Question
Do you have a strategy to combine all your notes from every app?
I tend to find I write notes in a variety of apps—handwritten notes on paper or in Apple Notes on the iPad, quick typed notes in iA Writer or Tot, research in Roam Research, detailed notes to save long term in Notion. Each app has its benefits and feels like it fits that specific note-taking stage better, but then I also end up needing to search across multiple apps whenever I’m looking for a note and can’t remember off-hand where I wrote it.
Do you have any strategy to get all your notes together in one place? Do you just force yourself to use a single notes app, or do you have a workflow to move notes between apps at different stages? With hand-written notes, do you take a photo of your notes and add them to an app, or screenshot digital handwritten notes?
Would love to hear your note management strategies!
Mentioned
#Google Keep #Evernote #Notion #Quip #Coda #Roam Research #Notes #Writing #Slite #Basecamp #Dropbox #Todoist #Trello #Pipedrive #Fellow #Hugo #Things #Zapier #Stream #Drafts #TickTick #Internal #Google DriveShare
An article in The Information recently did a review of note-taking apps(https://www.theinformation.com/articles/tech-execs-are-obsessing-over-note-taking-apps-we-tested-them-out), and my response there is similar to what I'll post here:
I have two needs: 1) a personal knowledge archive / second brain and 2) collaborative note-taking and sharing of meeting minutes with my colleagues
For #1:
I've used Bear for years and I still love it. Tried Notion & Coda and abandoned them both for notes / knowledge capture. I still use Coda as a low-code rapid app thingy (spreadsheets on steroids). I'm diving into Roam now and holding out hope for Athens. Worst case, I'll keep using Bear, but if there are gains to be had with a PKG then I am open to migrating. App speed and fluidity is important to me, which is one reason I haven't been able to stop using Bear. Hosted solutions in the cloud make for janky writing surfaces IMO
For #2:
My team piloted Hugo.team for collaborative note-taking and sharing. Hugo had all the right goals, but bad execution. We recently switched to Fellow.app and are MUCH happier. Fellow's own website is targeted at manager-managee relationships (1-on-1 performance reviews, goal setting, etc). We do not use it for this at all. The platform is great for our sales teams to capture notes during a call with a customer (sales CRMs like Pipedrive have this, but they do not make polished writing surfaces). We use Fellow for all of our non-engineering meetings (which use Atlassian products instead).
Finally, I know OP asked about notes and not Todo's / Action Items, but Fellow's handling AI's across teams has been better than Todoist's own business plan. Todoist AI's lacked context; we had some janky automation to embed backlinks between Todoist AI's and their corresponding meeting minutes ... but it just sucked. Having meeting minutes and action items in one app has been transformative.
In summary: yes, I'm trying to move towards "one app for notes" as OP asked, but I have two categories of notes (private notes vs collaborative business notes), and each requires a different tool.
Coda is really great for a rapid app platform. I run a fitness group on Reddit with weekly check-ins, and I maintain a fairly popular training log written in Coda for it:
https://coda.io/@turqeee/turqeees-training-log-2020
The coda folks have reached out to try to promote it somehow but I haven't had the time...
RE: Fellow, the main benefits are:
1) Todo's / Action Items are integrated into note-taking app. We had previously used Hugo for taking collaborative meeting notes, and it had integration with Todoist which seemed great at the time as we used Todoist to track back office AIs. However, using two tools was a pain since often the Action Items in Todoist lacked context and we had to reference the note in Hugo to get the full picture. Fellow wraps all of this up quite nicely.
In general I find that individuals can get away with Zapier and all sorts of APIs hacks to have The Perfect Setup, but those same setups tend to not scale well for organizations. Sometimes you need a really well designed tool that brings all (or most) of the functionality under one roof.
2) The writing surface is decent. I'm told that they are moving to CommonMark (yay!). Slash commands are okay. There are still bugs / weird behaviors when switching rapidly between Bullet Points, Talking Points & Action Items, but it's livable.
Hugo's writing surface made us sad. Coda's collaborative writing surface makes me sad. Notion's is OK, but at the time I eval'd Notion I was looking for a powerful database / app builder and Notion completely fails there (especially compared to Coda).
3) The concept of note "Streams" has been very powerful for my team. At first we only used Fellow to take notes for "Meetings", which were auto-populated in the app based on Google Calendar integrations. But Fellow urges users to also explore Streams, which are basically persistent topics that are comprised of a linear series of notes. In fact, we quickly realized that Meetings in Fellow are just an special kind of Stream tied to calendar events.
As an example, you could have a Stream dedicated to periodic review of a direct report (classic Fellow use case). Instead of searching through your calendar to find past 1-on-1 meetings, they are all grouped together in the Stream. We use streams to track sales leads for customer projects (e.g. a new stream for each active sales lead). We also use them for back office topics like "Org", "Weekly Project Management Review" or tracking OKRs and KPIs on a periodic basis. Streams are an opinionated workflow that won't work for everyone, but they are flexible enough to be useful in a number of scenarios while being structured enough to encourage some best practices.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that Streams in Fellow allow the option carry forward uncompleted Talking Points and Action Items from one note to the next. This can be done on a case by case basis. It's a really smart way to focus on what matters and not get lost in Action Item Noise
Great point on moving tasks between platforms making them lose context. If copying tasks with Zapier, the trick I've used is to include a link to the original task—so, say, our team would plan stuff in Trello, and I'd have Zapier add my assigned tasks to my personal todo list in Things, and it'd include a link to the original Trello card so I could go back and get context if needed while ensuring I didn't forget the task itself. But you're right: That works better for personal setups than team ones.
The only "perfect" writing apps I've ever used are always individual-focused native apps for writing such as iA Writer, Byword, et al. No team writing tool has ever hit that spot for me.
Interesting: Streams sounds almost like a more persistent chat thread. Could definitely see that being useful.
I’m using The Archive (https://zettelkasten.de/the-archive/) as my primary note-taking tool.
Inside the app, I’m writing everything that’s just for my eyes. For client work where I share information, I cannot use this tool (but I have Basecamp for that purpose).
The Archive has it’s own cross-linking feature and allows tags.
Plus: Files are stored in plain Markdown and I can move the folder that is including all files wherever I want. Right now, all files are being synced through Sync.com (a privacy-aware Dropbox alternative).
If I want to integrate images, I’m using a "media" sub-folder, uploading them there, and adding the filename as a reference into a new note.
For me, close to 100% control about my data is what matters most to me.
@naii You're the second person to recommend The Archive to me this week. What got you to pick it for your core note taking—and curious, did you start using it this year, or had you used it before Roam Research made wiki-linking so popular?
Storing files locally in markdown is definitely appealing, as that's why I write primarily in iA Writer and/or Ulysses. Do you have a companion mobile app you use with your The Archive notes?
So then basically you end up writing most of your notes in The Archive, then when you have something to share with the team you copy it out and publish it into Basecamp?
I began using The Archive as my primary note-taking tool back in March 2018, so I have used it before Roam made wiki-like-linking popular. Here is my original tweet from March 15, 2018.
And I have many reasons why I did:
- It’s an indie developer (actually two), and I like supporting the indie community, not some faceless companies
- 100% control about my data (as said above)
- The guys are German, and I’m German too, so that might have had an impact since there are not so many apps from German indie dudes that I find appealing (though I’m happy to support the international community of indie hackers/makers - and I am actively supporting the int’l community through being a paying customer)
- They are actively working on the project - it’s not some hobby thing
- It fits my kind of thinking
- Its design is settled and subtle (no shiny-bling-bling)
- It’s a work-horse, it just works!
- You pay once and you get updates forever (as far as I know)
> Storing files locally in markdown is definitely appealing, as that's why I write primarily in iA Writer and/or Ulysses. Do you have a companion mobile app you use with your The Archive notes?
That’s the only downside - but it’s an OK disadvantage for me. I use 1Writer on my iPhone, and I’m letting it sync through Dropbox since Sync.com currently does not allow an integration/API that 1Writer could use. That’s a bummer, but ok for me. Note-taking on the phone is not my primary activity and if I really want to move a note (that was originally written on my mobile) to "my The Archive system", I simply copy-paste. I’m ok to be doing the manual work.
> So then basically you end up writing most of your notes in The Archive, then when you have something to share with the team you copy it out and publish it into Basecamp?
Yes, that’s my way of doing things for especially longer notes or even commissioned projects (e.g. SEO texts or email campaigns).
If it’s simple back-and-forth on Basecamp, I only write it in Basecamp (because I know - if needed - I could export all data from Basecamp and access it through generated HTML files, and could potentially import/copy-paste them into my The Archive system — again, doing manual work is ok for me.)
p.s. Just to be transparent here, I’m also using Evernote as a note-taking tool but only in the sense of saving websites or other things from the web that I feel doesn’t have to be stored in my The Archive system but I would like to have it stored somewhere. So, you could say my system is a bit scattered but I like it this way - organized "chaos" somewhat :P
p.p.s. This comment is written in The Archive ;) (because I’m also archiving each online interaction that I consider valuable just to have it store locally cuz, you know, online platforms come and go, and then losing conversations is painful)
Thanks for sharing your story, that’s so cool!
There are a number of neat software startups from Germany. Ulysses and Things are two iOS/Mac apps from German teams, and Wunderlist pre-Microsoft acquisition was from Germany as well.
Evernote’s web clipper is its best feature—that kept me using Evernote long after I’d quit using it for standard notes. That, and its Google integration that shows your Evernote notes alongside your normal search results.
Seems like organize chaos is more the norm than I expected :)
You’re very welcome :)
There are a number of neat software startups from Germany. Ulysses and Things are two iOS/Mac apps from German teams, and Wunderlist pre-Microsoft acquisition was from Germany as well.
Indeed there are.
That’s why I added "that I find appealing" to what I said ;)
Plus: I like supporting solo-developers (or really small teams). Ulysses currently has 17 employees, and Things has 9 employees. They are doing without my support.
And Wunderlist, well, yeah they were based in Berlin (as far as I know) and I liked what they were doing, but when mother Microsoft ate them I lost interest.
Evernote’s web clipper is its best feature—that kept me using Evernote long after I’d quit using it for standard notes. That, and its Google integration that shows your Evernote notes alongside your normal search results.
The exact same for me!
Seems like organize chaos is more the norm than I expected :)
haha Am I surprised? I’m actually not sure :P
Oh wow, just realized the team behind The Archive also built TableFlip. That’s super cool.
TableFlip is super cool! Yep, yep, yep :)
I also like Christian’s WordCounter app. Especially when you think it was not such a productive, you can look at your stats and feel a lil more satisfied :)
Cheers,
- Alex
For notes and for reminders I am currently using 1 tool as much as possible which is Notion. If I find some notes which is still in a tool which I am migration off of (for example Google Keep) then I move that into Notion.
(Plus I also use Todoist for todos, events and recurring tasks.)
It would be great if features from Todoist would be available in Notion as well (or the other way around or in another app). This would make it more easier to review content and keep order.
Currently I am not using handwritten notes anymore since a long time. It is hard to manage them. I guess at some point there will be better tools for (digital) handwritten notes. Do we need them until then at all or is better to take notes with Notion for example which limits us (possibly in a good way to be more organized compared to handwritten notes)?
@kireerik Nice, awesome that Notion covered all your note-taking needs. Curious: Where do you usually put random, off-the-cuff notes? One thing that's tough with Notion is that it feels like you always need to put notes somewhere and so have to think about where the note should go when you start writing it, which is one reason I don't tend to start writing notes in Notion, instead copying finished notes over from other apps.
On Todoist, have you tried migrating your task management into Notion, and if so, what was the biggest missing feature that kept you using Todoist?
Handwritten notes are tough to manage. The funny thing is I find I remember stuff better when I write it by hand, which makes the actual handwritten copy less important—and then if something's really important I can type it up later (and/or take a photo). Handwriting recognition is getting better, though—it's pretty great in Goodnotes, and iPadOS now lets you handwrite and turn that into typed text in any text field which is a cool inbetween (though it only works for English and Chinese so far). Maybe writing eventually will be just another standard text input method alongside the keyboard and dictation.
For those type of notes I have a database called notes with a gallery view. Within this notes database I have a template called folder which creates an untiteled note database (within the root one) with the same gallery view setup. So I can organize the notes as needed. If I need a new "folder" (database) within another one then I create the folder in the root and move it into the other folder. This way I can somewhat easily nest them indefinitely and move the notes around and organize them.
Now I have noticed that I can even create a template within the database (folder) that is within the template. So I can create a certain deepness within the folder template and that way I don't need to create the folder at an upper level until I reach the deepness defined by the template.
Well as I wrote I am using Todoist for todos, events and recurring tasks that are somewhat time sensitive. I manage non time sensitive todos in Notion in different Kanban boards (database with Kanban view). (I have very few tasks in Todoist.)
There is 4 features that kept me using Todoist for the 3 use cases I described above:
1. The indefinitely scrollable upcoming view
2. Ability to indefinitely nest projects ("folders") on the left
3. Recurring tasks
4. Google Calendar integration for events
For the 1. the Notion calendar view could work, but it is not the same. It shows too much at once which is distracting. I could create some inline filtered views for the upcoming days, but it wouldn't be the same, because it would only go as far as I have created it (just like with my folder template). This can be fine though because after couple of upcoming days the gallery view is more useful anyway.
Also I think with Notion I would need to switch the view to be able to drag and drop items that are on the same day.
I would also need to use 1 database.
Which would be fine if the 2. missing feature would be added to the select property type. And I could create links for the views to each project and I can folderize those links as I wish. So that would be fine that way.
For 3. Notion could introduce let's say recurring dates.
Plus in general Todoist feels more like an app and not like a website. It is faster and has a better more minimalistic (and nice, clean) design. Notion only has a good enough design. I would prefer if it would have a design similar to Todoist.
Maybe handwritten notes are good for you then if let's say you are giving a speech and for off the brain storage using a note taking application is better I think (which eventually can even include using digital pens).
I'm the founder of slite.com, originally a note app for teams that expanded to much more. In the early days of it, I spent a massive amount of time thinking about this topic.
The generic term "note" actually encompasses hundreds of different habits, and the beauty of digital is we can shape products and form factors to fit perfectly each of them.
In a personal environment, I personally have 3-4 apps holding content:
- Google Keep to store ideas. The fluidity of creation, the great visualisation of docs, the form factor made for short content makes it great for that.
- At some point an app called Byword for writing articles. The markdown compatibility and a focus mode with nothing but what you typed on the screen was awesome for this use case
- And of course Slite for all things related to my work, my running tasks, personal thinking on what we do, on top of all things we need to share and centralise as a team.
Short answer: yes definitely multiple app for multiple type of notes 😉And when it's important enough, I do transfer physical notes to digital, and use this moment to rework on the topic, cutting down the useless bit and making the doc shorter.
@Christophepas Love your perspective from having built a notes app—albeit one that I had never thought of as a notes app, thanks to your product's current focus. Great job in finding a niche in team documentation to target!
Neat to hear you've got a similar workflow. What you said about Byword is exactly why I like iA Writer and Ulysses. So much easier to write without having to worry about formatting.
Do you use any automations to pull notes from other sources into Slite, or just copy/paste?
Well the only bits I transfer need to be reworked.
I actually love to use this transfer from something with a short half life, like a note book, to something more long lasting like Slite to refine my thoughts, cut down the useless bits & so on!
Ahh great call—the process of moving gives you a chance to edit and revise!
I use combination of Bear, Notion, Trello and Uncluttered. I used it following purpose:
- Bear Pro as Storing ideas, Podcast notes, Writing Final Scripts because somehow i feel creative on Bear. It's my iphone note taking tool as well.
- Notion as notepad for brainstorming and research notes.
- Notion as Dashboard for frequently needed content like (User persona, Positioning, Keywords etc. needed as Marketing input)
- Trello for Feature ideas, Ad hoc Task in single board
- Uncluttered for Mac helps to store temp notes to be added fast while working on Mac.
This is something i am endup having after trying lot of experiment.
I am founder of early age startup, Fasproc.
Ohh Unclutter's a blast from the past—I haven't used that in years, but used to love it to make dragging-and-dropping files easier.
Have you tried moving your feature ideas workflow to a kanban board in Notion, or are there any features that have kept you using Trello?
Fastproc looks really cool—almost an outlining app designed for work processes. Best of luck on it!
For me as well it looks like that you could possibly replace Trello and maybe even Bear with Notion.
@akash_kotadia Thanks for the offer! Don't think I'd be able to use it right now, but best of luck on rolling out your beta!
I started out with OneNote for a few years. Then used Evernote for almost 5 years. I also looked into Notion, Quip, and Google Keep. Ultimately I've left them all and consolidated into a single desktop + mobile app - DEVONthink 3 (https://www.devontechnologies.com).
DEVONthink does feel like an organized file manager, with the ability to create notes easily and add files to a "database". There is a small learning curve , around 4-5 hours to figure everything out , but the pay off is worth it.
Some features that I really like:
- The search is one of the best I've ever used (including search inside PDF files), and matching/relevance percentages.
- A floating collapsable notes "drawer" allow for a quick scratch pad for note taking
- Syncs desktop and mobile, without any extra monthly subscription fees (I already have iCloud storage)
- Ability to have secondary backups to any disk location (home NAS setup)
- Ability to find duplicate files / same contents different name
- Built in file viewer
- Custom scripts
Some cons to it:
- It's not the prettiest of app admittedly
- The built in spreadsheet isn't the friendliest
- A little pricy for a one time cost of $99 for the desktop, and another license for iPhone / iPad edition.
@faruque Nice! DevonThink always seemed like an app I would like but I never got myself to commit enough to switch.
Is its built-in spreadsheet just a table, or an actual spreadsheet with formulas?
Does the in-PDF search include OCR for searching inside photos for text?
On price, isn’t it funny how that upfront cost feels so expensive, but then a subscription can easily add up to that over a couple years but seems normal?
The tables are really just a table, saved in TSV format. Useful to make a quick tabulation of information, but not much beyond that.
On the PDF side, if you get the professional version - it comes with a complete OCR (built-in OCR is based on the ABBYY FileReader).
Regarding pricing - when I did the math, it's worth the investment. It came with a 30 day trial period, and 15 days in I made the purchase decision.
I also currently shifting my workflow to use DEVONthink with DEVONthink To Go (iOS). With iPadOS' new scribble feature, I can write journal with Apple Pencil.
I will add more Pros:
+ supports *.webarchive file format. I use it for web archiving too. which means it can also act as "Bookmark Manager", which you can [[wiki-link]] your bookmarked page from your notes.
+ in theory, by reading the documentations, you can use this as Todo manager, store video/voice note, asset management, manage highlights/annotation in books
more Cons:
- add up to the "[...] not the prettiest of app admittedly", the UX also often unexpected.
- long period between updates.
Before using DEVON stack, I used Emacs. It has:
- Org-mode → write notes that is time-based, track and manage schedule & todos.
- Org-roam → note taking, journaling, PKM. works side-by-side with Org-mode and bunch of other extensions.
Most extensible text editors has their own PKM extension: Vim has vim-wiki, VSCode has Foam. Emacs' extension by far is the best. Org-roam manages backlinks and unlinked reference.
The manual approach with extensible text editors is good, but demands your time. Also, there is no mobile app for them. That's why I am shifting to DEVONtech stack
Bit late to the conversation, but trying my two cents in because I finally have a system that works for me. I've been on a wander for years trying out plenty of apps and systems and methodologies. I've been burned by lost data and subscription hikes and vendor lock-in too many times.
I decided several years ago that I want to control my content with generic markdown files stored locally. Tried many mardown apps, especially Typora. Got caught up with Notion and Roam, but frustrated by lost data and slow glitchy webapps. Discovered Obsidian and fell in love.
So many positives that it is hard to list everything, but mostly it is back to generic markdown saved locally. Internal linking and tagging. Customizable interface. Active development and community. Logical organization tools.
I've been migrating notes and clips and content in as I build my own personal knowledge base. So easy to stay organized and interconnected. Syncing with Dropbox so I can read and edit on iPad, but mostly stick to laptop.
I'm a college instructor and I've started using Obsidian to build full interlinked courses with content, handouts, schedules, notes, etc. Hosting those on Google Drive because I have to. Google doesn't play well with markdown, but I can use StackEdit from any browser. I convert the markdown to HTML and upload to my school's LMS.
I've used tons of to do apps over the years. Just moved to TickTick after years with Todoist because of the integrated calendar. Quick notes get dumped into TickTick for future processing in Obsidian. These days everything ends up in Obsidian.
Keep a paper sketchbook for quick notes when away from technology. Finding that I'm using it less and less though.
So, yeah, that's what works for me.
Thanks for sharing your system here @mister-chad!
What are you using to edit your Obsidian notes on iPad? Of all things, really feels like there is still an opening for a wiki-style notes app on iPad, as Roam is still web app only, and Obsidian is focused on desktop. Notion's apps are ok, but could definitely be improved on mobile.
I'm with you on paper notes too. I love writing then, but end up doing it less over time. Or rather, it comes and goes, as I'll use paper more for a spell then end up back where I started with digital notes.
I use four apps:
1) "Drafts" to capture ideas and thoughts immediately. Sometimes I use my iWatch dictation capabilities. Thes notes have to disappear after being processed.
2) "Bear" to hold notes that I need frequently and quickly.
3) "Roam" for thoughts regarding learning and research.
4) "Notion" for naturally structured information, mainly about projects. Sometimes I use links between "Roam" and "Notion."
For a while, I considered moving from Roam to Notion only, but Roam's automatic linking enamored me. Besides, creating a page in Roam and being able to find all the unrelated notes got me.
I am still experimenting with this scheme, but up until now, it has worked fine.
In the end, I use three tools to hold all my data.
@rgonzaleza Nice setup! Do you have a workflow to send Drafts notes into Roam and/or Notion?
Not right now because I process personally the notes, and sometimes I fix or discard some of them. But that can be done in Roam or Notion too. I will think about it. Thanks.
Looking for a better way to plan remote meetings across time zones, and keep up with events. What software is doing that best today?
@mturquette Great way to split it into two sides of the note-taking process. The first is saving stuff to remember and working through your own ideas, the latter is publishing things of record, to a degree. And that makes the argument for two apps much cleaner. If anything, you could expand that, to have something to capture ideas, somewhere to process ideas, and somewhere to publish them to your team.
Coda is fascinating for its spreadsheet-style formulas inside text—not something I'd use all the time, but I've written a few reports in it and it's wild seeing values update in the text document when you change stuff in the table.
Fellow looks interesting—focused solely on meetings, but that's what so many team notes are written about. Clever niche to carve out. Equally fascinating that's not how you use it :). What made Fellow specifically better for team notes for your team?