Note taking tools have started to taking off in the past couple of years. There are so many tools out there these days its pretty challenging to pick one.
My journey with these tools began when I got into org-mode. For those who don’t know what org-mode is, its a note taking / organisation tool emdeded into the emacs editor. Quite versatile however it depends heavily on how much you use Emacs.
Discovering Notion
I discovered notion when it was in its early stages. Since then I had only been using simpler note taking tools. The ecosystem around notion, got me into a new high. Building Personal Wiki’s, a life OS you name it. The options were endless. So I ended up creating systems, and systems over and over again. But never consistantly using any of them.
The only good habit I got into during this time was, daily journals and making sure anything I found interesting or important was stored in it.
With the popularity notion gained, it became very bloted. And got into a state where simple note taking was more of a hassle.
Information overload from Internet guru’s
During this time of hype and Notion was pouring its VC funds into sponsored content, my youtube feed was exploding with different content. From simple template videos to full blown PARA, Zettelkasten videos using Notion, Obsidian you name it.
What am I using now?
Fast forward a couple of years. I have given up on watching all the youtube nonsense around the perfect system. Or making you do x, y and z to track all the bits and pieces of nonsense.
I started using Logseq a while back. Its the same old 💩 just a different flavour imo. When I had to take up a corporate role, I had to opt for something that doesn’t sync notes to the cloud or across devices. Then again, its very hard to manage completely different systems across work and personal life. When I was working for startup’s this wasn’t really a problem, I could use the same account and have all info sync across all my devices, because there wasn’t neceassarily strict security protocol around these.
These days, everything is a mess. Regardless of what tool I decide to use. My memory is pretty 💩 so I need a reminder for most things. Google Cal has been my friend for most things that are important and I need to remember. I’ve also tried to use Todoist, but I tend to forget I am using it 🤣 and its always out of sync. I do continue to journal at least on my personal device.
Knowledge capturing and referencing information has become a bit of a challenge now. Lets say I bookmark something interesting for reference, I forget about it and never come back to it.
And, pen and paper for daily todo’s. Given my lack of systems in place, I came up with this 30 min daily prep time for work and 30 min wind-down and transition. First 30 min prep, the plan is to prepare for what I would work on for the day. Any important meetings, if I need to block out time for a ticket etc This gives a bit of structure to my day. During the wind-down time, I plan for any non-work related things I need to do for that day. These are mostly not very strict so flexible with getting pushed over. However, sticking toa pen and paper seems to work for most parts.
Future outlook
My deep learning has stalled for last few months. I’ve come to a stage where I am investing my free time very carefully. Priorities in this decade of my life is quite different to what it was 10 years ago. I am no longer super excided about the new framework that dropped.
Having said that, I still have areas of interest. From, topics like testing, architecture patterns, API’s, Side Projects etc and I still want to have a process and system to capture this information. And I don’t have a decent way to capture this knowledge, especially when I need a mechanism that would ideally work across both my work and personal devices (probably a web solution).