Modern Note Taking and Making

Suddenly, I want to talk about modern note taking and making. Not sure you are from which generation started to use computers, for me, I used it as early as Apple II, then PC DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows Millenium, Windows XP, Windows 7 and Windows 10 (virtualized). But for most enjoy and now I still active use is actually Mac OSX, from Lion OSX until now Big Sur, it just a very enjoyable experience with Apple hardware, from my first Macbook Pro 13 to now Macbook 12 so slim and portable, I do not found the stress at all to carry a laptop with me traveling. Macbook 12 remains my laptop of choice for laying on the sofa or in bed, since I do not find any weight at all. I did have a standby windows laptop in windows 10, but use it as standby, for just in case I need a windows native machine.

Why I want to say what kind of OS I used, because it is relevant to the topic I want to talk about: note taking and making. As you are having more and more notes in place, ad hoc solutions will not work anymore, you end up moving toward a more proper and lasting solution. I share what I used in the past and reason for moving to a new solution, hope that it saves you time, no need to repeat my journey.

One of the solutions I use for a long period of time is Evernote, from the very beginning, it is also the time I use iPhone 3G, it works just well on a Smartphone small screen, and uses the note card approach. You can organize on the desktop or laptop, cross platform. At its peak, geotag with Atlas View feature, I was a paid subscriber for a long time, until they silently removed some of the features like geotag Atlas view, I think that correlated to the app peak performance at that time and then started to decline. I am a paid subscriber and stop it and downgrade as a free user, since I don’t really use it any more.

At that transition, I move toward OneNote, and Outline Mac since OneNote does not allow local file storage and so I use Outline to migrate my note in OneNote into local storage and archived. Then I came across Notion App, cloud based, no more local storage pain or storage pressure, since everything in cloud, any device can access, perfectly solves a lot of my problem in hand, I can custom develop and design my own template to use, which I consider the most flexible life app.

Within the Mac, Tinderbox is considered the most visually appealing solution I never use, can change so many views to make sense for the note taking, and help me make sense of my notes or create new meaning that go beyond mind map or concept map.

I found out that if I pair tinderbox with Outline, it looks really nice together. It is very close to the ideal digital notebook for my very own use case.

All serve the purpose and are useful for me. The list above excludes the diary and journaling app, no matter how, they are not fit well for the note taking and making domain, notebook app can act as diary, but diary can not act as notebook.

Occasionally I handwrite in particular something in mind. I simply want to write it down, instead of keyboarding them, despite knowing it much faster using the keyboard due to two-handed operation. But I enjoy the time for writing and can think at the same time, while handwriting in the notebook.

 

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I recently tried to write in the mediawiki, as I started to enjoy text with hyperlink, maybe after all the best note taking and making for me is actually wiki style. In general, I think for diary and thought based, handwriting will be just fine. But for subject matter I want to edit and expand in future, digital notebooks that have the clipper to clip internet resources and you can use it to make your note, or visualize like tinderbox all serve the purpose. Lifeapp approach of Notion make sense for most of the things, except for me I like to use at least a work page for write down to do, then appointment, notes on the day, which I found at end of the day, check off those planned to do, I use it to do time management so handwriting work for me, this is why some of the material I continue to be handwriting, it is particular so make sense when you saw your volume of diary notebook, where you can flip, as it serve the purpose not just for note taking and making, but to serve as record for life, or act lifebook.