What is your note taking workflow?

What is your note taking workflow

Well.

I went through a few iterations before settling on what I am currently using.

I started out using TiddlyWiki, back in 2009-2010, if not earlier. I was using TiddlyWiki Classic with quite a few plugins, and used two - maybe three? - such wikis, to keep notes on tabletop RPGs, on my courses, and as personal journal. I like TiddlyWiki quite a bit, but the safety measures built in modern browsers have more-or-less crippled it (save functionality used to work out of the box, then required a .jar, then a browser extension, then Quantum came out...), and browsers are in any case pretty bad editors.

I tried a few different conventional wikis after that: DokuWiki, the ridiculously lightweight AwkiAwki and CiWiki, and probably a few others. I never liked them that much: I need to run a server for them, which means that, even if they store their data on the filesystem, I'm forced to stare at the raw markup when on my phone away from home. And wiki markup looks ugly to me.

I was just keeping my notes in random markdown files by then. I wanted a simple solution, something that could compile a pile'o'files into HTML that I could browse on my phone, and I ended up rolling my own: I started out with a simple markdown to HTML script written in Awk and a Makefile, which slowly evolved into a shell-and-awk pipeline which supported backlinks, tags, mathematical equations (thanks to the Groff eqn being able of spitting out MathML), and references (I was actually using the refer format, but it was parsed by my own Awk script).

It worked well enough, but I wasn't really satisfied with it.

I tried out org-mode with org-wiki briefly, but I was still new to Emacs, and I went back to my own awiki for... maybe a year. By then, I felt comfortable enough with elisp to hack something up, and I started transitioning to org-mode fully (I was already using it, but mostly for the agenda and for quick notes on the go with Orgzly).

Even if I'm eyeing a few other solutions, I'm using org-mode right now, and I have been using it for the last year.

My wiki contains 170 pages, 117k words, and thousands of links. It doesn't have search - I use grep for it - but it's still small enough that I can usually find what I'm looking for in instants. It's organized pretty roughly - the top pages are Computers, Culture (which should probably be called Arts), Science, Society, World. There are a lot of uncategorized pages, as I mostly access them through org-wiki-helm.

If I'm on my laptop, I add to it immediately, commit the changes to git with magit, and then run make to compile it to static HTML, which Syncthing syncs over to my phone.

If I'm on my phone, I capture the link or snippet to org-mode with orgzly. Everything gets dumped into a @Capture.org file, which I then sort through when on my laptop, organizing the entries into a date tree, and copying the links/snippets over their appropriate wiki page.

I also keep an A5 notebook by my desk, but I mostly use it for quick sketches, and anything really important gets moved to my wiki as soon as possible.

But, again, I'm eyeing a few other solutions. I like org-mode, I like it very much, but a lot of information doesn't neatly fits into my hierarchy of pages - probably any hierarchy at all - so I'm looking for something more granular, where the basic unit of information is much smaller than a file, which can live under, above, or at the side of any other snippet.

TiddlyWiki would mostly fit the bill, but - going from editing inside Emacs to the browser, and from org markup to wiki markup? It's not really something I could do anymore.

Edit: redundancy.

Most of my notes – work, project, personal – are in Indigrid. I categorize them hierarchically, into subsections by which kind of a project or a thing it is, and then what part of the thing it is, and then what question it answers etc.. It's an outliner, so it probably won't do you good to store long-form thoughts there.

Ideally, I'd want to have something like Trillium for what I consider my mythos – that is, the span of all the ideas, traits, and experiences my life contains. Haven't tried it yet.

If I need a quick note jotted down, I have a stack of wide yellow stickies and a pen on my desk, so I could write them down. (I wish I had something digital that's just as efficient and easy to edit.) If I need a quick note jotted down and I'm AFK, I have a notes app called Better on my iPhone. (I'd link you to it, but I can't seem to find it on App Store outside of the iPhone now. It has an icon of a white sticky, with yellow background.)

Before the method I'll outline below, OneNote was my main driver. Its flexibility over organising notes, combined with the infinite page size, was absolutely superb. I found that the version distributed with Office is superior to the web and Windows 10 one; however, Office isn't free nor cross-platform compatible, so I eventually had to give up on using OneNote, unfortunately. I have thought of returning to it, but I'm too deep into the system I'm using now.

After going through countless methods of note-taking, I've finally settled on simple plaintext files (with Markdown syntax for consistency & rendering support), in a Git repository. The notes are categorised by directory trees. There is a top-level readme file that summarises all of the notes and links to them.

notes
|
| -- readme.md
+ -- administration
     |
     + -- vmware-shared.txt
+ -- programming
     |
     + -- csharp
          |
          + -- compression.txt

This offered the most flexibility, simplicity, and compatibility. I use Visual Studio Code for the convenience and Markdown-related features it provides; however, on iOS I use iA Writer. For the Git software on iOS, Working Copy works wonders for me.

The entire repository also serves as a diary. The years and months are sectioned into directories, and each day has a text file dedicated to it:

diary
|
+ -- 2018
|    + -- 12
|         |
|         + -- 2018-12-30.txt
|         + -- 2018-12-31.txt
+ -- 2019
     + -- 01
          |
          + -- 2019-01-01.txt
          + -- 2019-01-02.txt

Initially, the diary folder had its own readme summarising what I've written each day, but that quickly became a nightmare to maintain.

A convenient alternative to using Git is having the text files in a syncing software. Syncthing does the job for me when I use it to sync my KeePass databases. The reason I chose Git for the notes is for the sake of revisioning. It's nice going back in time to see how your notes have evolved over time!

I use zim wiki. Its a nice and simple notes desktop app which you can sync using any cloud storage service. No mobile app but really I have never actually needed to edit notes on my phone that I started on my desktop. I have a separate notes app on my phone which is just for tiny things I need in the near future.

I use a mix of paper and digital: I have a bullet journal that I use for managing tasks and agenda, which is also a receptacle for random notes at times. I also use an A5 sized clipboard as my notebook. Most stuff ends up being scanned and entered to the computer (I will talk about software in a bit). If they are not needed immediately, they generally sit in my scans folder, and I (hypothetically) transcribe stuff when I have time. Pen and paper are way more flexible for me, especially when I need drawings and/or I am not taking notes from something that is already digital (like PDFs, webpages, &c). All my lecture notes are written on my clipboard, for example. I used to use a fountain pen, but nowadays I use a BIC ballpoint with 4 colours, which is quite handy.

On the computer, I use Org mode, a major mode for Emacs. It is a very flexible outliner that can do anything from managing your tasks and agendas very effectively to typesetting novels, whitepapers and scientific books, and also be your blogware. It is extensible with Elisp and integrates very well with everything Emacs has, and then some more. I mainly use it for notes and word processing (I don't want to be tied to my computer for my tasks and agenda b/c I have procrastination issues & I find a BJ works better for me; but I may change my mind if I can get an ultralight computer). For scanning, I use Gnome's Simple Scan.

There are various org files that notes can go:

• not/org/notes.org: general notes
• not/org/hack.org: interesting shell commands or howto notes for Unix maintenance
• not/org/zibaldone.org: random stuff like quotes, ideas, poems, wiki article excerpts, &c
• not/prog/*.org: notes on programming, one org file per topic
• not/rsc/*/Readme.org: folders for various research topic, each folder has its own Readme.org into which all the relevant notes and todos go.

I use Orgzly on mobile that syncs via Syncthing to a temporary file, which I use as an intermediary for getting stuff from mobile to desktop. I hate typing on mobile with ferocious destructive passion (is it ironic that I am typing these on a mobile keyboard? soo fucking slow...) and never really take notes there, but just in case.

Syncthing is a host-your-own file sync daemon, it is FOSS and it has a FOSS Android app. It is lightweight, but I'd not put files I care on it and don't trust its read-only folder settings. I am in the market for an alternative myself, but can't find something that is not written in PHP. But I will probably end up slapping a Nextcloud on my Raspberry Pi...

Most if not all my org files are version controlled, either with git or with RCS, but I don't push them anywhere. TBH I don't like the idea of having multiple devices I use to edit the same stuff regularly. Ideally I'd only have a 13" laptop and a big screen phone (not there yet, but will be, my current laptop is 15.6" which is too big and heavy for my use cases), and maaaybe a desktop if I end up wanting/having to do mobile apps or other professional development.

I found this neato program called "CherryTree", it's a hierarchical text editor. You can set up parent/child nodes as much as you like, so i've been using it on/off for basically everything.

Whenever I wanna fool around with a new writing prompt I start a new file and just create nodes as fast as i can think of chapter-y things. Then as inspiration takes me, i just descend into one note until it's fleshed out enough or until i hit a deadend. After that I'll usually start a node for characters, and another one for those ideas that you feel could work with a little bit of shoehorning.

After i've expended all my inspiration, i'm usually left with something much more satisfying than if I had just tried to dive right into writing the thing. Sometimes I dont even write the story, I just worldbuild it because that's the more fun part to me. Literally the opposite to how I used to be; Writing the story and doing the world building in my head.

Here's a (blurred bc story bad) pic of my current thing https://i.imgur.com/WBVWtt1.png Each of those nodes on the side is just a flood of specifics about each thing and how they work/are perceived in the world, and where I wanna go with them. I've also used it to plan some programming projects, but i seem to have lost that file when moving laptops

Not sure if it'll be worth more than a play around, since you wanna do stuff online, but for me it's been an essential tool in managing a trove of local notes

I guess I’m a bit old fashioned, as most of my notes are pen-on-paper using cheapish notebooks. Anything import I’ll TeX up as this gives me another opportunity to look things over and rewrite it in the clearest way. I briefly installed vim-wiki a while ago and got it set up, but I never really ended up using it too much. Perhaps I should take that up again, or follow one of the suggestions here. I really like the idea of a personal wiki.

I used to use Apple Notes on iPad because it's easy and l cam draw in it, until l
had to export the files to a PC which was hell since there's no good batch export option.

Right now l'm working on figuring how to set up a server and run a website with a private password protected wiki to categorize notes and cross-refer for easy info storage.

I'm a total noob to linux, php and hosting things so that's been pretty fun so far. Any Nginx wizards out there that can tell me how to easily add subpages? (like http://example.com/subpage1, http://example.com/wiki, etc)

I personally have not taken notes in quite a while but when I did, I used "Standard Notes" (It's a bad name if I'm being honest)

The free service only has plain text and tagging with search but the paid product can extend it quite far, adding folder system, markdown, latex and a lot of things really. It also has mobile apps for iOS and Android which work pretty well (and support some of the extensions but not all if I understand correctly). but the syncing is really good.

If you were to wanna opt-out, you can too through their backup and import system.

You might be scared because the desktop is Electron but through black magic, it only uses like 50MB somehow. (Without extensions and on a cold boot, I've not looked extensively)

Edit : Oh yeah, might be worth mentioning the encryption and that the full stack is AGPL/GPL

I really like Joplin: https://github.com/laurent22/joplin

It's free, open source, uses Markdown.

It has sync features if you need them:

The notes can be synchronised with various cloud services including Nextcloud, Dropbox, OneDrive, WebDAV or the file system (for example with a network directory). When synchronising the notes, notebooks, tags and other metadata are saved to plain text files which can be easily inspected, backed up and moved around.

and:

The application is available for Windows, Linux, macOS, Android and iOS. A Web Clipper, to save web pages and screenshots from your browser, is also available for Firefox and Chrome.

Some nice features:

• Advanced search
• Alarms
• Dark mode

Took me a while to find it, but now I stick to Joplin.

Since you're already using git, you could try this... I just tested it out for my own usage and works well enough on Linux:

https://crates.io/crates/eureka

Edit: More details:

Eureka does a pull, then prompts you for your commit message, then opens the README.md file in your chosen editor. When you save and exit, it commits and pushes.

Personally I use Dokuwiki on a $2/mo server, absolutely fantastic and by far the best way for myself personally after years of switching to other things.

I highly suggest the monthcal plugin.

A few Org files and capture templates. I'm trying to use the Agenda more, but I keep forgetting. I don’t take too many notes but all my writing is done on Emacs.

I just migrated from Evernote Premium to Notion recently. I haven't been able to quite use all of Notion's features, but their features seem to be further along than Evernote's. I only miss being able to embed PDFs and annotate them. Unfortunately, Evernote worked only about 50% of the time with annotating PDFs.

I don't usually take notes, but if there's a small thing or two I need to remember, I just say "Hey Google, take a note" to my phone.

Which is a command i overwrote using their routines functionality that calls Tasker through AutoVoice, and that will open up Google Keep and automatically tap its voice recorder.

Then I just say what I want to say.