7 ms·

I can attest to this and took all of my notes on paper in college. However, once I started a real job I realized that this strategy doesn't scale to all situati

I can attest to this and took all of my notes on paper in college. However, once I started a real job I realized that this strategy doesn't scale to all situations. In college, I needed to be able to recall all of the information I had ingested: it was low-write, high-read. In the workplace, there's much more information, but I'm unlikely to need most of it: it's high-write, low-read. I need to be able to reference the information, but not necessarily recall it. Taking paper notes became too much of a burden and I moved to a wiki of markdown notes.

greyhair 4y ago
I found just the opposite in college. For me it was high write, low read, concerning my own notes. The only value to taking notes for me was the active nature of writing helped pin the information in my head. Other than assignment and test dates, which were just bullet lists, I rarely looked back at my notes. I think that was the sole value of doing homework assignments and term papers. Going through the act of working out a problem, or researching then writing about a topic, is what reinforced the learning for me.
_-_-__-_-_- 4y ago
What are you using the host your wiki and write markdown? I'm looking at self-hosting a similar system.
- CodeIsMyFetish 4y ago
  Not OP, but I use an app called Obsidian for this. It's my favorite way to take notes and make connections between topics.
  - psychomugs 4y ago
    I also use Obsidian, and paired with a handwriting keyboard for Apple Pencil support (e.g. mazec; Apple's built-in scribble feature is too finnicky), it's been my Goldilocks note-taking method for the past few months.
- mhint88 4y ago
  It might not be exactly what you need, but I use Zim for this purpose. [https://zim-wiki.org/ https://zim-wiki.org/]
- inferense 4y ago
  not OP (and biased) but I'm building https://acreom.com https://acreom.com to do this and to support my own dev workflow. Made it into a product after realising other devs like it too.
- headbee 4y ago
  I don't host it, per-se: I use VimWiki, and occasionally Obsidian for the pretty graph. VimWiki even has a static site generator, but I use Pandoc for that. For search I use FZF and ripgrep.
- CHSbeachbum420 4y ago
  OneNote gets the job done
mywacaday 4y ago
Thats a great way to put it, "high-write, low-read". I take a lot of notes and screenshots on calls, I may never need to go back and look but when I do look its always there. I use Onenote and the search is excellent in conjunction to the structure and tags I have build up around it. What works great is I have setup autohotkey to take a screenshot in the same area as the previous screenshot and insert it on my onenote page in context by hitting the F12 key. For me being visual with my notes is better than writing them.
- pbhjpbhj 4y ago
  As a more vanilla alternative... Ctrl+win+s screenshots to clipboard in Win10. Ctrl+shift+z screenshots to OneNote (though an update overwrote it at one point, not sure if it's fixed in general). You can use OneNote settings to determine how that capture is used, eg placing in the current page (I have it set to make a new page, but I almost exclusively capture to clipboard).
ihaveabeardnow 4y ago
this. I write when I'm reviewing training material from a paid course and going to be testing for a cert, but I rarely write as part of my day-to-day work.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
emodendroket 4y ago
I keep a text document for things like code snippets but I still find paper notes helpful when I have meetings or just to keep track of what I’m trying to do as I work.
qwertox 4y ago
I used Confluence which is excellent for inputting data, but the search functionality is abysmal.
- Tomte 4y ago
  It has search functionality? At work we have a search field, sure, but I've never encountered a successful search in our Confluence. It's all browser bookmarks and "can someone tell me where x is?" in Teams channels. Our Confluence guru still swears to God that Confluence used to have search problems, but now it's perfect. Fortunately, Atlassian has made us move with their stupid "you can't host on premises, would you like to pay tenfold" move. Jokes on us, we're moving to Sharepoint…
hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago
It's come to the point almost the opposite is the case: I actively try not to remember most information but try to make sure it's registered somewhere as plain text so that I can find it easily should I need it. People are surprised I can answer them so quickly when they ask about some trifle from last year - but it's only because I managed to register it (e.g. by refusing to proceed on the basis of an oral request and asking them to write an email instead). Moreover, I choose what to remember very carefully as it's something that also influences my personality.
- ycombinator_acc 4y ago
  How does what you remember influence your personality?
vasco 4y ago
I still do it and it has worked for me from being an individual contributor, to leading a team, to leading a part of the org that has a tree of ~50 people across multiple contexts. The way I see it, if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I note down almost everything during meetings, 1-1s, agile rituals, etc. Very rarely I move things to a computer, most things I just need to write down even if I never read them again, others I re-read, others are to-dos. No organization, just a flow of braindump, and lots of little drawings everywhere and arrows connecting things and so on. If you'd read it you'd not understand anything, both because the handwriting is atrocious and because there's practically no structure.
- sevensor 4y ago
  Likewise. Same reasons, same process, and I've found it just as helpful in middle management as I did when I was an individual contributor. There's an additional benefit. This is the reason I started doing it in the first place: many years ago, as a junior engineer, I was obliged to spend long hours in daily meetings. I found that the only way I could avoid actually falling asleep was to take detailed, copious notes. It was only afterwards that I discovered I was retaining information better and forming a big-picture view of the work. Also, what took me another decade to discover, is that nice stationery -- which for me means a fountain pen and a good notebook -- can make this a positive pleasure.
- randomdata 4y ago
  > if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I wonder that myself. Earlier in my career, when the internet wasn't so great, we had to rely on textual communication for everything. This left the ideal 'paper' trail to look back on for reference. Everything well communicated, everything perfectly retained. It was unbelievably efficient. Now that the technology has improved, easily transmitting voice and even video, there is a curious push in that direction. Communication quality has declined dramatically as you now have to suffer through a bumbling stream of consciousness instead of words someone put effort into writing, which adds significantly more human time involvement to get a point across, and once spoken the information is automatically lost save even more human best effort to retain what can and never perfectly so. I likely shiny newfangled tech as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place. Why we stopped using what worked best boggles the mind.
ryyr 4y ago
very true, in my experience it's been hard to keep up by hand and much faster to type, but like handwritten notes i rarely reference meeting or project notes so i put little effort into organization. i settled on using onenote and different tabs for different teams
jimmaswell 4y ago
Notes were a kind of write only memory for me - I rarely referred to them, preferring the textbook or other resources, but I still wrote them because it's supposed to help retention.
- 998244353 4y ago
  I'm the same way. I discovered that taking notes was a fairly effective way to make sure I actually thoroughly read the material and that I don't just lapse into skimming the book. Not sure how important doing them in handwriting was, but it felt more useful.
dchuk 4y ago
I came to the same conclusion, however, here’s how I handle that: I carry around a folder with just a bunch of printer paper, and some index cards in it. I write my todo lists on an index card because it’s intentionally small so I can’t overload it, and it feels good to cross out the last thing and just throw it away. I take notes through the day on the printer paper, and then I review them frequently and type up what I want to preserve in Notion (recently switched from WorkFlowy, as much as I love outlines, I need free form writing options too). Anything I don’t type up, I just throw away. Benefits: Super cheap Intentionally not opinionated, just pen and paper. If I need to think about a hard problem, I can lay out all of my notes on a flat surface. I think spatially, this is so valuable and not possible with notebooks or even software (miro kinda) I started this about a month ago and it’s going great so far. And this is coming from w notebook and note taking software snob.
- CSSer 4y ago
  Have you considered buying loose leaf notebook paper instead of printer paper? You get lines and I’d imagine it’s even cheaper.
  - koolba 4y ago
    Indeed. It’s pretty hard to be $.25 store brand spiral notepads for cost per page.
    - syntheweave 4y ago
      Cheap filler note paper is a source of difficulty when writing(ball pens will skip, dark inks will bleed, scratchy pencils and nibs will tear). The index cards work, but I would also go for the slightly more expensive paper brands one can find on JetPens. If you're going for a stationary experience, investing a little more in it goes a long way.
      - Wistar 4y ago
        I like use a 5.5 x 8.5 or 9 x 12 Strathmore 300 Sketch tablet for notes. They are sturdy and the paper is quite good. They are a pain if you want to scan/copy them as the paper is either smaller or larger than standard letter size. https://www.strathmoreartist.com/draw-sketch/id-300-series-sketch.html https://www.strathmoreartist.com/draw-sketch/id-300-series-s...
CrypticShift 4y ago
Yes! these read/write, and reference/recall ratios are good measures of how we should do things. the article case is only valid for a certain range. Maybe, for you, a system like mem.ai [1] is another step forward beyond the burdens of markdown wiki (for certain high-write/low-read use cases at least) 1- You "write" new information without each time asking yourself: where to put a new page in the hierarchy? what to name it? maybe I should include this into an existing page? which one? No. You just write "memos" (and maybe tag them). 2- Then, you are able to "reference" them without even recalling the exact keyword you used: You just ask a natural language question. [1] https://get.mem.ai/mem-x https://get.mem.ai/mem-x
iquerno 4y ago
a notebook is a great column oriented database for when you cannot bring technology with you. I don't think there is any useful scenario for one otherwise

greyhair 4y ago

I found just the opposite in college. For me it was high write, low read, concerning my own notes. The only value to taking notes for me was the active nature of writing helped pin the information in my head. Other than assignment and test dates, which were just bullet lists, I rarely looked back at my notes. I think that was the sole value of doing homework assignments and term papers. Going through the act of working out a problem, or researching then writing about a topic, is what reinforced the learning for me.

_-_-__-_-_- 4y ago

What are you using the host your wiki and write markdown? I'm looking at self-hosting a similar system.

CodeIsMyFetish 4y ago
Not OP, but I use an app called Obsidian for this. It's my favorite way to take notes and make connections between topics.
- psychomugs 4y ago
  I also use Obsidian, and paired with a handwriting keyboard for Apple Pencil support (e.g. mazec; Apple's built-in scribble feature is too finnicky), it's been my Goldilocks note-taking method for the past few months.
mhint88 4y ago
It might not be exactly what you need, but I use Zim for this purpose. [https://zim-wiki.org/ https://zim-wiki.org/]
inferense 4y ago
not OP (and biased) but I'm building https://acreom.com https://acreom.com to do this and to support my own dev workflow. Made it into a product after realising other devs like it too.
headbee 4y ago
I don't host it, per-se: I use VimWiki, and occasionally Obsidian for the pretty graph. VimWiki even has a static site generator, but I use Pandoc for that. For search I use FZF and ripgrep.
CHSbeachbum420 4y ago
OneNote gets the job done

mywacaday 4y ago

Thats a great way to put it, "high-write, low-read". I take a lot of notes and screenshots on calls, I may never need to go back and look but when I do look its always there. I use Onenote and the search is excellent in conjunction to the structure and tags I have build up around it. What works great is I have setup autohotkey to take a screenshot in the same area as the previous screenshot and insert it on my onenote page in context by hitting the F12 key. For me being visual with my notes is better than writing them.

pbhjpbhj 4y ago
As a more vanilla alternative... Ctrl+win+s screenshots to clipboard in Win10. Ctrl+shift+z screenshots to OneNote (though an update overwrote it at one point, not sure if it's fixed in general). You can use OneNote settings to determine how that capture is used, eg placing in the current page (I have it set to make a new page, but I almost exclusively capture to clipboard).

ihaveabeardnow 4y ago

this. I write when I'm reviewing training material from a paid course and going to be testing for a cert, but I rarely write as part of my day-to-day work.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

emodendroket 4y ago

I keep a text document for things like code snippets but I still find paper notes helpful when I have meetings or just to keep track of what I’m trying to do as I work.

qwertox 4y ago

I used Confluence which is excellent for inputting data, but the search functionality is abysmal.

Tomte 4y ago
It has search functionality? At work we have a search field, sure, but I've never encountered a successful search in our Confluence. It's all browser bookmarks and "can someone tell me where x is?" in Teams channels. Our Confluence guru still swears to God that Confluence used to have search problems, but now it's perfect. Fortunately, Atlassian has made us move with their stupid "you can't host on premises, would you like to pay tenfold" move. Jokes on us, we're moving to Sharepoint…

hdjjhhvvhga 4y ago

It's come to the point almost the opposite is the case: I actively try not to remember most information but try to make sure it's registered somewhere as plain text so that I can find it easily should I need it. People are surprised I can answer them so quickly when they ask about some trifle from last year - but it's only because I managed to register it (e.g. by refusing to proceed on the basis of an oral request and asking them to write an email instead). Moreover, I choose what to remember very carefully as it's something that also influences my personality.

ycombinator_acc 4y ago
How does what you remember influence your personality?

vasco 4y ago

I still do it and it has worked for me from being an individual contributor, to leading a team, to leading a part of the org that has a tree of ~50 people across multiple contexts. The way I see it, if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I note down almost everything during meetings, 1-1s, agile rituals, etc. Very rarely I move things to a computer, most things I just need to write down even if I never read them again, others I re-read, others are to-dos. No organization, just a flow of braindump, and lots of little drawings everywhere and arrows connecting things and so on. If you'd read it you'd not understand anything, both because the handwriting is atrocious and because there's practically no structure.

sevensor 4y ago
Likewise. Same reasons, same process, and I've found it just as helpful in middle management as I did when I was an individual contributor. There's an additional benefit. This is the reason I started doing it in the first place: many years ago, as a junior engineer, I was obliged to spend long hours in daily meetings. I found that the only way I could avoid actually falling asleep was to take detailed, copious notes. It was only afterwards that I discovered I was retaining information better and forming a big-picture view of the work. Also, what took me another decade to discover, is that nice stationery -- which for me means a fountain pen and a good notebook -- can make this a positive pleasure.
randomdata 4y ago
> if you know the best way to retain information, why would you stop using it. I wonder that myself. Earlier in my career, when the internet wasn't so great, we had to rely on textual communication for everything. This left the ideal 'paper' trail to look back on for reference. Everything well communicated, everything perfectly retained. It was unbelievably efficient. Now that the technology has improved, easily transmitting voice and even video, there is a curious push in that direction. Communication quality has declined dramatically as you now have to suffer through a bumbling stream of consciousness instead of words someone put effort into writing, which adds significantly more human time involvement to get a point across, and once spoken the information is automatically lost save even more human best effort to retain what can and never perfectly so. I likely shiny newfangled tech as much as the next guy, but there's a time and a place. Why we stopped using what worked best boggles the mind.

ryyr 4y ago

very true, in my experience it's been hard to keep up by hand and much faster to type, but like handwritten notes i rarely reference meeting or project notes so i put little effort into organization. i settled on using onenote and different tabs for different teams

jimmaswell 4y ago

Notes were a kind of write only memory for me - I rarely referred to them, preferring the textbook or other resources, but I still wrote them because it's supposed to help retention.

998244353 4y ago
I'm the same way. I discovered that taking notes was a fairly effective way to make sure I actually thoroughly read the material and that I don't just lapse into skimming the book. Not sure how important doing them in handwriting was, but it felt more useful.

dchuk 4y ago

I came to the same conclusion, however, here’s how I handle that: I carry around a folder with just a bunch of printer paper, and some index cards in it. I write my todo lists on an index card because it’s intentionally small so I can’t overload it, and it feels good to cross out the last thing and just throw it away. I take notes through the day on the printer paper, and then I review them frequently and type up what I want to preserve in Notion (recently switched from WorkFlowy, as much as I love outlines, I need free form writing options too). Anything I don’t type up, I just throw away. Benefits: Super cheap Intentionally not opinionated, just pen and paper. If I need to think about a hard problem, I can lay out all of my notes on a flat surface. I think spatially, this is so valuable and not possible with notebooks or even software (miro kinda) I started this about a month ago and it’s going great so far. And this is coming from w notebook and note taking software snob.

CSSer 4y ago
Have you considered buying loose leaf notebook paper instead of printer paper? You get lines and I’d imagine it’s even cheaper.
- koolba 4y ago
  Indeed. It’s pretty hard to be $.25 store brand spiral notepads for cost per page.
  - syntheweave 4y ago
    Cheap filler note paper is a source of difficulty when writing(ball pens will skip, dark inks will bleed, scratchy pencils and nibs will tear). The index cards work, but I would also go for the slightly more expensive paper brands one can find on JetPens. If you're going for a stationary experience, investing a little more in it goes a long way.
    - Wistar 4y ago
      I like use a 5.5 x 8.5 or 9 x 12 Strathmore 300 Sketch tablet for notes. They are sturdy and the paper is quite good. They are a pain if you want to scan/copy them as the paper is either smaller or larger than standard letter size. https://www.strathmoreartist.com/draw-sketch/id-300-series-sketch.html https://www.strathmoreartist.com/draw-sketch/id-300-series-s...

CrypticShift 4y ago

Yes! these read/write, and reference/recall ratios are good measures of how we should do things. the article case is only valid for a certain range. Maybe, for you, a system like mem.ai [1] is another step forward beyond the burdens of markdown wiki (for certain high-write/low-read use cases at least) 1- You "write" new information without each time asking yourself: where to put a new page in the hierarchy? what to name it? maybe I should include this into an existing page? which one? No. You just write "memos" (and maybe tag them). 2- Then, you are able to "reference" them without even recalling the exact keyword you used: You just ask a natural language question. [1] https://get.mem.ai/mem-x https://get.mem.ai/mem-x

iquerno 4y ago

a notebook is a great column oriented database for when you cannot bring technology with you. I don't think there is any useful scenario for one otherwise