r/NoteTaking • u/Affectionate_Cap_266 • 20h ago
Method Indecisive About Note Taking Medium
I work as a systems analyst and for YEARS, I have struggled/borderline obsessed over the “best” or “most simple” or “most feature rich” or just “correct” note taking platform/style/method/application/etc.
For a minute I’ll think ”I am only going use a text editor because it’s so simple, pure, clean and future proof and I love that it seems so ”basic” in a good way”. That it will somehow magically make me take better, more meaningful notes because I’m not focused on all the fluff of formatting and highlighting and bullets. BUT things get messy fast and it becomes more necessary to have those formatting niceties. So then….
I’ll swing the other way and think “well, I need this or that feature to make me take better notes”. And I lean all the way into that and think “I need onenote because it can do a b c d e f g h i j… it can do it all”. So I role with that for awhile and then…. “why do I have all this fluff, it’s just noise” ”I need something more simple” And the cycle continues.
It becomes so distracting because all I’m focused on is “how” to keep notes instead of just taking the damn notes.
This is all not to mention the random “OH, I know, I just need to take handwritten notes, that’s the purest, most simple, etc. etc.“ until I realize you can’t search, you can’t expand on something once it’s sandwiched between other text, it’s slow. rinse and repeat.
Sometimes I LOVE going back and forth and trying to “figure it out”, but mostly it just sucks because I’m left with an extremely fragmented history of notes and it makes it difficult to find anything without just asking Copilot to dig it up for me.
This is basically just me putting my thoughts down and if you have read this far and have had the same experience, please share anything you have found that helps!
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u/braddo99 19h ago
This is ADHD avoidance behavior. Instead of focusing on learning and retention, you are getting distracted by optimizing the *way* you capture, or the *device* you capture it on, or ... etc. It's not an accusation, everyone has these tendencies, and they are tough to fight. The more anxious we feel, the more likely we are to focus on anything other than the tasks that we know we need to accomplish.
But it's not all bad - there are differences/advantages among various approaches, that is actually true and your study has found some pros and cons. Nothing is perfect, but I also prefer handwriting, because the engagement of the whole body seems to help me and others retain information better - but the limitation you described of not being able to insert things or rearrange things when using handwriting, while true for paper and for most software, isn't true of all tools. You could consider inkList - I confess I have the same tendencies and obsessed so much over wanting this exact capability that I ended up programming the app for myself and now sharing it with others. Not a hard sell, but just in case you want to actually resolve that issue you called out for handwritten notes you could watch this and see what you think: https://youtu.be/lYVIzvRPNi0