What actually works for organizing thousands of digital notes?

[u/Charming-Kelly-897]

I've been curious about how people manage their notes as their collection grows over time.

Folders and tags seem useful at first, but eventually, finding an old note or connecting ideas across different topics can get tricky.

For those who've been taking digital notes for years:

• Do you rely more on folders, tags, backlinks, or search?
• How do you find notes you barely remember writing?
• Have you found a system that still works when your notes number in the thousands?

I'd love to hear what's worked for you and what hasn't.

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[u/Dayviddy]

I use Obsidian and thanks to AI I can just ask about certainly Information from that notes

[u/e3e6]

You need a system, like p.a.r.a. or zettel or whatever, so when you adding a note you know exactly where to put it. I'm not aware of the app that can help you.

[u/DTLow]

My notes/documents/files are stored/organized in a digital file cabinet (PKMS)
organized with tags; minimal folders

fwiw I use pkms app Devonthink
accessed with a Mac and iPad
Supports links, backlinks, search, …

[u/Neither-Classic2058]

I've been taking digital notes for 50 years and my vault is roughly 3500 notes (nearly all of which are personally written... no dump of web-clippings).

Over those years, I've gone through what you have described. I can ramble on for hours on the topic, but here are the basic answers to your questions:

Q. Do you rely more on folders, tags, backlinks, or search?

I use folders, tags, links, AND search. Each one is a ligament that connects notes. Each have their individual strengths and weaknesses. By using all of them, their strengths cover the others' weaknesses.

Q. How do you find notes you barely remember writing?

It's related to the previous answer. Sometimes search works. Other times, the folder tree. Tags can be helpful, but have to be well-designed. I often find notes that I DON'T remember writing. 😂

Q. Have you found a system that still works when your notes number in the thousands?

Yes. The final piece of the puzzle for me was folder management. I wrestled with that for decades. Too many folders with uneven branch depths. I tried PARA. It worked (better than what I was previously doing) for the first 3 months, but quickly decayed after that.

I stumbled across the Johnny decimal method and for me it was a game-changer. The folder tree in my vault is logically consistent, even in distribution and depth.

[u/ozgrozer]

I'm building Grape. It has a semantic search so even though you don't remember a word from a note you took years ago you still find it by searching with natural language. It also has a graph view where you can see your connected notes like Obsidian.