I’ve been trying to figure out a note taking system that works for me and I think I’ve found a roughly working and sustainable solution (at least for now). Previously I would end up with a lot of “Untitled” unsaved files in my text editor and it would be a massive task to go through all of them to get them stored in an organised fashion: “What is this exactly about? When was this? Should I keep it or not? etc.”
To fix this issue and improve the possibility of staying organised, I started writing daily notes. I was (and still am, slowly) making a writing application and I added template feature to it, so the daily note is easily created and prefilled with the date, headings for the day’s agenda, tasks and “other” sections. So far I have 419 of these daily notes from working days so the habit has stayed and improved my working life significantly.
At first everything went to the daily note, but it quickly became quite verbose and unwieldy, so I split and categorised notes into three types:
- Daily notes: day’s agenda, tasks list, links, messages etc.
- Notes that have clear title and place: meeting notes, specific tasks…
- All the rest: All the stuff that wouldn’t “fit” into the daily note and would otherwise be left as “Untitled - 11” tab in the editor. I made a 1-click save feature that uses the timestamp & first line of the note as the filename. These are rarely needed or looked, but useful to have if needed. Usually consist of code snippets, queries, debugging notes, logs and such. Out of sight, out of mind.
I use FSNotes in conjunction with my own editor to store and edit the notes. FSNotes stores notes as plain text files, automatically creates and saves files and provides a great folder-specific search. Currently the folders are grouped into dailies, personal stuff (blog, studies etc). and work with project specific subfolders.
Could also just use Apple Notes and manage, but what’s the fun in that.
How do you do information management or just note taking?