My note-taking journey
A samurai has no goal, only a path (c).
At some point, the flow of incoming information becomes very large and powerful like the Niagara Falls. Naturally, the thought arises - to WRITE DOWN this information. The second thought is to create a NOTE ORGANIZATION SYSTEM because while writing it down is good, the recorded information needs to be searched and used, preferably with minimal effort between these points.
I’ve tried most of the popular note-taking apps, from Notion to Obsidian and OneNote. All excellent apps with interesting concepts and rich functionality, but in the end, it became the reason why I rejected them.
The number of blocks for customizing the interface in Notion and plugins in Obsidian is overwhelming. You can endlessly browse plugins and come up with templates for all life cases. Unfortunately, all these actions have nothing to do with the main task of notes - to store information in an “external brain” and then use it. Numerous options and settings are disguised procrastination - you seem busy all day, but in fact, you haven’t produced anything useful.
After I discarded all the fluff and stopped spending time setting up the system, it turned out that I don’t need these sophisticated apps. Apple Notes and Bear are very minimal and perfect for note-taking. They both perfectly integrated into the Apple ecosystem and free. To sync Bear, you’ll have to pay around $20 per year. The main difference between them is that Apple Notes uses Rich Text Formatting, while Bear uses Markdown. At the moment Notes adopts Markdown, I will cancel the Bear Pro subscription without regret. The use of tags is also slightly different. Notes have Smart folders - a very convenient feature, while Bear doesn’t have that, but it has multi-level tags.
Obsidian reveals its potential only if you need to maintain a personal Wikipedia with cross-references, and Notion - when group access of people with different tasks is required. Bear or Apple Notes provide enough functionality for 95% of users and cases!
My note-taking process is very simple. Practically throughout the day, I manage with one file in which I write down thoughts, reminders, and maintain a list of tasks that I need to do. I periodically go through this list - work-related items go into JIRA, personal ones into email, or, if the task takes little time and doesn’t require explanations, I do it right away. Usually I don’t tag notes immediately, I do it during weekly review.
In general, for now, I’ve decided to stick with Bear as the main system and Apple Notes for quick notes.