer and came across something worth remembering or committing to memory?

markus_zhang 7y ago

As a business analyst (and looking forward to moving to Business Intelligence in a couple of years), notebooks are invaluable tools. They are more convenient than laptops and I have yet to find a note-taking application that is as flexible as handwriting. The pain point is that it's extremely difficult to find a suitable notebook because most notebooks do not have computer professional as target customers. What I need is something with a lot of tabs, with one tab takes about 10-15 pages. as that's pretty much the amount of pages I need for one small project. But again this might be too much for a notebook because I'd also need to move the tabs to any page, so the only viable solution is to make my own tab notebooks with an ordinary notebook and some stickers. I think maybe there are some hardware and software out there that allow us to write on a screen with the same flexibility and speed, but so far I didn't find one. Would be very nice if I can write quickly and comfortably in OneNote as it's so easy to tab in an application.

matwood 7y ago

For me at least, writing is the best way to organize my thoughts. I think writing requires more precision and thought over talking or just thinking. I believe this is one of the reasons Bezos makes people present ideas starting with a short written memo. When I have an idea, even if I'm going to share it with the team by talking, I will share a document first. Just the act of making those notes will help me see holes in the idea. Taking notes also adds another retention mechanism. Taking notes frees my brain from dwelling on or thinking about something that I don't want to forget. Taking notes captures me at that point in time. I have stacks of workout notebooks. Writing down my numbers every workout plus how I felt probably gave me the biggest leap forward in my workouts than anything else. I'm doing the same now with BJJ and it really does help. I do understand your point though. I used to be the same way until it dawned on me that a more general notebook was just like my stacks of workout notebooks, except for my entire life. Now I take notes, journal, etc... whenever I have thoughts rolling around in my head.

guidoism 7y ago

A good deal of what ends up in my notebooks are just random thoughts I’ve had. Ideas for stuff to make, questions I want answered about everything from some pedantic programming thing to the meaning of life. These little insights help me construct larger patterns of thoughts.