Here is my current note-taking workflow. I’ve not used it for very long, and I’m currently reading material on this subject, so I suspect this is going to change in the near future to adapt to feedback from usage and study.
- Record a fleeting note, try to get at least one tag. I make a folder for broad areas (books, projects, subjects) and try to put fleeting notes in folders.
- On a scheduled (currently weekly) basis I collect my thoughts together and make a literature note. This is supposed to be a more polished short article-like note about a particular subject.
- On an ad-hoc basis I put together permanent notes by editing together the literature notes and producing more fleeting notes in the process.
If I’m sitting at my computer then this is easy. I simply create fleeting notes as I think of them. I notice that the “On a weekly basis” bit (step 2 up there) isn’t always true. I will often do this step when I wrap up a chapter or a book.
If I’m not sitting at my computer though, the ingestion step is more difficult. For this I depend on having either my phone or a notebook with me. As soon as I can (at least daily) I take what I record on my phone or a physical device and turn it into a fleeting note.
Looking Forward
I have seen the concept of a “Map of Content” as a way to provide a physical (well, virtually physical?) place to record an explicit list of notes that support a single idea (as opposed to the implicit list one gets from looking at tags). I’ve not used this idea yet, but I suspect I will once my set of notes reaches some critical mass.
developerly.info 