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.