1. Better organization. One note organizes my files into notebooks and pages. This is really important to me to prepare study notes, as I find arranging the notes just like the technical books' table of content I'm reading.
2. To easily apply Cornell(two columns of hint and description) note taking method.
3. To search easily. Once I studied a book and took my notes well, there is no better way to search and recall.
4. Sketch with my notes. This helps me represent ideas I study into my own mental model. Also great for representing my startup ideas.
5. Record myself into the note reciting the material.voice memo.
6. Doing all of the above on my computer and phone and finding everything in place.
Again, there might be work around for doing all this. But once you get into Evernote and OneNote you find it really hard to go back into text files.
-rich formatting. It’s easier to scroll through your notes if the headings and sub-headings stand out. Also, automatic bullet lists with multiple indentation (I do a lot of these)
- ability to add pictures / screenshots. Comes in handy if you’re taking notes in class and you have the slides or pdf at hand. You can add a tricky diagram right into the notes, and draw over it if necessary.
- small timesavers, like the ability to mark a line as a to-do item (Ctrl+1 for One Note on Windows); you can then filter according to the to-do tag. This effectively gives you a centralized to-do list which you add to from whatever you’re currently working on without switching context. Or if you write an operation (e.g. “1+5-2”) and add “=“ One Note will compute that for you. Saves you the hassle of switching to another app. Or hitting tab to create a (rudimentary) table.
I also use mind mapping tools when trying to organize a large topic and I’m more interested in the overall picture than the details. I find that a mind-map/tree-like outline + notes or specific documents for the leaves or subtrees works well for me.
That is what I do as well. It is simple and does not distract me from my main task. I find that I do not really need features that many note softwares provide de facto such as tagging, WYSIWYG editor or multimedia support.
However I feel that note taking softwares add values by making it easier to categorize and retrieve the notes later. For this reason I wrote a small command line interface called Dnote (https://github.com/dnote/cli). It stores notes in 'books' and supports full text search.
My workflow is:
$ dnote add bookName
# launches vim. I type my note and quit vim. The note is saved locally.
# later...
$ dnote find "some text"
$ dnote view bookName`An example task, say you got a huge doc filled with numbers you could regex to select all co joining numbers of a phone number length then move them to the start of the line then multi edit and add [ ] around them. To do something like that just in notepad would be a nightmare but in of the others you could do that in 10 seconds.
Invest some time in learning them as they'll make you far more productive.
It stores the notes as plain text, though the file names aren't nice (it generates a GUID, because you don't have titles as such in the program).
It's nice for things like business card scanning, receipts, remembering your bank account numbers.
But I find the best use for it is for things like gaming. I can store images and sketches of base build designs. Multicolored tables. I can even drop a full spreadsheet for the tougher games like Football Manager. That way there's no linking and sifting through Google Drive spreadsheets.
It allows you to recall information quickly. It serves as your “exobrain”. Your info at your finger tips. Anywhere in the world. Anytime. That’s quite powerful when you think about it deeply. As you do that you will also realize what you capture (and what you don’t) is equally is directly proportional to the information’s utility
At my desk I have a chair and desk and PC and screens and pieces of sticky paper, cut-up pieces of scrap paper, and coloured pens on-hand to take notes.
In the wall we have a safe to store any notes. And a document retention policy. And a bigger safe downstairs.
At the gym I have a note taking app on my phone, that doesn't include titles or anything other than body text. That works for recalling really quickly, and is not 'structured data' other than a data and preview.
I use email to send notes to myself, and this allows attaching files which might or might not be needed again (document retention policy).
I have a personal wiki that allows wiki-like harnessing of rich media, and is available-anywhere, a constantly living document, document-of-documents, not restricted to a computer or OS or platform for accessibility.
So... what is a note, the use of the note, the potential for sharing and/or collaboration and/or storing?
Is a note a note in dictation, distraction, and no note leads to better noting?
- Some people want more than plaintext formatting (e.g. markdown lists, tables, bold, headings, etc...)
- In-lining images
- Being able to edit on mobile
Being able to edit on mobile