How I Take Notes
Tools I Use Regularly
- Pen and paper
- For capturing quick notes, especially anything that requires diagramming, nothing beats a pen and paper The obvious problem is that it’s difficult to search through pen and paper notes (if only we had cmd-F/ctrl-F for everyday life).
- Apple Notes app
- I use this exclusively to quickly write a note/thought but I don’t keep anything here long-term.
- Markdown files stores in Git repos
- Especially for shared team documentation
- Notes I want to make publicly availably (lke this digital garden!)
- Anything where I see versioning being valuable (eg seeing how a note changes over time)
- Notekeeper
- Another quick way to take one-off notes from the command line.
- Google Keep
- My main way of taking notes on my phone and also sharing them with family members.
At Work
- Confluence (Exclusively for work)
Experimental
Tools I am experimenting with.
- Notion
- Obsidian
Semi-Retired
I haven’t fully given up on these tools yes, but they are not an active part of my note-taking regiment.
- Bullet Journal
- I used to be an avid Bullet Journaler in my college years, but I don’t find that it maps well to a professional working environment when you need to share calendar events and/or notes with colleagues.
Retired
Things I used to use but don’t any more.