I use Obsidian for my notes; the only automation is some light quality-of-life stuff available in its core plugins. For example, I have a separate tag for each

I use Obsidian for my notes; the only automation is some light quality-of-life stuff available in its core plugins. For example, I have a separate tag for each stage of the process, so I can work a step at a time instead of a note at a time. Also, my ad-hoc notes stick around as a collection of links to to evergreen notes that were extracted from them without extra effort on my part. During the day, I'll write down anything that I think's worth remembering. Usually that's how something I've read or done might affect my work in the future, but sometimes it'd just an interesting relationship I'd not noticed before or something random that catches my fancy. This either goes in today's daily note, or a reading/bibliography note if it came from a book or article I was studying. Maintenance is my first task every morning: 1. Do all of my outstanding Anki reviews 2. Extract yesterday's ad-hoc notes into evergreen notes, and file them appropriately. This is the most time-consuming part of the process, because I need to determine which of my existing notes are related and include cross-references. The filename of the new note is constructed to place it adjacent to whatever preexisting note is most closely related. I may also need to write some support notes here, if the new note relates to something I know but hasn't gotten a note yet. 3. Copy the text of all the new notes into Anki, and black out some key words in the second half of the card. I have Anki set to an aggressive schedule, so that I don't get bored of seeing any of the cards: 2,7, and 30 day intervals for learning, and then a 4x growth rate after that. The cards also include the ID, so that I can find them again in my notes. I don't usually bother with a lot of detail in my notes; for that I can always go back and look up a proper reference. Instead, I focus on what problems different approaches are good at solving, how different things fit together, and anything else that might help me pick which technique to reach for in any given situation.