The Art of Note Taking

Published

One of my recent passions that I have dived into since getting my new personal computer is note taking. I have been bouncing between different platforms and formats for my notes, but its all in the interest of figuring out how I can better reflect on my ideas and thoughts later on.

Some of the tools I have been using include:

  • This Notebook published on my personal site - most likely the location that you are reading this article now
  • A running logbook on Dropbox Paper
  • A private GitHub repo where I am storing markdown files

Each of these formats I have used slightly differently, and each I use to collect or share a different idea.

I've been thinking about using my notebook as a digital garden of sorts, a place where I can share more free-form, less polished content than I would on my blog1.

My logbook on Dropbox Paper I use to mostly track thoughts and highlights from work, I've been doing this for about 6 months now and I'm hoping that it will help me prepare better for doing peer reviews as we enter our performance review cycle.

Finally, the newest addition I have been exploring with has been a private GitHub repo that I store markdown files within. Each of these files I title with the date, and I begin typing whatever comes to my mind. I am exploring this as something like a Zettlekasten of sorts, mostly just a log of thoughts, concepts, internal monologue.

Through all of this, I am getting better at understanding things worth capturing and also the things that aren't worth capturing. One of the culminating thoughts that I have noticed is that note taking is imperfect, it has rough edges, in many ways it can become like an art.


Footnotes

  1. not that any of my blog posts are polished anyway ↩

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