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.
View this post on Instagram