[HN Gopher] Paper Notes
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Paper Notes
Author : ingve
Score : 47 points
Date : 2021-05-16 11:14 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (macwright.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (macwright.com)
| azinman2 wrote:
| The insight is that you just write on the next page as time moves
| forward?
|
| Am I missing something? Doesn't seem particularly insightful...
| wrycoder wrote:
| The insight is largely in what not to do!
| alexpetralia wrote:
| Personally I find indexing all my notes by time completely
| useless. What does it matter to me if I learned a software
| concept on Apr. 2 2017 or Sep. 8 2020? What is important for me
| is the ontology - the hierarchal structure of knowledge. If I
| have a sociology note (or question), I know where to look. Same
| with biology or physics or software. Knowledge in my head is
| not indexed by time; neither should my notes.
| deepdmistry wrote:
| Author is not talking about indexing with time, rather they
| are talking about just writing with time.. viz you write
| forward as time flows forward.. You should definitely index
| by topic/content. Eg Cats: 1,5,7,8,22,23,55
|
| Dogs: 2,3,9,10 ...
| azinman2 wrote:
| Except your learnings on the subject and in general are
| chronological.
|
| I rarely refer to notes older than the past 2 weeks... it's
| largely an exercise in helping memorization by writing.
|
| Do you randomly go through old notes indexed by subject?
| neilv wrote:
| I try to avoid paper notes, and don't mind having a laptop with
| me almost all the time (I'm also not fond of smartphones for
| notes), but when I do need a little paper notebook...
|
| If I'm bothering with a paper notebook (for information, not
| artistic sketching), it's probably important, and possibly in a
| messy environment. So I go with the Rite in the Rain brand
| notebook, together with a Fisher Space Pen. Though I still don't
| like the coated feeling to the paper.
|
| For work, notes of all kinds are electronic and shared throughout
| engs&ops and time, so either go into the git monorepo (usually in
| Markdown files, or embedded in source code files), or in GitLab
| Issues. If it's a one-time capture, not a note that will evolve,
| the filename tends to start with a date in sortable format (e.g.,
| `20210517-foo-tech-background-prep-for-baz-meeting.md`).
|
| For personal, I used to capture "quick document" notes organized
| based on timestamps and categories, with an emphasis on capturing
| some little idea or bit of information while it was in front of
| me, with minimal interruption to whatever else I was doing. Hit
| hotkey, just start typing or copy&paste very rapidly, and done.
| No naming files, organizing, etc. Here's one small Emacs thing to
| make that easier (maybe Org-Mode would be better):
| https://www.neilvandyke.org/emacs-qd/
| Teknoman117 wrote:
| I don't know if the author would equate them, but I carry an eInk
| tablet (the reMarkable) with me most of the time. I write on it
| (in it?) every day for the most part. Best thing is, if I need to
| share something, a few simple clicks and the document is turned
| into text via OCR and everything else is a figure. Send it as a
| PDF.
|
| At least for me, I've always found that doodling out problems
| helps me think through them a lot easier.
| david-cako wrote:
| Small notebooks (I like Field Notes or Rhodia) help me with
| pacing and chronology of my writing. It makes it easier to feel
| the tempo of sentences than when you're writing on larger pages,
| and it also makes it easier to remember what you wrote when, and
| which notebook it was in, especially if you have a predilection
| for all of the cool designs you can get Field Notes in. I know
| exactly when I was using a particular notebook. If you like
| longer-form writing, I don't recommend them, but for how I write
| they're awesome.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I've never been able to find paper notebooks useful because the
| information I need from past ones is never at hand when I need
| it. (At least, pre-COVID remote work.)
|
| These days pretty much everything lives in my Google Mail, Keep
| or Docs, and I rely on the search bar to find my notes on topics,
| which is usually from my phone when I need an answer quick.
|
| People who keep paper notebooks, do you scan your notebooks in
| later or something? Do you archive the physical ones at your
| office, or at home?
| ad404b8a372f2b9 wrote:
| I don't really relate to the author's motivation. Who is "the
| kind of person who carries a notebook"? Surely it's someone who
| has something to write down, it's an odd perspective wanting to
| force yourself to take notes.
|
| I took diligent paper notes for the first three years of my PhD.
| Lab notes, research ideas, mad science, meeting notes,
| presentation drafts, diagrams, graphs, specifications, diary
| entries, poems, songs, tirades, rants and drawings...
|
| In the end it was only marginally useful, mostly to recall what
| was said in meetings. It's too much data, hard to search and 99%
| of it ends up useless. Really their main use was to work through
| problems and ideas as I was writing them, as well as to look back
| at past me and frown at how stupid I was.
|
| Now I've switched to an e-ink solution (Remarkable) because I've
| got dozens of paper notebooks that I don't know what to do with
| and the waste of paper gave me a mental block over time that made
| me reticent to write down more stuff.
|
| I do agree with him that notebooks should be append only,
| anything else is a lost battle which will force you to censor
| yourself to keep things clean. Unless you use binders, then you
| have a better control of the paper stack.
| gumby wrote:
| > Who is "the kind of person who carries a notebook"?
|
| I took it to mean "I decided to keep track of my random
| thoughts and things not to forget rather than be one of those
| people with scraps of paper and who loses track of things."
|
| In that read, "notebook" is synecdoche
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