14 ms·

Incremental note-taking

181 points by thesephist 5y ago

tunesmith 5y ago
The incremental note-taking approach is interesting - it's definitely a solid primitive for tracking the history of data. But it also puts an even greater burden on the surrounding features for sorting, organizing, summarizing, because now you can't just delete something that is better represented elsewhere.
discardable_dan 5y ago
No discussion of Workflowy (https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/)? It is, in my opinion, by far the best note-taking app I have used. You can search, reorganize, and freely move content as you take it, and also after. You can nest a whole campaign of D&D notes next to your favorite recipes, and it feels natural due to their focus level model. More importantly, it's absolutely dead simple, and it "gets out of the way." The author dances around the two main properties that all good note-taking methods have: 1. It's easy to add new notes 2. It's easy to look through old notes to find what you want Pencil and paper, or bound journals, do the former very easily. The latter is much harder, unless you start some indexing system (such as a bullet journal solution). This suggests searching and tagging are ideal, which digital is good for. But, and I cannot stress this enough, (1) is more important than (2). It is not impossible to find information in hand-written notes, just harder. But the exact moment it becomes hard to take new notes, the solution fails because you won't use it. And I believe Workflowy does all of this, with quick nesting, easy extension, and even quick reorganization. And you can quickly drop into "just let me write some notes," then go back and organize later (even splitting your notes up into subcomponents, if you want).
- thesephist 5y ago
  OP here. There are a lot that I left out -- Workflowy of course, but also Notational Velocity and its cousins (nvAlt, nvUltra) are another favorite of mine. I guess I mostly mentioned the ones that were top of mind / in the zeitgeist in my work. But you can extrapolate this philosophy to other apps like Workflowy for sure.
- senectus1 5y ago
  oh wow. workflowy is a amazing. I need to dump onenote for this i think
  - cehrlich 5y ago
    As a long-time paying Workflowy user, it’s great but it also has some persisting frustrating issues and I think it’s not for everyone. Two of the biggest issues: * no easy way to insert code snippets * because the desktop app is just a web view, it’s not possible to open more than one window. Which means that for some poweruser stuff you have to open multiple browser Windows of the web version.
  - mackrevinack 5y ago
    i found workflowy a few years ago, within the space of a weekend i moved everything from onenote, todoist and some evernote stuff into workflowy. i liked it that much! im using dyanlist now which is similar enough, just more options, but i can't see myself moving away from outliners ever again
- VladimirGolovin 5y ago
  Workflowy is fantastic for keeping project journals, which are my form of incremental note taking. It's great at "behaving like memory" and documenting "a story of how I arrived at the ideas". Currently, however, I'm drifting away from the journal format to a Zettelkasten, which I keep in Obsidian, a plain-text / markdown desktop app. I guess I could keep my Zettelkasten in Workflowy, but I rather like the dedicated desktop app approach for it.
- mackrevinack 5y ago
  > freely move content as you take it, and also after workflowy is great but dynalist has a leg up here with its 'move' feature. it allows you to write a note anywhere and then search for another note to move it to. its useful when I'm in a completely different context, like if I'm in my todo list section and i want to write down a idea in my programming section, i don't have to go to that location and then back
riffic 5y ago
Is any of this influenced by How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens, or the increasingly trendy personal knowledge management scene? It seems there's been a mini-renaissance surrounding some of these topics.
- sgdread 5y ago
  The system Ahrens describes is more: it has indexing system and an approach to generate new ideas. github + markdown + cross-page linking works really great with his system.
Rochus 5y ago
Interesting text. But by the end of the day I think it is quite subjective how people optimally capture their thoughts and ideas. I spent many years doing research to find an optimal tool. Netmanage Ecco worked very well for me, but had some limitations - interestingly some which also the referenced article considers important. Other people were fan of completely different tools which I couldn't get much out of (and vice versa). Finally I implemented my own tool (not for the first time) ten years ago which I'm successfully using since then (https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/ https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/). It looks certainly old fashioned to younger people, but I'm very efficient with it because I can talk to people and record/organize the discussion at the same time without moving my hands away from the keyboard (what helps me to focus on the topic and counterparts and not to be distracted by handling the tool). If I assess my approach with the "Principles of incremental notes" it looks like a good match. Point 1 is met by efficient shortcuts and capturing information in context due to outlining approach. Point 4 is met in that each outline is automatically added to a history list; of course I can organize outlines in that some outlines are used as directories, and there is also a full text search; I agree that I very often rediscover notes from the history context. Point 2 is met in that I can consolidate notes from old ones without copying, i.e. I just take the items from different outlines I want and put them together in a new outline without losing the link to the original context; much more to say. And yes, I carry a small laptop with me wherever I go; it has a good keyboard on which I can type faster than people usually talk. Doesn't work with a smartphone.
- deleted 5y ago
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greyman 5y ago
>The tragedy of Apple Notes is that it’s an idea black hole. I don't quite understand what's the problem here. You capture ideas digitally, and later, you can revisit them just the same as you revisit paper notebooks.
- tylerwince 5y ago
  Agreed. I didn't understand this part. I exclusively use Apple Notes for typed and handwritten notes. I also find the search functionality to be excellent at finding stuff I need, so I'm not sure why the author bashes Apple Notes search either.
  - thesephist 5y ago
    Fair points. But I was going less off of raw capability here and more from how I've observed these tools to be used in the wild. It was very common for most people to dump things like contact info, recommendations, random links into Apple Notes and very very rarely search for what they put in (because they forgot what they put in). So you can search — it seems like the product isn't conducive to frequent recall.
- kaichanvong 5y ago
  Joking aside about black holes, notes being created in plain markup languages and being confusing. There has to be something mentioned about microsoft notepad and their directions. You save files and you hope the desktop isnt filled up (talking the 800x600 days). I mean they also have other notes but really Apple Notes as you say is on level with other notes at the end of the day.
- raindropm 5y ago
  Revisit your note later, right...But what if you forget about those notes in the first place? :p I'm sure problem most people face with digital note is discoverability, things that digital Zettelkasten method want to solve. Once it inside your app, it rarely comes out. You forget about it completely except from some of most-used notes or unless you have a strong system in place(which most people don't) Also, what paper has and digital notes lack, is spatial connection between you and your note. You can guess or estimate where or at what position your note is in your notebook, complete with time context, while digital notes live in abstract oblivion...
amadeuspagel 5y ago
Shameless self-promotion: I've built an app - thinktype[1] - that I think fulfills three of these four principles: > Captured ideas are better than missed ones. > Ideas that can’t be recalled are worse than useless – effective search and recall form the soul of great notes. In thinktype, you write and search notes at the same time. You can start both writing and searching (which are the same) right when you open the app. > Time is essential to how we remember, and should be a first-class concept in a good note-taking system. In thinktype, you see a relative time for every note ("two weeks"). When you open the app you see all notes sorted by recency. You can also easily sort search results by recency, for example to see how your thinking on a topic developed. [1]: https://thinktype.app https://thinktype.app
- thesephist 5y ago
  The "search and entry are the same" thing reminds me of Notational Velocity / nvALT. I think it makes editing multiple things at the same time difficult, but generally feels really nice.
  - amadeuspagel 5y ago
    The way to edit multiple notes at the same time is just to have multiple tabs open. Thinktype is optimized for that workflow. It loads fast, it updates the title based on the note you currently edit and when you edit a note which is visible in another tab, thinktype updates the note there too.
toomanyducks 5y ago
I used to think about this a ton, and then I just gave up and went with an independently created clone of Christine Dodrill's method - take a notebook, write the things you want to do, write about them, and use a new page for the next day. I can confidently say that it's fine.
blakewatson 5y ago
I can’t imagine not being able to modify an existing note. What if I made a typo? That would drive me up the wall. I’m currently using Craft. Previously I used Simplenote and, before that, Notational Velocity (and nvALT). My standard for notes now is that it needs to be fast, it needs decent search, and its data needs to be portable.
Karrot_Kream 5y ago
I've been using jrnl[1] for temporal, daily-style nodes. It has some tagging and searching features too so you can search for your notes. [1]: https://jrnl.sh/en/stable/ https://jrnl.sh/en/stable/
cborenstein 5y ago
Great deep dive into core principles of a good note-taking system. There are a few things I'd add. Curious to hear your thoughts. > 1) Captured ideas are better than missed ones > 2) Adding new ideas is better than updating old ones. Updating notes in-place is inherently lossy, and I think it’s unnecessary. Yes. And, setting the intention to "add," not "update" reduces friction to capturing. When you write something in a "source of truth" - like a wiki - you've now made a commitment to keep it updated. (It's a commitment you probably don't want to keep). So, what do you do? You don't write stuff there. Instead you write it somewhere more ephemeral like Slack or a scratchpad. Setting the expectation that your notes are to be "added to," not "updated" lets you add notes with more ease. > 3) Ideas that can’t be recalled are worse than useless > Regardless of how you recall information back from your notes, a great note-taking system should make it trivial to get ideas out, as well as in. Two things I'd add here are i) It should be easy to deliver ideas to the right location (not just to recall them). This means copy-paste should be fast. Your notes should use integrations with the tools you use to make it easy to get them there in a snap. If there's a lot of friction to getting notes organized or shared, you're less likely to do it. It's also just annoying to have to highlight text, pull it apart with your mouse, open the app you need, and paste it in. ii) Most of what you need to recall is actually very simple to find. It's what you recently wrote. Most of what's most important from personal working notes is stuff that's immediately relevant. Stuff that was probably written in the past week or so. This explains why so many people use Apple Notes. It's messy but it's fast to get things down and you usually can find what you need using the recency filter. > 4) Time is essential to how we remember, and should be a first-class concept in a good note-taking system. YES YES YES. And the stuff that we need the most right now is most likely to be stuff we wrote recently. At https://bytebase.io https://bytebase.io we're building the fastest notepad for engineers. Our focus is on the notes that are most helpful to you as you do your work today.
- thesephist 5y ago
  Glad the ideas resonated with you! Two things you said stuck out to me: >And, setting the intention to "add," not "update" reduces friction to capturing. This is a subtle point I felt, but failed to capture, that you expressed very succinctly. Having the primary action be adding, rather than "keeping up to date", reduces the cognitive load of capture. As a result, we remember more with adding-based tools than replacement-based ones. >Most of what's most important from personal working notes is stuff that's immediately relevant. Stuff that was probably written in the past week or so. One thing that I've been thinking about, but haven't had a chance to form into a thesis yet, is the idea of our actions / workflows making sort of tacit modifications to our workspace that make the workspace more usable. For example, in a paper-and-pen world, if I had a note on a sticky note that I access a few times every day, it would inevitably end up somewhere very close to where I work, compared to notes I rarely access, which may be stuck inside books or on a far wall somewhere. This isn't necessarily because I brought it closer because it would make me more efficient or something -- it just ended up close by as a direct consequence of how I access the note frequently. I feel like affordances/tacit modifications of our workspaces like this are much rarer in digital tools, where the default state is not to change over time. The behavior to have most recently edited notes "nearby" for example takes explicit design in digital notes. Makes me wonder what other kinds of tacit modifications to our tools/workspaces we are leaving out in software tool design.
nfgrep 5y ago
Reading this was a “you read my mind” experience. Feels good to hear someone consider the same problems and come to similar conclusions. I’ve been daydreaming of building some append-only search-first note taking app for a while, love the insights here!
aj2 5y ago
Shameless plug: I built https://www.instanote.io https://www.instanote.io. It has threads which I personally use a lot to do incremental note taking and tracking.
- thesephist 5y ago
  "Threads" is an interesting concept on which to build an incremental note taking system. I know folks who keep a CRM by emailing themselves after conversations, on a separate email thread for each person. I also know folks who use a personal Slack workspace like this, with thread support. Maybe threads are a good building block for this kind of stuff.
baddate 5y ago
I recommand an amazing cross-platform note-taking tool: Trilium(https://github.com/zadam/trilium https://github.com/zadam/trilium) made by zadam.
CoderPuppy 5y ago
My personal note taking system is based around plain text files in Git repositories. I edit with NeoVIM and use ripgrep (and other shell tools) to recall. I started out (in 2014 or 2015) with a wiki-like style, but I switched to a time-based/append-only style (in 2019) when I realized that not everything that I wanted to write down needed its own name. I still use some remnants of the old wiki style, but I mostly use a few append-only files/folders. I have `scratch` where I'll write just about anything, it has upcoming tasks, my current place in TV shows, juggling patterns, math problems, and drafts (including this message). Many things in it are unlabeled and I often delete things from it, relying on Git to store the history. I have `viewed-topics` which lists things (HN/Reddit threads, papers, talks) I've read/watched with a summary, my thoughts and related things from the past. Last I have dated notes (files named `YYYY-MM-DD`) where I write things that happened, philosophical rambles, mental constructions, shower thoughts, etc. Often these will reference previous notes. I've been thinking about how to improve this for a while because it doesn't handle "updates" to old notes well. I currently have three ways I do it: (1) copy then change (with a reference), (2) append in place with a marker (WRITTEN YYYY-MM-DD), or (3) new note with just changes (and a reference). Each has problems, (1) makes seeing changes difficult, (2) is impure and can make it hard to find by date, and (3) makes seeing the "current" version difficult. I relate this to version control, particularly the tradeoff between (1) and (3). Git allows seeing both diffs and states fairly easily, but it doesn't track bits of text between files well enough. I've thought about it off and on but always manage to confuse myself without producing any solutions. TL;DR I greatly agree but want better updates
- stewbrew 5y ago
  Similar experience, similar conclusion but I ended up with a system around todo.txt. A note gets an todo entry and a reference to a note (in markdown). Updates sometimes get a new todo entry w/ link to the same note. Some notes are structured in a diary-like fashion.
- arael 5y ago
  I have started with a similar approach but my deal breaker were math symbols and pictures. Do you have any need to include drawings to illustrate some of the concepts? How do you manage the math symbols and graphs, if you have any?
flakiness 5y ago
Slightly offtopic: There is a thing called "Incremental Reading" [1], and I guess this article is (remotely) inspired by that. It's well known, cult-like method in note-taking / memorizing community. Worth a read, although not directly applicable to most people's life. (Some more context: [2]) [1] http://super-memory.com/help/read.htm http://super-memory.com/help/read.htm [2] https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/ https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/
- alessivs 5y ago
  (The expanded and updated version of the parent's first referenced article is [1].) I'd say on-topic. The core of incremental reading is a highly configurable mechanism of distributed exposure to your notes over time, which is an activity the article advocates for. In addition to letting the user walk the revision path through the note maze, the SuperMemo implementation walks the extra mile in suggesting an optimal schedule of revision given constraints, priority criteria, and past performance. The tools mentioned in the article, including (inc)remental, do not suggest any schedule of revision, nor explicitly tackle the problem of measurably preserving information in long-term memory (which, in SuperMemo, is the culmination of the incremental reading process). The word "reading" in incremental reading can be misleading in establishing a relationship with note-taking, but "reading", here, is far more than "consumption": elaboration/editing of notes is encouraged (even necessary) for brain-friendly formulation and memory preservation, which is also another point the article touches on (though it ultimately seems to focus more on history preservation). An elaboration-first approach to incremental reading is incremental writing[2]. [1]: https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_learning https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_learning [2]: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_writing https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_writing
  - krychu 5y ago
    This is fascinating. I’ve come across SuperMemo and use spaced repetition for self-created decks. However, incremental reading is something new to me, like a missing piece. Seems like it’s a process of turning any linear material into a deck. Have you or anyone else use it? And could comment on results / issues?
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thecodrr 5y ago
> This means our tool has to be fast, and can’t burden you with questions like “In what folder should I put this?” that aren’t relevant in the moment. This is so important. I feel most note taking apps approach note taking the wrong way: organization first, ideas later. Most of our notes are random and the only real organization they can fit into is time. I have recently launched a note taking app [0] that keeps this in focus. In my opinion, "organizing notes" is often done after "writing notes" and that is how the app is built. 1. Note taking is a fast activity - you can take notes from any where in your phone, opening the app is fast, the steps to actually writing a note are frew, the note editor is uncluttered and stays out of the way, and the app works anywhere you have a browser & an internet connection. 2. Time is a first class citizen: all notes are sorted by date created, grouped by modifiers like year, week, month & alphabetical. 3. The app doesn't force you to organize your notes i.e., there's no special distinction between organized and unorganized notes. Some apps put unorganized notes in a specific folder or tag. Not so with my app. The focus is on writing notes; organization comes later. 4. Recalling notes is currently not the most amazing thing. There is full text search, however I feel like that's not enough. Things like similarity search (based on tags) or advanced filtering are yet to be implemented. I think all these fit well into the incremental note taking system. However, that's a coincidence really. [0] https://notesnook.com/ https://notesnook.com/
- bebna 5y ago
  That is why the Samsung Note series was the only thing that I see as a possible alternative to paper. (Paper is still king in my everyday life.) Steps you need to take to write down a note with a Samsung Note: 0. Have it and screen off is fine. 1. Pull out the pen. 2. Don't press any buttons, just start writing on the display, the UI will awake when you go near the display with the pen tip. 3. Put the pen away. Note will be saved and screen will shut off.
  - thecodrr 5y ago
    Sounds convenient but not everyone has a Samsung Note device.
- jmiskovic 5y ago
krychu 5y ago
This is a good research topic but my opinion differs - The article claims that the forgetting of 90% is an underrated problem. I think it’s generally a feature that enables us to converse, read stories, and live. It’s a garbage collector. More specifically, however, it gets in the way when we learn new things. You read something important, have an aha moment, but then forget it a minute later when your short-term memory gets refilled. And so you need to run into the same important thing multiple times before it really sticks with you. - The article claims that the time element is of upmost importance. I think it’s important only in very specific cases, and generally unimportant. The passing of time also makes the value of it decay. - The article claims that new notes are better than re-working old ones. I feel the opposite is my preference. You re-work your knowledge, review, correct, and restructure it. What matters is your current understanding, not how you arrived there, or what your 0.1 version was. The art is in simplification and distillation over time, not accumulation.
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- jmiskovic 5y ago
  I agree on your first and second point. As for third, reformatting and updating some old notes is huge waste of effort for me. I don't want to treat everything as a 'live document' because it creates an implicit responsibility to keep all the ancient notes up to date. This is not realistic. I'm also more creative when starting note from scratch. Would prefer a workflow where a note can be corrected and refined over couple of days, and then enters read-only mode. The only way to correct and append to it would be to create a new note with better text, and optionally redirect any links to the new note.
yanis_t 5y ago
To me, the main point was always the need to refresh the knowledge. Ive built a note taking webapp (http://rekowl.com http://rekowl.com), that will pop up some of your older notes for review, not unsimilar to anki. I have to say the experience is amazing. The retention improves, but also there's always a chance to update a note on a particular topic with some new knowledge and put links to other related notes.
mbrock 5y ago
I use Roam a lot like this. Everything goes on the Daily Notes page. I refer back to older notes with block references. I don’t write anything on other pages, I just refer to ideas and names with the [[Link Syntax]] and then the pages are just like queries for finding those links within Daily Notes. I think this is right in line with the Roam paradigm and I expect the temporal aspect to be a focus of their product development.
arael 5y ago
I take my notes in org-mode with deft plugin and latex snippets. I have shortcuts for taking screenshots and importing them in the org document. I use blocks for gnuplot, octave, etc. It is very powerful but at the same time slow. Every time emacs generates the latex bits it takes some time to generate and open the file. There is also a little bit of overhead because it is a lot of elements and a lot of syntax to generate documents. I am learning math so my org files are full of latex code, screenshots and graphs. It is very powerful but I wonder if I am wasting my time into details. Sometimes I think I should limit myself to text only, but I am not sure I can convey textually ideas that are better represented in picture. Also, although I very much like emacs I find it very slow. So...there is this tradeoff, either very complete and detailed but slow (emacs/orgmode/deft/latex) or very basic and simple but quick (neovim/plain_txt/fzf). I still do not know what would be better.
inferense 5y ago
> We don’t remember things by modifying our past memories – we simply accumulate more, as if adding entries to a log or a journal. We search through them by traversing time, looking for links between ideas and experiences. This is a good write-up. Not the first one mentioning this, but ideas first, organisation second, that's the natural workflow. Yet most note-taking apps have it backwards. The self-promoting ones in the comment section seem no different besides offering a new color theme. The only app I used that was true to this was apple notes. But then, organisation sucked and my workflow is not just about taking notes. It's about organising my knowledge and time around it. I'm going to be no different here and promote https://acreom.com https://acreom.com which launched recently and is unique. It's simple just like apple notes, the functionality is either well designed or hidden in the backend using machine learning. It's time for a new approach. I'm happy to share access and get ridiculed if someone doesn't find it so.
foxes 5y ago
How are some of those other apps too slow? Stream of consciousness definitely doesn't need to be recorded, you can polish the thought a bit before recording something. Even then I imagine a lot of my notes are junk I won't ever look at again. It was just useful at the time to scribble stuff down to help my own thought process, doesn't all have to go on record. OP seems to suffer a bit from "note anxiety". Further, some minimal command line app would truly suck for me. What if I want to draw a diagram/sketch, express something that doesn't neatly fit into some text? Maths symbols? I don't want to type stuff. Embedding links? References? Screenshots? An ipad pro has been a boon, I use notability or apple notes and just organise by date. What this is lacking is a good query feature. The end game would be a clean infinite paper interface but still maybe something that I can go query on my desktop later. It should be able to at least parse maths symbols and convert it to sensible text. Diagrams it could stick into a picture.
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andix 5y ago
Anyone here using Joplin for note taking? I hate using proprietary apps/services for essential thins, and that's so far the best self-hosted and open source note application I found. There are a few very simple features missing (which could totally be implemented via plugins) 1. A daily note page. When opening Joplin I would like to start typing, and not create a new page first 2. A button for adding Notes on top of the stack, or below/above the current note.
- riffic 5y ago
  obsidian might be of interest but it's not open source (imo this doesn't matter because the data is plaintext and can be stored in Git).
  - andix 5y ago
    Oh wow, thanks a lot for the tip. I love that Obsidian just stores plain markdown files, which means zero vendor lock in. And just after playing around for a few minutes I see so many things they do better than Joplin. I can actually use it in parallel with another markdown editor (VS Code with Markdown Preview Enhanced or Typora)
- ytjohn 5y ago
  I'm a long-time user of Quiver and feel that it's just about perfect. It is MacOS only though, and I haven't found a suitable equivalent for Linux or Windows (work). However Joplin comes really close. If you're a fan of Joplin but are using MacOS, give Quiver a try. They also have an iOS app, and someone made Quaver for Android. https://happenapps.com/ https://happenapps.com/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.andrewt.quaver https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.andrewt.qu...
bronlund 5y ago
I think I'll stick with Obsidian for now :D
pHollda 5y ago
Something in my notes I wrote about note-taking and its apps months ago: "Google Keep is the best note-taking mobile app I've ever used. Interesting thing is, I didn't realize how good it was until I tried to switch to a better app due to Keep's lack of an obvious export feature. (You can export your Keep notes via Google Takeout.) What makes Google Keep so special? — Write icon opens to the body content, not the title. Several other apps open to the title and expect you fill that first. Horrible UX. — content body begins several pixels from the top. Beginning writing right at the top makes the content feel too far. Cc: Writer Plus, which has a 4.6 rating from 46k reviews. — focus when scrolling through app includes content body, not titles only. The boxes show parts of the content when you look through the app. Again Cc: Writer Plus and its ilk. — 'search' searches all of content body + title + links. — instant cloud sync. — lightweightness. — tagging > notebooks/folders. Easier and faster tagging a note than moving it around. — urls are active links. — view box is relative to content size. What It Lacks — Markdown, or something similar — Import/export — revision control — hierarchical structuring — sharing notes with non-keep users — linking to other notes within the app A single feature could solve all last three features it lacks: links. You could copy the link to a note and share with non-Keep users or post it in some other note to refer to that note. (Keep already shows titles and images associated with linked web URLs)."
- thecodrr 5y ago
  > What It Lacks - Markdown, or something similar - Import/export - revision control - hierarchical structuring - sharing notes with non-keep users - linking to other notes within the app Noticed this so wanted to pitch in. Notesnook [0] solves most of these. There is full markdown support, import from all the big note apps, you can share notes with anyone via Monograph [1]. Internal linking between notes is planned. Google Keep is a awesome but only for taking quick notes. You are stuck as soon as you want to write something longform. Not to mention the privacy implications. [0] https://notesnook.com https://notesnook.com [1] https://monograph.notesnook.com https://monograph.notesnook.com
nickjj 5y ago
This is very much why I keep things simple with an automated shell script[0] that creates and appends to a YYYY-MM.txt file for notes that's optimized for easy entry from the command line. I've been doing this style of note taking since 2001. There's never any reason to think about where to save it, how to save it, what tags I should use, what it's linked to, formatting and other distracting tasks. You just run `notes` and it opens this month's file in your default $EDITOR, `notes this is my 1 liner to append to the file` or `echo "something to pipe in" | notes` depending on what you want to add. It's just 1 continuous thought process of notes that's broken up by date and having it broken up by month is nice because if you're working on something that spans a few days you have everything together most of the time to recall it when you want it most. Then for recalling specific older entries it's really easy to use grep and other command line tools or just open the whole directory in your editor and casually browse your notes if you want to go down memory lane. [0]: https://github.com/nickjj/notes https://github.com/nickjj/notes
AgoRapide 5y ago
I just use Notepad in Windows, and store everything in a single document. This single document also contains my diary / log for daily activities. Plain text is enough for me.
cloverich 5y ago
Like many here, I've been working on one of these apps for years, off and on. Although I've been thinking deeply about it for some time, OP did such a great job describing the problems and conceptual space I'd have a hard time not just linking to it from my app's "why" page, should it ever exist. Really exciting to see so many others chasing this space, I honestly believe we'll see some really stellar contenders in the near future. And probably a few in parallel that suit different personality types better, which is great. I agree w/ most of OP, a few things I think should work differently. One to call out -- images. When I build prototypes without drag and drop image support, I find I quickly stop using it until I add support for them. It's just too useful on a computer to grab a screenshot of something or make a little diagram. This is especially true when I am in "thought dump" mode. I also played with append only and while its _usually_ sufficient, it is very annoying when not. I compromised by making it append by default, but easy enough to right click -> edit.

181 points by thesephist 5y ago

The incremental note-taking approach is interesting - it's definitely a solid primitive for tracking the history of data. But it also puts an even greater burden on the surrounding features for sorting, organizing, summarizing, because now you can't just delete something that is better represented elsewhere.

discardable_dan 5y ago

No discussion of Workflowy (https://workflowy.com/ https://workflowy.com/)? It is, in my opinion, by far the best note-taking app I have used. You can search, reorganize, and freely move content as you take it, and also after. You can nest a whole campaign of D&D notes next to your favorite recipes, and it feels natural due to their focus level model. More importantly, it's absolutely dead simple, and it "gets out of the way." The author dances around the two main properties that all good note-taking methods have: 1. It's easy to add new notes 2. It's easy to look through old notes to find what you want Pencil and paper, or bound journals, do the former very easily. The latter is much harder, unless you start some indexing system (such as a bullet journal solution). This suggests searching and tagging are ideal, which digital is good for. But, and I cannot stress this enough, (1) is more important than (2). It is not impossible to find information in hand-written notes, just harder. But the exact moment it becomes hard to take new notes, the solution fails because you won't use it. And I believe Workflowy does all of this, with quick nesting, easy extension, and even quick reorganization. And you can quickly drop into "just let me write some notes," then go back and organize later (even splitting your notes up into subcomponents, if you want).

thesephist 5y ago
OP here. There are a lot that I left out -- Workflowy of course, but also Notational Velocity and its cousins (nvAlt, nvUltra) are another favorite of mine. I guess I mostly mentioned the ones that were top of mind / in the zeitgeist in my work. But you can extrapolate this philosophy to other apps like Workflowy for sure.
senectus1 5y ago
oh wow. workflowy is a amazing. I need to dump onenote for this i think
- cehrlich 5y ago
  As a long-time paying Workflowy user, it’s great but it also has some persisting frustrating issues and I think it’s not for everyone. Two of the biggest issues: * no easy way to insert code snippets * because the desktop app is just a web view, it’s not possible to open more than one window. Which means that for some poweruser stuff you have to open multiple browser Windows of the web version.
- mackrevinack 5y ago
  i found workflowy a few years ago, within the space of a weekend i moved everything from onenote, todoist and some evernote stuff into workflowy. i liked it that much! im using dyanlist now which is similar enough, just more options, but i can't see myself moving away from outliners ever again
VladimirGolovin 5y ago
Workflowy is fantastic for keeping project journals, which are my form of incremental note taking. It's great at "behaving like memory" and documenting "a story of how I arrived at the ideas". Currently, however, I'm drifting away from the journal format to a Zettelkasten, which I keep in Obsidian, a plain-text / markdown desktop app. I guess I could keep my Zettelkasten in Workflowy, but I rather like the dedicated desktop app approach for it.
mackrevinack 5y ago
> freely move content as you take it, and also after workflowy is great but dynalist has a leg up here with its 'move' feature. it allows you to write a note anywhere and then search for another note to move it to. its useful when I'm in a completely different context, like if I'm in my todo list section and i want to write down a idea in my programming section, i don't have to go to that location and then back

riffic 5y ago

Is any of this influenced by How to Take Smart Notes by Sönke Ahrens, or the increasingly trendy personal knowledge management scene? It seems there's been a mini-renaissance surrounding some of these topics.

sgdread 5y ago
The system Ahrens describes is more: it has indexing system and an approach to generate new ideas. github + markdown + cross-page linking works really great with his system.

Rochus 5y ago

Interesting text. But by the end of the day I think it is quite subjective how people optimally capture their thoughts and ideas. I spent many years doing research to find an optimal tool. Netmanage Ecco worked very well for me, but had some limitations - interestingly some which also the referenced article considers important. Other people were fan of completely different tools which I couldn't get much out of (and vice versa). Finally I implemented my own tool (not for the first time) ten years ago which I'm successfully using since then (https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/ https://github.com/rochus-keller/crossline/). It looks certainly old fashioned to younger people, but I'm very efficient with it because I can talk to people and record/organize the discussion at the same time without moving my hands away from the keyboard (what helps me to focus on the topic and counterparts and not to be distracted by handling the tool). If I assess my approach with the "Principles of incremental notes" it looks like a good match. Point 1 is met by efficient shortcuts and capturing information in context due to outlining approach. Point 4 is met in that each outline is automatically added to a history list; of course I can organize outlines in that some outlines are used as directories, and there is also a full text search; I agree that I very often rediscover notes from the history context. Point 2 is met in that I can consolidate notes from old ones without copying, i.e. I just take the items from different outlines I want and put them together in a new outline without losing the link to the original context; much more to say. And yes, I carry a small laptop with me wherever I go; it has a good keyboard on which I can type faster than people usually talk. Doesn't work with a smartphone.

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greyman 5y ago

>The tragedy of Apple Notes is that it’s an idea black hole. I don't quite understand what's the problem here. You capture ideas digitally, and later, you can revisit them just the same as you revisit paper notebooks.

tylerwince 5y ago
Agreed. I didn't understand this part. I exclusively use Apple Notes for typed and handwritten notes. I also find the search functionality to be excellent at finding stuff I need, so I'm not sure why the author bashes Apple Notes search either.
- thesephist 5y ago
  Fair points. But I was going less off of raw capability here and more from how I've observed these tools to be used in the wild. It was very common for most people to dump things like contact info, recommendations, random links into Apple Notes and very very rarely search for what they put in (because they forgot what they put in). So you can search — it seems like the product isn't conducive to frequent recall.
kaichanvong 5y ago
Joking aside about black holes, notes being created in plain markup languages and being confusing. There has to be something mentioned about microsoft notepad and their directions. You save files and you hope the desktop isnt filled up (talking the 800x600 days). I mean they also have other notes but really Apple Notes as you say is on level with other notes at the end of the day.
raindropm 5y ago
Revisit your note later, right...But what if you forget about those notes in the first place? :p I'm sure problem most people face with digital note is discoverability, things that digital Zettelkasten method want to solve. Once it inside your app, it rarely comes out. You forget about it completely except from some of most-used notes or unless you have a strong system in place(which most people don't) Also, what paper has and digital notes lack, is spatial connection between you and your note. You can guess or estimate where or at what position your note is in your notebook, complete with time context, while digital notes live in abstract oblivion...

amadeuspagel 5y ago

Shameless self-promotion: I've built an app - thinktype[1] - that I think fulfills three of these four principles: > Captured ideas are better than missed ones. > Ideas that can’t be recalled are worse than useless – effective search and recall form the soul of great notes. In thinktype, you write and search notes at the same time. You can start both writing and searching (which are the same) right when you open the app. > Time is essential to how we remember, and should be a first-class concept in a good note-taking system. In thinktype, you see a relative time for every note ("two weeks"). When you open the app you see all notes sorted by recency. You can also easily sort search results by recency, for example to see how your thinking on a topic developed. [1]: https://thinktype.app https://thinktype.app

thesephist 5y ago
The "search and entry are the same" thing reminds me of Notational Velocity / nvALT. I think it makes editing multiple things at the same time difficult, but generally feels really nice.
- amadeuspagel 5y ago
  The way to edit multiple notes at the same time is just to have multiple tabs open. Thinktype is optimized for that workflow. It loads fast, it updates the title based on the note you currently edit and when you edit a note which is visible in another tab, thinktype updates the note there too.

toomanyducks 5y ago

I used to think about this a ton, and then I just gave up and went with an independently created clone of Christine Dodrill's method - take a notebook, write the things you want to do, write about them, and use a new page for the next day. I can confidently say that it's fine.

blakewatson 5y ago

I can’t imagine not being able to modify an existing note. What if I made a typo? That would drive me up the wall. I’m currently using Craft. Previously I used Simplenote and, before that, Notational Velocity (and nvALT). My standard for notes now is that it needs to be fast, it needs decent search, and its data needs to be portable.

Karrot_Kream 5y ago

I've been using jrnl[1] for temporal, daily-style nodes. It has some tagging and searching features too so you can search for your notes. [1]: https://jrnl.sh/en/stable/ https://jrnl.sh/en/stable/

cborenstein 5y ago

Great deep dive into core principles of a good note-taking system. There are a few things I'd add. Curious to hear your thoughts. > 1) Captured ideas are better than missed ones > 2) Adding new ideas is better than updating old ones. Updating notes in-place is inherently lossy, and I think it’s unnecessary. Yes. And, setting the intention to "add," not "update" reduces friction to capturing. When you write something in a "source of truth" - like a wiki - you've now made a commitment to keep it updated. (It's a commitment you probably don't want to keep). So, what do you do? You don't write stuff there. Instead you write it somewhere more ephemeral like Slack or a scratchpad. Setting the expectation that your notes are to be "added to," not "updated" lets you add notes with more ease. > 3) Ideas that can’t be recalled are worse than useless > Regardless of how you recall information back from your notes, a great note-taking system should make it trivial to get ideas out, as well as in. Two things I'd add here are i) It should be easy to deliver ideas to the right location (not just to recall them). This means copy-paste should be fast. Your notes should use integrations with the tools you use to make it easy to get them there in a snap. If there's a lot of friction to getting notes organized or shared, you're less likely to do it. It's also just annoying to have to highlight text, pull it apart with your mouse, open the app you need, and paste it in. ii) Most of what you need to recall is actually very simple to find. It's what you recently wrote. Most of what's most important from personal working notes is stuff that's immediately relevant. Stuff that was probably written in the past week or so. This explains why so many people use Apple Notes. It's messy but it's fast to get things down and you usually can find what you need using the recency filter. > 4) Time is essential to how we remember, and should be a first-class concept in a good note-taking system. YES YES YES. And the stuff that we need the most right now is most likely to be stuff we wrote recently. At https://bytebase.io https://bytebase.io we're building the fastest notepad for engineers. Our focus is on the notes that are most helpful to you as you do your work today.

thesephist 5y ago
Glad the ideas resonated with you! Two things you said stuck out to me: >And, setting the intention to "add," not "update" reduces friction to capturing. This is a subtle point I felt, but failed to capture, that you expressed very succinctly. Having the primary action be adding, rather than "keeping up to date", reduces the cognitive load of capture. As a result, we remember more with adding-based tools than replacement-based ones. >Most of what's most important from personal working notes is stuff that's immediately relevant. Stuff that was probably written in the past week or so. One thing that I've been thinking about, but haven't had a chance to form into a thesis yet, is the idea of our actions / workflows making sort of tacit modifications to our workspace that make the workspace more usable. For example, in a paper-and-pen world, if I had a note on a sticky note that I access a few times every day, it would inevitably end up somewhere very close to where I work, compared to notes I rarely access, which may be stuck inside books or on a far wall somewhere. This isn't necessarily because I brought it closer because it would make me more efficient or something -- it just ended up close by as a direct consequence of how I access the note frequently. I feel like affordances/tacit modifications of our workspaces like this are much rarer in digital tools, where the default state is not to change over time. The behavior to have most recently edited notes "nearby" for example takes explicit design in digital notes. Makes me wonder what other kinds of tacit modifications to our tools/workspaces we are leaving out in software tool design.

nfgrep 5y ago

Reading this was a “you read my mind” experience. Feels good to hear someone consider the same problems and come to similar conclusions. I’ve been daydreaming of building some append-only search-first note taking app for a while, love the insights here!

aj2 5y ago

Shameless plug: I built https://www.instanote.io https://www.instanote.io. It has threads which I personally use a lot to do incremental note taking and tracking.

thesephist 5y ago
"Threads" is an interesting concept on which to build an incremental note taking system. I know folks who keep a CRM by emailing themselves after conversations, on a separate email thread for each person. I also know folks who use a personal Slack workspace like this, with thread support. Maybe threads are a good building block for this kind of stuff.

baddate 5y ago

I recommand an amazing cross-platform note-taking tool: Trilium(https://github.com/zadam/trilium https://github.com/zadam/trilium) made by zadam.

CoderPuppy 5y ago

My personal note taking system is based around plain text files in Git repositories. I edit with NeoVIM and use ripgrep (and other shell tools) to recall. I started out (in 2014 or 2015) with a wiki-like style, but I switched to a time-based/append-only style (in 2019) when I realized that not everything that I wanted to write down needed its own name. I still use some remnants of the old wiki style, but I mostly use a few append-only files/folders. I have `scratch` where I'll write just about anything, it has upcoming tasks, my current place in TV shows, juggling patterns, math problems, and drafts (including this message). Many things in it are unlabeled and I often delete things from it, relying on Git to store the history. I have `viewed-topics` which lists things (HN/Reddit threads, papers, talks) I've read/watched with a summary, my thoughts and related things from the past. Last I have dated notes (files named `YYYY-MM-DD`) where I write things that happened, philosophical rambles, mental constructions, shower thoughts, etc. Often these will reference previous notes. I've been thinking about how to improve this for a while because it doesn't handle "updates" to old notes well. I currently have three ways I do it: (1) copy then change (with a reference), (2) append in place with a marker (WRITTEN YYYY-MM-DD), or (3) new note with just changes (and a reference). Each has problems, (1) makes seeing changes difficult, (2) is impure and can make it hard to find by date, and (3) makes seeing the "current" version difficult. I relate this to version control, particularly the tradeoff between (1) and (3). Git allows seeing both diffs and states fairly easily, but it doesn't track bits of text between files well enough. I've thought about it off and on but always manage to confuse myself without producing any solutions. TL;DR I greatly agree but want better updates

stewbrew 5y ago
Similar experience, similar conclusion but I ended up with a system around todo.txt. A note gets an todo entry and a reference to a note (in markdown). Updates sometimes get a new todo entry w/ link to the same note. Some notes are structured in a diary-like fashion.
arael 5y ago
I have started with a similar approach but my deal breaker were math symbols and pictures. Do you have any need to include drawings to illustrate some of the concepts? How do you manage the math symbols and graphs, if you have any?

flakiness 5y ago

Slightly offtopic: There is a thing called "Incremental Reading" [1], and I guess this article is (remotely) inspired by that. It's well known, cult-like method in note-taking / memorizing community. Worth a read, although not directly applicable to most people's life. (Some more context: [2]) [1] http://super-memory.com/help/read.htm http://super-memory.com/help/read.htm [2] https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/ https://www.wired.com/2008/04/ff-wozniak/

alessivs 5y ago
(The expanded and updated version of the parent's first referenced article is [1].) I'd say on-topic. The core of incremental reading is a highly configurable mechanism of distributed exposure to your notes over time, which is an activity the article advocates for. In addition to letting the user walk the revision path through the note maze, the SuperMemo implementation walks the extra mile in suggesting an optimal schedule of revision given constraints, priority criteria, and past performance. The tools mentioned in the article, including (inc)remental, do not suggest any schedule of revision, nor explicitly tackle the problem of measurably preserving information in long-term memory (which, in SuperMemo, is the culmination of the incremental reading process). The word "reading" in incremental reading can be misleading in establishing a relationship with note-taking, but "reading", here, is far more than "consumption": elaboration/editing of notes is encouraged (even necessary) for brain-friendly formulation and memory preservation, which is also another point the article touches on (though it ultimately seems to focus more on history preservation). An elaboration-first approach to incremental reading is incremental writing[2]. [1]: https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_learning https://help.supermemo.org/wiki/Incremental_learning [2]: https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_writing https://supermemo.guru/wiki/Incremental_writing
- krychu 5y ago
  This is fascinating. I’ve come across SuperMemo and use spaced repetition for self-created decks. However, incremental reading is something new to me, like a missing piece. Seems like it’s a process of turning any linear material into a deck. Have you or anyone else use it? And could comment on results / issues?

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thecodrr 5y ago

> This means our tool has to be fast, and can’t burden you with questions like “In what folder should I put this?” that aren’t relevant in the moment. This is so important. I feel most note taking apps approach note taking the wrong way: organization first, ideas later. Most of our notes are random and the only real organization they can fit into is time. I have recently launched a note taking app [0] that keeps this in focus. In my opinion, "organizing notes" is often done after "writing notes" and that is how the app is built. 1. Note taking is a fast activity - you can take notes from any where in your phone, opening the app is fast, the steps to actually writing a note are frew, the note editor is uncluttered and stays out of the way, and the app works anywhere you have a browser & an internet connection. 2. Time is a first class citizen: all notes are sorted by date created, grouped by modifiers like year, week, month & alphabetical. 3. The app doesn't force you to organize your notes i.e., there's no special distinction between organized and unorganized notes. Some apps put unorganized notes in a specific folder or tag. Not so with my app. The focus is on writing notes; organization comes later. 4. Recalling notes is currently not the most amazing thing. There is full text search, however I feel like that's not enough. Things like similarity search (based on tags) or advanced filtering are yet to be implemented. I think all these fit well into the incremental note taking system. However, that's a coincidence really. [0] https://notesnook.com/ https://notesnook.com/

bebna 5y ago
That is why the Samsung Note series was the only thing that I see as a possible alternative to paper. (Paper is still king in my everyday life.) Steps you need to take to write down a note with a Samsung Note: 0. Have it and screen off is fine. 1. Pull out the pen. 2. Don't press any buttons, just start writing on the display, the UI will awake when you go near the display with the pen tip. 3. Put the pen away. Note will be saved and screen will shut off.
- thecodrr 5y ago
  Sounds convenient but not everyone has a Samsung Note device.
jmiskovic 5y ago

krychu 5y ago

This is a good research topic but my opinion differs - The article claims that the forgetting of 90% is an underrated problem. I think it’s generally a feature that enables us to converse, read stories, and live. It’s a garbage collector. More specifically, however, it gets in the way when we learn new things. You read something important, have an aha moment, but then forget it a minute later when your short-term memory gets refilled. And so you need to run into the same important thing multiple times before it really sticks with you. - The article claims that the time element is of upmost importance. I think it’s important only in very specific cases, and generally unimportant. The passing of time also makes the value of it decay. - The article claims that new notes are better than re-working old ones. I feel the opposite is my preference. You re-work your knowledge, review, correct, and restructure it. What matters is your current understanding, not how you arrived there, or what your 0.1 version was. The art is in simplification and distillation over time, not accumulation.

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jmiskovic 5y ago
I agree on your first and second point. As for third, reformatting and updating some old notes is huge waste of effort for me. I don't want to treat everything as a 'live document' because it creates an implicit responsibility to keep all the ancient notes up to date. This is not realistic. I'm also more creative when starting note from scratch. Would prefer a workflow where a note can be corrected and refined over couple of days, and then enters read-only mode. The only way to correct and append to it would be to create a new note with better text, and optionally redirect any links to the new note.

yanis_t 5y ago

To me, the main point was always the need to refresh the knowledge. Ive built a note taking webapp (http://rekowl.com http://rekowl.com), that will pop up some of your older notes for review, not unsimilar to anki. I have to say the experience is amazing. The retention improves, but also there's always a chance to update a note on a particular topic with some new knowledge and put links to other related notes.

mbrock 5y ago

I use Roam a lot like this. Everything goes on the Daily Notes page. I refer back to older notes with block references. I don’t write anything on other pages, I just refer to ideas and names with the [[Link Syntax]] and then the pages are just like queries for finding those links within Daily Notes. I think this is right in line with the Roam paradigm and I expect the temporal aspect to be a focus of their product development.

arael 5y ago

I take my notes in org-mode with deft plugin and latex snippets. I have shortcuts for taking screenshots and importing them in the org document. I use blocks for gnuplot, octave, etc. It is very powerful but at the same time slow. Every time emacs generates the latex bits it takes some time to generate and open the file. There is also a little bit of overhead because it is a lot of elements and a lot of syntax to generate documents. I am learning math so my org files are full of latex code, screenshots and graphs. It is very powerful but I wonder if I am wasting my time into details. Sometimes I think I should limit myself to text only, but I am not sure I can convey textually ideas that are better represented in picture. Also, although I very much like emacs I find it very slow. So...there is this tradeoff, either very complete and detailed but slow (emacs/orgmode/deft/latex) or very basic and simple but quick (neovim/plain_txt/fzf). I still do not know what would be better.

inferense 5y ago

> We don’t remember things by modifying our past memories – we simply accumulate more, as if adding entries to a log or a journal. We search through them by traversing time, looking for links between ideas and experiences. This is a good write-up. Not the first one mentioning this, but ideas first, organisation second, that's the natural workflow. Yet most note-taking apps have it backwards. The self-promoting ones in the comment section seem no different besides offering a new color theme. The only app I used that was true to this was apple notes. But then, organisation sucked and my workflow is not just about taking notes. It's about organising my knowledge and time around it. I'm going to be no different here and promote https://acreom.com https://acreom.com which launched recently and is unique. It's simple just like apple notes, the functionality is either well designed or hidden in the backend using machine learning. It's time for a new approach. I'm happy to share access and get ridiculed if someone doesn't find it so.

foxes 5y ago

How are some of those other apps too slow? Stream of consciousness definitely doesn't need to be recorded, you can polish the thought a bit before recording something. Even then I imagine a lot of my notes are junk I won't ever look at again. It was just useful at the time to scribble stuff down to help my own thought process, doesn't all have to go on record. OP seems to suffer a bit from "note anxiety". Further, some minimal command line app would truly suck for me. What if I want to draw a diagram/sketch, express something that doesn't neatly fit into some text? Maths symbols? I don't want to type stuff. Embedding links? References? Screenshots? An ipad pro has been a boon, I use notability or apple notes and just organise by date. What this is lacking is a good query feature. The end game would be a clean infinite paper interface but still maybe something that I can go query on my desktop later. It should be able to at least parse maths symbols and convert it to sensible text. Diagrams it could stick into a picture.

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andix 5y ago

Anyone here using Joplin for note taking? I hate using proprietary apps/services for essential thins, and that's so far the best self-hosted and open source note application I found. There are a few very simple features missing (which could totally be implemented via plugins) 1. A daily note page. When opening Joplin I would like to start typing, and not create a new page first 2. A button for adding Notes on top of the stack, or below/above the current note.

riffic 5y ago
obsidian might be of interest but it's not open source (imo this doesn't matter because the data is plaintext and can be stored in Git).
- andix 5y ago
  Oh wow, thanks a lot for the tip. I love that Obsidian just stores plain markdown files, which means zero vendor lock in. And just after playing around for a few minutes I see so many things they do better than Joplin. I can actually use it in parallel with another markdown editor (VS Code with Markdown Preview Enhanced or Typora)
ytjohn 5y ago
I'm a long-time user of Quiver and feel that it's just about perfect. It is MacOS only though, and I haven't found a suitable equivalent for Linux or Windows (work). However Joplin comes really close. If you're a fan of Joplin but are using MacOS, give Quiver a try. They also have an iOS app, and someone made Quaver for Android. https://happenapps.com/ https://happenapps.com/ https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.andrewt.quaver https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=net.andrewt.qu...

bronlund 5y ago

I think I'll stick with Obsidian for now :D

pHollda 5y ago

Something in my notes I wrote about note-taking and its apps months ago: "Google Keep is the best note-taking mobile app I've ever used. Interesting thing is, I didn't realize how good it was until I tried to switch to a better app due to Keep's lack of an obvious export feature. (You can export your Keep notes via Google Takeout.) What makes Google Keep so special? — Write icon opens to the body content, not the title. Several other apps open to the title and expect you fill that first. Horrible UX. — content body begins several pixels from the top. Beginning writing right at the top makes the content feel too far. Cc: Writer Plus, which has a 4.6 rating from 46k reviews. — focus when scrolling through app includes content body, not titles only. The boxes show parts of the content when you look through the app. Again Cc: Writer Plus and its ilk. — 'search' searches all of content body + title + links. — instant cloud sync. — lightweightness. — tagging > notebooks/folders. Easier and faster tagging a note than moving it around. — urls are active links. — view box is relative to content size. What It Lacks — Markdown, or something similar — Import/export — revision control — hierarchical structuring — sharing notes with non-keep users — linking to other notes within the app A single feature could solve all last three features it lacks: links. You could copy the link to a note and share with non-Keep users or post it in some other note to refer to that note. (Keep already shows titles and images associated with linked web URLs)."

thecodrr 5y ago
> What It Lacks - Markdown, or something similar - Import/export - revision control - hierarchical structuring - sharing notes with non-keep users - linking to other notes within the app Noticed this so wanted to pitch in. Notesnook [0] solves most of these. There is full markdown support, import from all the big note apps, you can share notes with anyone via Monograph [1]. Internal linking between notes is planned. Google Keep is a awesome but only for taking quick notes. You are stuck as soon as you want to write something longform. Not to mention the privacy implications. [0] https://notesnook.com https://notesnook.com [1] https://monograph.notesnook.com https://monograph.notesnook.com

nickjj 5y ago

This is very much why I keep things simple with an automated shell script[0] that creates and appends to a YYYY-MM.txt file for notes that's optimized for easy entry from the command line. I've been doing this style of note taking since 2001. There's never any reason to think about where to save it, how to save it, what tags I should use, what it's linked to, formatting and other distracting tasks. You just run `notes` and it opens this month's file in your default $EDITOR, `notes this is my 1 liner to append to the file` or `echo "something to pipe in" | notes` depending on what you want to add. It's just 1 continuous thought process of notes that's broken up by date and having it broken up by month is nice because if you're working on something that spans a few days you have everything together most of the time to recall it when you want it most. Then for recalling specific older entries it's really easy to use grep and other command line tools or just open the whole directory in your editor and casually browse your notes if you want to go down memory lane. [0]: https://github.com/nickjj/notes https://github.com/nickjj/notes

AgoRapide 5y ago

I just use Notepad in Windows, and store everything in a single document. This single document also contains my diary / log for daily activities. Plain text is enough for me.

cloverich 5y ago

Like many here, I've been working on one of these apps for years, off and on. Although I've been thinking deeply about it for some time, OP did such a great job describing the problems and conceptual space I'd have a hard time not just linking to it from my app's "why" page, should it ever exist. Really exciting to see so many others chasing this space, I honestly believe we'll see some really stellar contenders in the near future. And probably a few in parallel that suit different personality types better, which is great. I agree w/ most of OP, a few things I think should work differently. One to call out -- images. When I build prototypes without drag and drop image support, I find I quickly stop using it until I add support for them. It's just too useful on a computer to grab a screenshot of something or make a little diagram. This is especially true when I am in "thought dump" mode. I also played with append only and while its _usually_ sufficient, it is very annoying when not. I compromised by making it append by default, but easy enough to right click -> edit.