5 ms·

A related question for note-takers: what would you estimate as your rate of reference to prior notes? For my own part that rate is so dismally low that right no

by pdinny 5y ago

A related question for note-takers: what would you estimate as your rate of reference to prior notes? For my own part that rate is so dismally low that right now I get more value out of making notes than retrieving and reading notes. I'm reminded of a response to another thread on HN a few weeks back about organizing physical documents. Many commenters had very sophisticated processes with scanning, OCR, indexing etc but there was one commenter who organized their documents as a stack of paper, divided by year. The use case for documents might be a bit different because the number of times you're likely to need a document is probably quite different the number of times you will benefit from reading a note. A more concise reframing of the above: for those who have adopted a disciplined approach to note taking (geared towards retrieval and linking) do you get enough value from the disciplined approach to encourage us unstructured notes-everywhere to invest the effort of adopting a better process?

MattGaiser 5y ago
Within a week, I frequently refer to notes. It drops off heavily after that, as I start forgetting that I had notes on that topic. Maybe I need notes of the notes I took.
- swah 5y ago
  They are known as MOCs... https://www.linkingyourthinking.com/ https://www.linkingyourthinking.com/
nicbou 5y ago
Many of my notes are write only. I might refer to them here or there, but it's mostly about laying my thoughts out. However, I love flipping through old notebooks. They're a personal diary made of schematics, sketches, lists and recipes. I'm now a bit more conscious about dating each page, because I combine those with other data to form a personal timeline [0]. None of this is about productivity. It's closer to an artistic hobby like calligraphy. [0] https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/timeline https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/timeline
- pdinny 5y ago
  Timeline looks really great! I'm a fan of this approach to users owning their data: it enables things that are interesting and valuable for the user, rather than making it something that necessarily requires an audience. I hadn't previously considered incorporating notes into a personal archive as I often see them as being of a fundamentally different class to journaling, but I'm starting to reconsider my biases in that regard.
dageshi 5y ago
There's two types of notes for me. One is stored procedures for things that are tedious but I know I will need to do again, a lot of programming snippets might fall into this one but procedures of any kind. Second is writing my current thought processes as I'm working on stuff, once a task is complete these are rarely if ever references again but they're very handy for if you're working on something, get interrupted and need to get back on task. I use Roam Research for both. I think for people who heavily link and organise notes by subject, they're more about getting back within a specific context area and getting the brain firing on that context area than necessarily finding specific answers.
unfocussed_mike 5y ago
> what would you estimate as your rate of reference to prior notes? For arbitrary links and bookmarks, probably quite low, so I rarely bother with that sort of noting (never managed to make pinboard an essential part of my life). If I am specifically researching something deeply, like a personal project, I am much more likely to go back to a link I've noted, because I've usually gone to the trouble to describe that link in a searchable way. For work-related notes, close to always. I _start_ by reopening the note relevant to the job (Apple Notes search is so fast this is easy), and I modify/append to it as I go along; those notes are "workbooks" effectively and they are essential to my process now.
Joeri 5y ago
My memory is not good enough to go by what I can recall, so by necessity I live in my notes. For me the notes are my long term memory and all I have to actually remember is what I’m currently working on. They are organized for easy retrieval (hierarchical, topical and searchable), and I do regular refactoring on my notes to improve retrievability and archive outdated material.
camtarn 5y ago
Like another commenter mentioned, I have different types of notes: procedural (how did I fix X), thought processing (I want to design Y, what's the best way to do it), and non-code documentation (this setup works this way because person Z requested it). I regularly refer back to procedural notes (I'm a contractor with multiple projects on infrequent maintenance for years), almost never refer to thought processing notes, and rarely refer to non-code documentation. However, while my rate of reference to procedural or documentation notes is fairly low, the value I get from that reference tends to be very high - for instance, "how did I solve that problem with the database that took me an entire day to resolve, because online docs/examples were sparse?" or "my client is asking why feature A was implemented in such a silly way; it's because they insisted it be that way, five years ago". For me I think the trade-off of regular note-taking is worth it. I suppose I could delete my thought processing notes after I've used them, but they're already archived and don't clutter my note space, so there's not that much point.
D13Fd 5y ago
My rate of reference is pretty high. I have a job that involves a lot of research projects. My process often goes like this: 1. Someone calls me with a project. I take notes about what they need. 2. I look at my notes to figure out what to research. ' 3. As I do the research, I take notes about the results 4. I look at my notes to draft an e-mail or memo about the research 5. I look back at my notes from the call to make sure I got what they wanted Another task I often have is having a call with someone (sometimes a very long call) and then writing an e-mail about it: 1. Take notes on the call 2. Draft e-mail based on notes 3. Review notes to make sure the e-mail encompasses everything I definitely refer to old notes less. But here are some examples where I constantly refer back: 1. I have a note with the terminal command to strip Mac OS system files from .zip files. I refer back to that a lot. 2. I have notes about my wife's favorite takeout orders that I check before I put the orders in. 3. I have a long note called "Python Dev Stuff" that describes how to set up my Python environment, that I look at whenever I get a new laptop or do a major OS update. 4. I have a "blog post ideas" note where I write down ideas for blog posts. When I want to do a post and can't think of what to write about, I look at that note.
EleanorKonik 5y ago
I got through all of school, including two professional degrees, organizing all of my notes chronologically. It worked really well for me — right up until I tried to write a novel, hah. I think the "best process" is driven by goals — my husband gets by just using notepad and plaintext files, because he and I have very different goals with our notes. He's a software developer, and I'm a nerdy scifi author. As long as his code is documented clearly, he mostly doesn't need a system more complicated than some .txt files and browser history search. Me? I've got way too much going on, and I need to be able to follow reference chains so I can figure out what the heck I was thinking six months ago when I wrote the thing I'm trying to publish.

by pdinny 5y ago

MattGaiser 5y ago

Within a week, I frequently refer to notes. It drops off heavily after that, as I start forgetting that I had notes on that topic. Maybe I need notes of the notes I took.

swah 5y ago
They are known as MOCs... https://www.linkingyourthinking.com/ https://www.linkingyourthinking.com/

nicbou 5y ago

Many of my notes are write only. I might refer to them here or there, but it's mostly about laying my thoughts out. However, I love flipping through old notebooks. They're a personal diary made of schematics, sketches, lists and recipes. I'm now a bit more conscious about dating each page, because I combine those with other data to form a personal timeline [0]. None of this is about productivity. It's closer to an artistic hobby like calligraphy. [0] https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/timeline https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/timeline

pdinny 5y ago
Timeline looks really great! I'm a fan of this approach to users owning their data: it enables things that are interesting and valuable for the user, rather than making it something that necessarily requires an audience. I hadn't previously considered incorporating notes into a personal archive as I often see them as being of a fundamentally different class to journaling, but I'm starting to reconsider my biases in that regard.

dageshi 5y ago

There's two types of notes for me. One is stored procedures for things that are tedious but I know I will need to do again, a lot of programming snippets might fall into this one but procedures of any kind. Second is writing my current thought processes as I'm working on stuff, once a task is complete these are rarely if ever references again but they're very handy for if you're working on something, get interrupted and need to get back on task. I use Roam Research for both. I think for people who heavily link and organise notes by subject, they're more about getting back within a specific context area and getting the brain firing on that context area than necessarily finding specific answers.

unfocussed_mike 5y ago

> what would you estimate as your rate of reference to prior notes? For arbitrary links and bookmarks, probably quite low, so I rarely bother with that sort of noting (never managed to make pinboard an essential part of my life). If I am specifically researching something deeply, like a personal project, I am much more likely to go back to a link I've noted, because I've usually gone to the trouble to describe that link in a searchable way. For work-related notes, close to always. I _start_ by reopening the note relevant to the job (Apple Notes search is so fast this is easy), and I modify/append to it as I go along; those notes are "workbooks" effectively and they are essential to my process now.

Joeri 5y ago

My memory is not good enough to go by what I can recall, so by necessity I live in my notes. For me the notes are my long term memory and all I have to actually remember is what I’m currently working on. They are organized for easy retrieval (hierarchical, topical and searchable), and I do regular refactoring on my notes to improve retrievability and archive outdated material.

camtarn 5y ago

Like another commenter mentioned, I have different types of notes: procedural (how did I fix X), thought processing (I want to design Y, what's the best way to do it), and non-code documentation (this setup works this way because person Z requested it). I regularly refer back to procedural notes (I'm a contractor with multiple projects on infrequent maintenance for years), almost never refer to thought processing notes, and rarely refer to non-code documentation. However, while my rate of reference to procedural or documentation notes is fairly low, the value I get from that reference tends to be very high - for instance, "how did I solve that problem with the database that took me an entire day to resolve, because online docs/examples were sparse?" or "my client is asking why feature A was implemented in such a silly way; it's because they insisted it be that way, five years ago". For me I think the trade-off of regular note-taking is worth it. I suppose I could delete my thought processing notes after I've used them, but they're already archived and don't clutter my note space, so there's not that much point.

D13Fd 5y ago

My rate of reference is pretty high. I have a job that involves a lot of research projects. My process often goes like this: 1. Someone calls me with a project. I take notes about what they need. 2. I look at my notes to figure out what to research. ' 3. As I do the research, I take notes about the results 4. I look at my notes to draft an e-mail or memo about the research 5. I look back at my notes from the call to make sure I got what they wanted Another task I often have is having a call with someone (sometimes a very long call) and then writing an e-mail about it: 1. Take notes on the call 2. Draft e-mail based on notes 3. Review notes to make sure the e-mail encompasses everything I definitely refer to old notes less. But here are some examples where I constantly refer back: 1. I have a note with the terminal command to strip Mac OS system files from .zip files. I refer back to that a lot. 2. I have notes about my wife's favorite takeout orders that I check before I put the orders in. 3. I have a long note called "Python Dev Stuff" that describes how to set up my Python environment, that I look at whenever I get a new laptop or do a major OS update. 4. I have a "blog post ideas" note where I write down ideas for blog posts. When I want to do a post and can't think of what to write about, I look at that note.

EleanorKonik 5y ago

I got through all of school, including two professional degrees, organizing all of my notes chronologically. It worked really well for me — right up until I tried to write a novel, hah. I think the "best process" is driven by goals — my husband gets by just using notepad and plaintext files, because he and I have very different goals with our notes. He's a software developer, and I'm a nerdy scifi author. As long as his code is documented clearly, he mostly doesn't need a system more complicated than some .txt files and browser history search. Me? I've got way too much going on, and I need to be able to follow reference chains so I can figure out what the heck I was thinking six months ago when I wrote the thing I'm trying to publish.