December 15, 2021 โข Life
Taking Notes ๐
I try not to switch up my tools too many times.
Iโve fallen into that trap of having lists, notes, storage of my thoughts all over the place and then when it comes to writing notes or things I need to do: suddenly I have nowhere to put it.
Well, scratch that – I have a lot of places I can put it, but nowhere that feels trustworthy to be its long-term home if that makes sense?
With that said, I did find a new tool that sort of blew my mind, and since then, I have been trying to adapt my note-taking workflow to it.
My note-taking apps
๐ LogSeq
LogSeq describes themselves as:
A privacy-first, open-source platform for knowledge management and collaboration.
If youโre familiar with Obsidian, youโll probably also like LogSeq, which is very similar in terms of features. I tried Obsidian for the first time when I started my new job at Gitpod earlier in the year. I didnโt enjoy the experience as much as I thought I would (surprised that productivity YouTubers didnโt make me productive!)
This thought was interesting because it was a reminder that there are so many tools to help cater to different people. Weโre all so diverse; specific tools may not work for all.
Specifically, Obsidian didnโt work for me because I enjoy taking bullet point notes. LogSeq does that out of the box! I know I could have just written bullet points myself, but itโs different when the way the application was designed with folks like me in mind: who liked taking bullet point notes.
Obsidian had used such as writing markdown files, but it didnโt feel as nice as where I usually write my markdown files, which is in the trustworthy Bear app that Iโve used for years.
My use case for LogSeq: daily note taking for work and life. I have a database called โBrainโ which is mostly my work brain, and another called โLifeโ which is my life brain (, e.g. digesting therapy sessions or learnings from a book/podcast)
Another favourite feature is building out this work brain to see all the connections Iโm learning. Itโs pretty cool.
My work brain gets the most daily notes because honestly, I learn so much at work, feels like every minute of the day sometimes ๐
Thank you to Matt for sharing LogSeq with me in the first place. ๐ Also, a shoutout to the LogSeq team for merging my PR to improve contributions to their docs using Gitpod. ๐
๐ Bear
How many times have I talked about Bear on my blog? A quick search would probably tell you that 90% of my blog mentions Bear. ๐ It is that good, though!
As I said above, Iโve been using Bear to write markdown files for years now. Bear fits into my daily workflow as the app I open when writing a blog post, a newsletter for DevX Digest or some dialogue for a podcast or other media projects.
I previously used Bear for everything including my bullet-point note-taking. Still, no matter how much I attempted to organise my notes, it just didnโt work. Now, I exclusively use Bear for writing. Thatโs it. It was a welcome change because now, I know itโs time to write when I open Bear! My brain is ready to go!
๐ Appleโs Notes
Unfortunately, LogSeq isnโt very accessible on my phone (and Iโve just got it working well on my iPad, sort of.) I remember seeing some requests in the future for an app, but for now, all the โotherโ notes that donโt make it in a more meaningful way onto LogSeq lives in Apple Notes.
I moved most of the notes I previously had stored in Bear to Apple Notes. Although that sounds like itโs a dumpster fire, there is a bit of structure! I enjoy using Apple Notes for more personal stuff (, e.g. COVID travel notes) or shared notes with Matt. We all have a copy that doesnโt seem like a big deal, but this switch was very welcome after using Bear primarily (which doesnโt have a share feature).
๐ Notion
Admittedly, I donโt use Notion as much as in my personal life.
I use it a lot for work, as itโs one of our main daily tools, but although Matt and I have a shared Notion space, I hardly look at it.
Because Notion is so feature-rich, itโs been an excellent way to find links to other things that we occasionally need. It has been helpful when I forget recipes, for example, and refer back to it because 2019 me was looking out for future me.
But in terms of note-taking? Eh, not as much, but still worth a mention.
Take note: I like taking notes ๐คท๐ปโโ๏ธ
This post might be too over the top or even complicated for some folks, but having the separation makes my brain VERY happy, and hey – thatโs what matters here! ๐ง
I’m aware that I didn’t talk about physical notebooks…and that’s because they just don’t work for me. I need to be able to search for things otherwise I’m lost. ๐
Over to you – tell me about your note-taking workflow! Iโm always intrigued to see how people capture everything in this information-heavy age. ๐๐ผ
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