How do you remember?

I've tried a bunch of those apps/sites too and honestly I've found that none of them have a perfect one-size-fits-all solution because there are different kinds of information that I need to remember.

• If it's something important that I need to remember but am unsure when, like a code or name or number or something, I'll probably just email it to myself. That way if/when I need if in the future I can just search for it in my email very easily.

• If it's something I'm sorta maybe interested in but not too fussed over if I remember to check it out or not, maybe I'll just leave a browser tab open for a few days/weeks until I decide that I actually want to read it or not (often times I'll just close it after a few days because I'm not that interested any more).

• If it's a webpage that I know I'd like to come back to, I'll just bookmark it into an appropriate bookmark folder.

• If it's a lot of text that I need to save, like a list of stuff to do or notes from a phone conversation, I'll just use the default notes app on my phone, or maybe a google doc/sheet if I'd like to share it with my wife.

• If I need to be reminded at a specific date or time, then I'll just use the reminders app on my phone, or a basic alarm if its within the next 24 hours or so.

Seems like a messy system, but it mostly works fine for me. Despite there being like 5-10 different apps and programs, I find that it works well because each program or app serves a specific role rather than trying to remind me of everything.

I keep a little notebook. Write the date at the top, the topic and a very brief note of what needs to be done and potential issues

I used to keep it in my head, and I was far happier for it because you don’t remember what you forgot about, so you feel like 100% success rate lol. But after I started working I just had to externalise it somewhere for proof if anything else, then kept it going because writing things down gave my brain time to compartmentalise the issue

For little projects I'm working on or longform notetaking/journaling, I have an Obsidian notebook that works across all my devices (Windows, Mac, iPhone).

For time-sensitive reminders, I've found Apple's Reminders app to work best for me. It has the most reliable notification system and cleanest interface I've seen. Combined with Apple's default Calendar app and widgets on iOS, I've been fairly pleased.

I've used Apple's built-in Reminders app on my iPhone. It syncs to my Mac and when I'm thinking about things I need to do I usually enter them on my Mac because I enjoy using the keyboard more.

I have list for things which repeat on a more or less weekly or daily basis (take out the trash), and a list for things which happen on much longer timescales like quarterly or yearly (pay estimated taxes, change air filters, inspect water heater, change car oil).

I also have a list for things I need to buy the next time I'm at any store. It's a list that has groceries, toiletries, hardware, anything that when I'm in any sort of brick and mortar store I look at briefly before I leave just to make sure I hadn't forgot something.

And then there's just a general list for everything else.

Every reminder can be assigned an alert so it will go off at a specific day or time, or just hang out without notifying you (like all the stuff on my shopping list).

It's gotten to the point where anytime I think of anything, I reflexively pull out my phone and add it to the list (you can also do via voice, but often I don't like saying my thoughts in public).

The main benefit for me is I never spend any time worrying about whether I'm forgetting something. If it was ever important to me, it's on a list. Maybe once every few days I go through all of the lists and remove anything that is no longer relevant, like a fleeting idea I thought was a great idea that I've already taken care of. In general before this my brain was constantly spinning thinking of all the things I may have forgotten to do - that's no longer the case for me and it's incredibly freeing.

I bought a physical notebook (dotted, so I can draw my own lines) and a pen that I keep on my desk, or in my purse when I go out. I number the pages, and reserve the last few for an index. Before the notebook I had a bad habit of making notes in random Google docs. In contrast the notebook makes it easy to have everything I want to remember in one place. It feels very hygienic if that makes sense. And it means I'm not uploading my random thoughts -- my grocery lists, blocking for parties, stray ideas about books and games, research references for writing -- into the cloud.

if it's IRL stuff like a grocery list, I'll use Keep

For anything I find in a browser I now use self-hosted Karakeep with self-hosted AI tagging

I rarely find myself going back into Karakeep, since the stuff that's really important I will remember enough so it pops up in my address bar, but for everything else it's nice to know it's in Karakeep somewhere

I note things down across a variety of mediums nowadays. It's certainly messy but the places I save things are places I often spend time at for other reasons so I'm never too far from what I've saved.

At work, I keep everything in a solo Notion instance. My company recently gave employees access to Notion so I've got things noted down there. When I need to share things with co-workers, I'll create a document in our wiki and share it with them that way.

For personal things, it's a mess haha. For emails I receive that I need to action on, I will pin and flag them within my email client. That way, every time I open my email client, they're at the top and highlighted to grab my attention. For clipping things like screenshotting confirmations or saving plans, I use a personal Discord server. I spend a lot of time on Discord chatting with friends so it's easy to just forward things to my personal space and also upload to it. For reminders, I use the Google Tasks app, though I've also been using Apple Reminders recently.

For tasks I use Apple's Reminders. It integrates with the Calendar app, so that's great.

For all sorts of note-taking, including things like grocery lists, I use Bear.

Links are just bookmarked.

For work, I do similar to a lot of other folk here.
For my personal life it's kinda more complicated...

I think I have some kind of ADHD and I forget important stuff all the time. I tried notes apps, physical paper, calendars and whatever and nothing stuck.
My uh, workaround? Is I just do as much as I can immediately lol. As soon as I have a new item to put on the list, I just do it. If I do have something to do, it's normally like 1 or 2 things and I can actually remember them.

Like, terrible advise I know, don't do this. It's gonna get me. But thought I'd share.

I use Obsidian. I used to use Google Keep for pretty much everything, and before that I tried (and tried, and tried) notebooks.

I really want to be the notebook guy. But it never works out for long enough, I get sick of writing everything and it's so slow to find stuff.

So, I switched to Keep, and made todos for each week and manually copied them for each new week to keep a rolling chain of thought. Plus I used it for random grocery lists and notes, but it always felt so disorganized, like a big pile of paper notes.

So, I tried Obsidian. It's been amazing! I have an automatically-generated daily note, and with a press of a menu item it checks yesterday's note and brings forward anything I didn't complete the day before. I have a dedicated note for long term stuff, and a reminder to take a look at it daily. When I finally get a solid due date for something long term, I assign it one. One the day the item comes due, my daily note automatically brings that item in with the rest of that day's todos.

It gives me so much flexibility to make random notes or fully fleshed-out work documents or anything between. The backlink system and nested folder system makes it feel really organized, and it's just automatic enough to keep me from feeling too much friction.

I'm a completionist, so seeing the same item not checked off every day really motivates me to get stuff done. And if I can't get it done, I can move it to long term, or give it a due date, or mark it cancelled and have a record of when I finally made that decision.

It just works well for me.

Beware the customization, it can be a bottomless rabbit hole if you let it. I use a couple plugins and try not to spend time optimizing anymore.

Tasks.org with the GTD system for reminders and tasks, Anki for everything I need to really remember

I keep tabs open when I need to do something urgently otherwise I save them to a sqlite database. Every week I see if any cruft has stayed open and force myself to get things done or push them to the sqlite database.

Why sqlite over simple text files? The main reason is that I can add columns like page title and time_created to keep track of when pages are saved and marked as completed. But I've used simple text files for a long time too and it's easier to start with that.

Gmail snoozing emails to myself or adding calendar events is also helpful for one-off tasks--but for recurring tasks I run a program to open tabs from a special sqlite database that helps me keep track of all the sites that I want to visit without visiting them too frequently or forgetting one.

I think my number one magic trick is just to do things that are needed immediately when they are needed--even if it takes a lot longer than 5 minutes.

I like to use an Obsidian-style set of markdown files for anything I need to remember long-term. (I use an nvim plugin because I already use nvim frequently but same diff) Otherwise I use browser bookmarks for things I find interesting or want to check out but haven't had the time. For everything else I have a TUL notebook with the little rings and the custom hole puncher to go with it. That lets me take physical notes or draw diagrams/doodles.

I've gone down the rabbit hole of "perfect" knowledge system storage and have settled on those three methods as good enough for me. Markdown/Obsidian is great for just dumping things with keywords and being able to search and find them later, bookmarks for online stuff that's not so important but I want to remember, and then the physical notebook with pages I can re-arrange for anything that I don't want to type.

Why didn't Notion, Keep, and Evernote work out?

Does keeping browser tabs open work for well for you some or most of the time?

Edit: Oops, I forgot to answer the question. I use Google Docs/Sheets for big things (desktop & mobile app), calendar mobile app for time blocking + long term task reminders, and whatever mobile reminder app for short term recurring tasks. I also refer to medium/small things in Google Keep (mobile app), only because I had legacy sticky notes in there and didn't want to branch out. I think this works for me because I am typically glued to my phone.

For the most part Google Keep and saving drafts in Gmail. And a lot of browser bookmarks.

I use Color Note. It's a simple app. You can create free text notes or lists. Categorize by color, password protect, and sync to Google drive.

I just have a bunch of notes and lists, all categorized. I delete stuff I don't need anymore like daily todo lists and archive important things. Like my monthly notes of big expenditures.

I use Google Keep in a pretty haphazard way. I have a few pinned notes right now:
"Felix commands" (Felix is a work project)
"To Do"
"Felix To Do"
"Books read, 2025 - " (this one is fun, I started a journal listing the books I read and any thoughts about them.)
"Projects" (What is the difference between projects and to-do? Who knows?but I look at projects less often)
"Music"
"Movies/TV"
"Books"
"Games" (last four are recommendations/things I might want to check out)

I throw stuff in all these and occasionally clean it out with no plan/schedule. Some of them have years-old stuff. Anything important goes in To Do, and I check that at least every couple of days. Or it goes in Google Calendar with a notification.

If I want to remember a thing but don't know where to put it, I just make a normal note and don't pin it. I try to use enough keywords that I can find it if I search later. But if I never think to search for it, it is essentially gone. I rarely look at unpinned notes. This helps when I have a thing taking up space in my brain, causing mild stress. I just fart out some notes in Keep and probably never see them or worry about them again. But if it comes up, I can search and remember where I was before. grocery lists etc. are also unpinned and float in the abyss.
I use it on my desktop and my phone, both are necessary. I typically add things on my phone and look them up on my desktop.

I'm also looking to improve and try Notion or something else. So thanks for the thread!

technical things get a gist, other things get an apple note, short term things get a text to myself.

depends what im trying to remember.

Most personal stuff goes into nextcloud notes.

Grocery lists and conlang stuff goes to Silent Note bc of the formatting and check boxes

Long form documents (like story ideas that turned into actual stories) get moved from notes to a word(odt) document in my cloud storage.

work stuff goes in OneNote if its something that a team member could benefit from. If its just for me, it goes in a running text file.

if its an event, or something i have to Do, it goes in my calendar so that i get a reminder

if its a website that i really want to keep forever, it goes in nextcloud bookmarks. If i just want to find it again later but dont really care if it disappears, i bookmark it on whatever browser i accessed it on.

if its really quick or if ive forgotten multiple times in a row to do it, it goes on the back of my hand lol

My mind works like a vector database, I remember connections. Not things so much.

I have all of my bookmarks (the stuff people keep in decade old tabs) in Raindrop

• This is for those things where you remember you saw that page once but can't either find it with a web search or can't remember any keywords
• These will, at some point, go to a self-hosted solution but I don't have the brainpower to go through all 5000 options.

Daily notes and stuff I need to remember goes in Obsidian

• Daily notes are for remembering "what the fuck did I do on Thursday two weeks ago"
• The other stuff is just "how do I set up a new Linux VM from scratch" or "What are the shortcuts for my Keychron keyboard's RGB lights"
• I prefer Obsidian because they now have a CLI tool AND I can use any LLM to wade through it with vague questions like "what did I say about my PT appointments last year?" or "when did I start watching Homeland?"

If something needs attention it's either in my phone calendar or Things3

• These are the stuff I need something to actively remind me about, appointments, things I need to remember to do daily (medications, workouts etc)

Hahaha At first I thought this was more philosophical, was about to say "I don't know, I feel like I just remember everything all at once."

In general my memory is great. I have what I can best describe as a holographic memory, I remember things in 3D and can go back and remember details very well. I have a pretty good situational and self awareness so I remember a lot of details.

But more about your question, I use Obsidian mainly to take notes. I use it more to structure and track my thoughts, I make a lot of lists and breakdowns of projects.

I've been using org-mode in Emacs for the past 15 years which is basically text files. Works the same as it always has and if I ever manage to somehow lose my notes it will be entirely my own fault.