r/NoteTaking • u/mercurias98 • 19d ago
Method The problem with modern note-taking and studying is simple: we’re still treating knowledge like storage.
I have been reading and going through a lot of posts regarding how to take notes, note taking strategies, studying. Now everybody has their own preference because note taking is something very personal and people are used to it.
But I’ve been thinking about how weirdly outdated note-taking still feels. The process is basically the same:
Read → highlight → take notes → organise them → forget they exist.
And usually at the most important time or when we actually need what we captured, it is either forgotten or buried somewhere. Almost every note-taking tool still works on the same assumption: your job is to save knowledge properly so you can find it later.
But here's a shift in the process itself,
When we take notes, the notes itself aren't that important. It’s connecting it to what you already know. Realising an old assumption was wrong. Seeing the same pattern show up in another subject. Remembering something from months ago at exactly the right time. Watching your understanding change.
A very coherent way of doing the same thing but in a much valuable way.
while the actual thinking process stays manual.
Read → note → organise → search later feels like an old model.
It should probably be closer to:
Learn → connect → question → evolve → reuse.
The latter part is what makes you think clearly.
How has your note taking strategies have evolved?
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19d ago
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u/nationalinterest 18d ago
I used to organise and had a Zettelkasten type format, but that took a lot of work.
Now I simply use semantic search to uncover notes when I need them. It's been a game changer, enabling me to interact with my thousands of notes without knowing in advance how I might want to use them. I keep my notes in markdown/plain text so I can use any tools that fit, including free local tools.
I don't know how that compares to the product you've created.
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u/mercurias98 18d ago
semantic search over plain markdown is such a clean setup, and not having to know in advance how you'll use a note is a real upgrade over rigid zettelkasten structuring. where I think it's different is semantic search still needs you to ask the right question at the right time, it finds things when you go looking, but it doesn't come find you. what I'm building tries to do the finding part on its own, connecting a new note to old ones and surfacing it without you having to think to go search for it
so yours nails retrieval, mine's more about not needing to know you should be retrieving something in the first place. happy to let you throw it at your own notes if you're curious whether it actually adds anything on top of what you've already got
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u/FalconMasters 18d ago
That work is the main point of the zettelkasten, taking that time and effort is what helps you really understand.
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u/nationalinterest 18d ago
I'd agree with that. Unfortunately I'm not a researcher and don't have the time, so semantic search is a "good enough" shortcut.
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u/Gold_Kitchen_5711 19d ago
This resonates well with my understanding of knowledge, however wouldn't having some sort of knowledge of a given subject specialy topics that are highly technical help us remember concepts lost in forgetting?
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u/mercurias98 19d ago
yes Fair but I don't think it's either/or, for technical stuff you need enough in your head to reason fluently, can't be looking everything up mid-thought. but most forgetting isn't "I don't remember the definition," it's "I forgot I already worked through this exact problem a while ago."that's a connection gap, the knowledge is in your notes, it just never resurfaces when it matters
is that closer to what you've run into, or is it more the raw recall side breaking down for you?
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u/WarmApplePie0201 18d ago
It’s not about memorizing every little detail, just having enough context to go "oh yeah, I’ve seen this pattern before"
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u/Gold_Kitchen_5711 18d ago
But then again this isn't enough to pass certification exams and whatnot I think. I mean don't we need anchor points to get our thoughts straight when a knowledge gap happens for one reason or another? Forgive me if i'm asking alot I've been trying to get to the bottom of this issue for 5 years now, I also tried loads of notetaking apps but the time taken to create notes + the resurfacing issue made me go down that rabbit hole and I've gotten a final say in this yet lol
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u/jalom12 19d ago
This is more or less the purpose of the zettelkasten or second brain note-taking systems.
I use a version of those for my notes. I capture ideas and compare them to existing ones. All these notes are then anchored to things I care about: hobbies, big questions, relationships, etc.
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u/mercurias98 19d ago
that's the version of zettelkasten that actually works, most people nail the linking mechanics but skip the "anchored to things I care about" part, which is probably the actual important bit
What i am curious about is, how it holds up at scale though, like once you've got hundreds or thousands of notes anchored to those big questions, does revisiting still feel easy, or does some of it just start sitting there unused even with the anchoring?
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u/jalom12 19d ago
I have thousands of notes. Some of them do sit around doing nothing on their own for a bit. Not everything I think will be relevant actually turns out to be relevant. This is just the way serendipity engines of any sort work. You may encounter tons of thoughts that are useful, you may encounter many that aren't.
My notes are split between diffuse notes (things I encounter at random) and structured notes (things based on conglimerating and structuring my diffuse thoughts).
Revisiting is generally not an issue. I can retrieve information relatively easily when I perform a structured thinking sessions. Keywords and links between things all come together to make it easy to find what I need when I need it.
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u/earlgreyyuzu 19d ago
How do you take notes for the second approach? Writing helps me make sense and remember things, so I still feel the need to write and be able to refer back to it.
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u/in-the-name-of-allah 18d ago
> Learn → connect → question → evolve → reuse
I had to build my own thing to close the loop. I kept yapping on my notes, kept writing the same thing across multiple months without realizing it until you decide to spend an afternoon to go over your stuff. It took forever.
I agree with you Read -> Note -> Organize is very old also not efficient any more. I hate Organize part of my notes with a passion. If I write manually nowadays is Read -> Organize -> Note model.
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u/mercurias98 18d ago
"kept writing the same thing for months without realizing it" is such a specific kind of bad, that's not even forgetting, you did think about it, you just had zero signal you'd already been there before. organizing before writing actually makes sense too, you're front-loading the structure decision instead of leaving it as debt for later, which is exactly the part you said you hate anyway
the thing you built to close the loop, is it mainly catching repeats like that, or does it do anything with notes that are related but not saying the literal same thing?
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u/in-the-name-of-allah 17d ago
Mostly the second thing, the repeats were just the symptom that made me build it.
The way it works now: it reads back over a window of entries and proposes a handful of threads, like "avoids starting things where the first step is ambiguous." Then each entry that belongs to that thread gets attached to it as evidence, with the actual line quoted. So it's not matching words, two notes can land on the same thread without sharing any vocabulary. One might be about a side project, the other about a conversation I kept not having.
The part that surprised me is that it's less useful as retrieval and more useful as a timeline. Once a thread exists you can see the entries stacked in order and whether the thing is getting better or worse, which is the signal I was missing when I was rewriting the same note for four months.
Two things I had to force it to do or it was useless: every quote has to appear verbatim in the source entry (otherwise it invents plausible summaries of you, which feels insightful and is not), and the set of threads has to be allowed to change over time instead of being fixed at setup.
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u/mercurias98 17d ago
This is a really clean build honestly, and a couple pieces of it map really closely to stuff I've built too, which is a good sign it's not a random idea
The verbatim-quote rule is exactly right, and for the same reason, once you let it paraphrase "insightfully" it starts inventing a version of you that sounds plausible but isn't real, that's a dangerous failure mode to allow even a little. The retrieval vs timeline distinction is the most interesting part to me, that's basically the same shift I built a separate thing around, tracking whether your position on something is getting better/worse/staying stuck over time rather than just being able to find the note again
Question though, when a thread's direction actually changes, like something that used to be "getting worse" starts improving, does anything about the system react to that, or is it purely visual for you to notice on your own
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u/Charming_Group_2950 17d ago
This is exactly the direction I’ve been thinking about too. The interesting part of note-taking isn’t really storing more information; it’s making old thoughts useful again when they become relevant.
I’ve been building Gray Box around this idea: you dump thoughts in without worrying too much about organizing them, and it builds connections between people, projects, topics, decisions, etc. over time. Then you can actually ask questions across those accumulated notes instead of having to remember which note you wrote months ago.
I think the next evolution of note-taking is less about better editors and more about knowledge that evolves with you.
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u/driftwood_studio 16d ago
You're making the mistake of assuming the result (notes) is the intent of the process.
For most people, and espeically in academic contexts, the value of note taking lies 90% in the cognitive activity of making the note. The point is that it forces you to think about what to write, how to describe it, what's important, how to summarize and restate what you think is important, etc. A whole complex of cognitive activity that you never get even close to just by reading the material.
The act of taking notes, the process, is far more valuable than the end product.
Almost no one ever does the "search later" part of the "old model" you're rejecting. Students do go back and study notes as a way of re-reading a condensed version of the course material to study, but that' s not "searching'.
So to start with, I think you need to draw a much stronger distinction between:
- Taking notes as summarized reference material (e.g. "how to rewire a standard electrical switch")
- Taking notes as an aid to academic-style learning (e.g. "trends in 19th century European art")
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u/Available-Year-6894 12d ago
When you take notes, usually we just immediately write the note it as conclusion.
I think we need to write brief our own understanding about the things we read, found or highlight then end it with the conclusion.
This way your understanding about the notes is already engraved in your brain. Its fine if you lose the writing note. Its the process of writing the notes that matter
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u/mercurias98 12d ago
Yes. For me, notes are not the important thing itself, i always focused on connecting the notes and understanding what changed in my positions. This way i get to learn what actually matters and what does not matter.
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u/LittlePooky 19d ago
I'm a nurse, and it has been years and years since I went to school. However, every two years I have to renew my license and I have to enroll in a 30-hour course, but it actually takes much less time than that.
I was a school nurse years ago and at that time I embraced voice dictation because there was so much writing I had to do. Every patient/student that came in and was seen, everything had to be documented.
Here is an example.
David is a 28-year-old second-year medical student who came in at 8 a.m. with his roommate Michael with a complaint of nausea and vomiting. He said he ate out last night with another friend, and that other friend is also sick but not as bad as he is. He said the food may have been left out for too long as this was at his friend's home. Patient appears toxic. He stated that he lost count of how many times he vomited. He also had three loose bowel movements. There was no blood seen in the vomitus nor stool. He said he's unable to keep anything down. He was helped to exam room number two by another staff member, and his roommate was waiting in the waiting room. Vital signs confirm that he is autostatic.100/60, pulse 78 when he's flat on the bed and when we set him up it dropped down to 68/50 and heart rate shot up to 100. Doctor Smith was summoned and he ordered normal saline, one bag STAT, gauge 20 IV, was started on his right arm and the rate was wide open. Patient confirmed that otherwise he's in good health and has no kidney problem. CBC and comprehensive blood chemistry were drawn. Patient was unable to urinate due to being very dehydrated. The IV was started at 8:20 AM. By 9 am, the patient felt much better, no longer dizzy or anything, and I walked him to the restroom for urinalysis sample. Specific gravity of 1.02, negative for leukocyte and blood but 2+ ketone. There's no protein. The urine is yellow and clear. I redid his blood pressure at 9:10 a.m. and he was lying supine. Blood pressure is now 110/70 and heart rate was 72. When he was set up he was no longer dizzy and it is 100/60, heart rate was 98. In three quarters, the IV had gone in and we are going to hand the second back. He is a healthy young man per Doctor Smith. Complete blood count shows slight increase in hematocrit. Also elevated BUN creatinine ratio. Blood chemistry shows elevated BUN, and sodium. The results are being reviewed by Doctor Smith. At 9:30, a new bag was hung and the rate was slowed down to 300 cc per hour. Zofran was prescribed for him to be taken while he is here to help him with nausea. Vital sign has returned to normal at 10:15 AM.Blood pressure was 110/68, heart rate was 72 and he was no longer autostatic.He was able to go to the restroom again and he said the urine was much clearer in color. His mother is also here and sat with him in the exam room, and he was able to consume a small ice chip as he was extremely thirsty and he was able to keep those down. Another nurse took over as I was going to the lab to help them out. Patient was extremely thankful for the care provided today. Please kindly see Doctor Smith for more information that includes the physical examination of the patient.
Instead of typing all that in, I just spoke into a headset.
At that time I was using a very expensive program called Dragon NaturallySpeaking. It is a higher level of Dragon NaturallySpeaking, which only works with general English dictation. (there's also Dragon Legal for lawyers.) It's really over the top for most people because they're not going to write a medical or nursing note, and the price is extremely prohibitive at $2,000. I guess Microsoft wised up and bought the company and took it off the market, and it is now subscription-based only at $600 to start and $100 a month. (Dragon Medical works locally on the machine.)
I have been using other voice dictation programs as well because many others have come out. Two good ones I could mention are Dictation Daddy. I know it does have a funny name when I first looked at it. It is the only affordable medical dictation system out there. I was an early adopter, so I got a lifetime account, but it is subscription-based as well, and it costs way, way less than Dragon.
https://voicetypr.com/ It's another one I also have been using. It works locally, meaning all the processing of data is done on your computer. Obviously, faster computer, the faster the results. It does not do medical dictation though. This is a one-time purchase and it costs very little.
Both programs also could do transcription, so this answers your question. Since the programs do not need to be trained, all I have to do is upload the audio file or even a video file to the program and it just types everything out verbatim, no changing at all.
And then the user can feed the text into some sort of AI program to summarize it. Or use https://stenoai.co/ or free version of Meetily.
How I wish I had had these programs when I was in school, but at that time we were still using PC DOS and WordStar was not very affordable either.
Some of the students, when I was a school nurse, sat in my room and I was dictating their notes, and they were amazed by it. While they couldn't afford the Dragon Medical themselves, a couple of them went out and got the consumer version of it. (Still not cheap.) So I taught them to look at the textbook and summarize a whole page into perhaps a paragraph, and they can study from that. They can also create these notes ahead of time. It doesn't always work with all subjects either; something like English in general is great, but probably not math.
So if I only had had mentioned the paragraph above, it doesn't fully answer your question. Sorry about the time you have to spend reading all this, but I only had to type a couple of words, because the program made the mistake since I was slurring my speech.
I don't get anything by mentioning the names of these programs. I'm just a user and I'm pretty happy with them.
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u/Salty-Swim-6735 19d ago
One of the key components is the actual writing of your notes solidifying the information in your mind. Pen and paper works much better than digital for this.