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Comment by johngalt | Hacker News Reader

It's not about hierarchy or flexibility, but the ill-defined nature of what 'notes' are. Ask people to share notes and you'll observe several different types with disparate goals:

1. Shorthand: A memory mechanism to simplify/summarize a complex text.

2. Logbook: Record a series of events which occurred and what order.

3. Planner: Todo lists, upcoming meetings, due dates.

4. Whiteboard: A worksheet for working through a complex problem.

5. Time-capsule: Long term memory about why we decided to do [thing].

If you take someone who treats notes like a Whiteboard and try to sell them a system which looks like a Logbook, they will think it makes no sense.

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Hmm, can I subscribe to a newsletter about this SLoPWiT technique you've just invented?

Off topic, but what is SLoPWit? You're comment is the top hit for this on Google with no other helpful results

It’s the first letter of each of the bullets in the list of note styles above.

Sibling response is correct, just a silly acronym summarizing parent's off-the-cuff list of note types.

I meant it as a joke, in comparison to e.g. PARA or LATCH systems. The funny thing is, listing out all the different types feels much more useful to me than any other "note taking system" idea. It would lead you to design different UIs and workflows, depending on the type you're currently working with. I use several of them, sometimes via different tools. Being more aware of and explicit about the types seems like a good thing.

This is a nice explanation and definition. Now, I realize I’m multiple of them and like to use different medium for these types.

As a “Planner”, I default to digital notebooks and uses the tools such as Apple Notes, Obsidian, Sublime Text to write.

I also love recording memories as part of my “Time-Capsule” and are more structured. They are in Markdown and I use iA Writer, Obsidian, or Sublime Text to write it.

While in a meeting, thinking, scribbling, I turn on my “Whiteboard” on a physical Notebook and use a pen to write it. The additional thing I do is if I have a to-do in my mind and need to write it down, I start from the end of the Notebook. So, in a typical 200-odd paged Notebook, the last 4-5 pages are filled up with check-box TO-DOs. At the end of most meetings that I attend, people usually take pictures of my Notebook.

I like this comment. Thank you.

Think your list is comprehensive, or is it just an off-the-cuff summary? I mean, the full list must be a pretty good start to making actually decent notes-software.

Off-the-cuff; there are certainly more categories.

Notes related behavior is a good place to find ideas, but not a good goal itself. 'Notes' is where information lands which isn't being specifically captured. Looking at your organization's notes will draw the outline of the system which isn't present, what feature the present system is missing, or what training doesn't cover.

Is this a new number, or is it 3a?

Drafts for blog posts; ideas for YouTube videos; half-formed notions which might one day make a good speech in Toastmasters.

I always have a dumping ground of uncategorized piecemeal notes in whatever note-taker I'm using at the time which I usually call the 'heap' (like a heap of dirty laundry)

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