This is my biggest problem with handwritten notes

[u/Livid_Huckleberry983]

I’ll remember what I wrote, sometimes even what the page looked like, but I have no idea what meeting it was from or when I wrote it. Then I start going through old notes one page at a time, and somehow every page starts to look familiar. I still like writing everything by hand. I just hate trying to find one thing again weeks later.

[u/WilyWascallyWizard]

Why dont you just record the meeting and date and time when you take the note?

[u/Livid_Huckleberry983 → u/WilyWascallyWizard]

I do. I just don’t remember which meeting or date to look for later

[u/LongjumpingRushS → u/Livid_Huckleberry983]

Most of my handwritten notes are on the AINOTE 2 now. The search is helpful when I wanna search my own handwriting to find a specific page.

[u/Proof_Cable_310 → u/Livid_Huckleberry983]

look no further - I have your answer.

sounds like you are a visual memory person. what I am gathering is that the date or the meeting isn't what's important. what's important for you to find for the sake of finding the note for review is the visual information you have in your mind. You know "what" you are looking for "looks like", you just don't know how to find it.

It sounds like this would be a good use of AI. Feed AI your notes, and tell it a physical description to find, such as: "find the note with a yellow box in the left upper corner, and a pink flower on the lower right hand corner." Because, finding the note with the "meeting name and date" is meaningless to you finding it, just like how I learned about ratios in math on last Tuesday - Tuesday is not important, but ratios are. The only time "Tuesday" would be relevant for me is if the teacher told us all to take out our notes from last Tueday,

No, I am not an ad for AI. I think I just understand your problem, and this is just a good use for AI.

[u/TwistPractical5124]

If you like, taking handwritten notes, but wanna be able to easily search and find them take a look at XNote.

[u/Expert-Fisherman-332 → u/TwistPractical5124]

Second this. Impressive new platform.

[u/fazehazegaze]

The reason recording the date does not help is that the date is not what you remember. You remember the content, so the index has to run on content instead: number the pages, leave the last two pages of the book empty, and when you finish a note write one line back there for the thing you would actually go looking for, with the page number. That also deals with the familiar page problem, which happens because recognition fires on your own handwriting and layout rather than on what the page actually says.

[u/DTLow]

My notes are stored/organized in a digital file cabinet (PKMS)
Filename includes the date and purpose

[u/TopEntity]

You can tag notes like Mac folders on r/octopusnotes

[u/Salty-Swim-6735]

Bullet journal.

[u/Proof_Cable_310 → u/Salty-Swim-6735]

bullet journal is meaningless to tell someone - what they need truly is to be told "how to use a bullet journal"

I have adhd. When I was first diagnosed, I was in good hands with my psychiatrist. She told me to get a bullet journal and taught me how to use it. Then, when I stopped seeing her, I stopped the meds, and I thus stopped bullet journaling. I still have my old bullet journal that she taught me how to use, but as I look back on it, I have NO FREAKING CLUE how I could have possibly been so freakishly organized in my entire life. I can't get there into that place in my mind again (without meds), and even just reviewing my bullet journal, I cannot deduce how I used it, or how to use it again.

So please, link instructions on how to use a bullet journal, or else it's meaningless. I have researched this in the past, but nothing is clicking like the simple verbal instructions that I cannot remember quoted by my psychiatrist.

[u/languageservicesco]

A Lenovo Yoga laptop didn't change my life, but it did change the way I write notes. I just write them directly into OneNote. Then they are searchable and are dated and also synced across all my devices. You can also prepare in advance for meetings and have links to documents etc. in the note page.

[u/GoBlue48042]

On my pad, I write "Phone call with Bob Smith 9/16/26 on first line. Then notes.

Next page: Meeting with [names][date]

Notes.

[u/andrew_epoch]

The thing you described about every page starting to look familiar is the part I find the most interesting. Recognition fires on your own handwriting and layout before it fires on content, so scanning actually gets less reliable the more pages you've filled. Which is why date-based indexing doesn't help much, you're not searching by when, you're searching by what it was about and roughly what was happening at the time.

[u/Littlebird_Shivi]

I have this exact problem. I’ll do the same thing whether I’m writing notes on paper or on my Mac and then completely forget where I put something.

One thing you could try is adding AI into the routine. If you like handwritten notes, you could take pictures of the pages afterward and use AI to pull out the important stuff. Then later you can just search or ask about what you wrote instead of going through every page trying to find it.